The vocabulary of the Eastern Hercegovina and Shumadia-Voyvodina dialects of the Serbian language in a comparative aspect

Abstract

The paper deals with the results of a survey of speakers of Eastern Hercegovian (Western Bosnian, Manjača and Livanjsko Polje districts) and Shumadia-Voyvodina dialects (Rađevina and Podgorina districts) on the base of 370 questions covering the main thematic groups of vocabulary. In comparison with Rađevina, the answers of informants from Western Bosnia contain more words different from the literary language. But most of Bosnian dialect words coexist in with words that are identical to the literary language. The range of lexical differences between the Western Bosnian dialect and the Western Serbian dialect is 27%, but half of this number also falls on doublet pairs. A series of differential lexemes demonstrates a clear areal dichotomy between dialects of Western Bosnia and Western Serbia (dimljak — odžak, guliti — ljuštiti, uvor — kresta, gra — pasulj, mrkva — šangarepa, cesta — put, tara — razboj, kruv — hleb). The Western Bosnian corpus is heterogeneous, and the southern dialects, which tend to the Adriatic area, contain more archaisms and vocabulary characteristic for the Western part of the Serbo-Croatian area.

For citation
Yakushkina E. I. The vocabulary of the Eastern Hercegovina and Shumadia-Voyvodina dialects of the Serbian language in a comparative aspect // Slavic Almanac. 2020. Issues 3–4. P. 194–210. DOI: 10.31168/2073-5731.2020.3-4.2.03