On the importance of studying turcizms from the pre-standard epoch of the Serbian language: On the selected material from Stari srpski zapisi i natpisi by Ljubomir Stojanović

Abstract

Turcizms attested in written sources from the pre-standard epoch of the Serbian language are significant for studying the chronology of this type of loanwords, as well as for the insight into the history of language and cultural contacts between the Serbs and the Ottoman Turks. Ljubomir Stojanović’s six volume book Stari srpski zapisi i natpisi often presents the first written evidence of turcizms in the Serbian language. Relevant lexicographic resources including this material in its corpora, and thus offering the historical linguistic data for the Turkish loanwords in the Serbian language, are very few (RJA, STACHOWSKI 1967 and MIHAJLOVIĆ) and not always reliable. The paper analyzes sixteen Turkish loanwords from the Stojanović’s book, not included in these three manuals: aršin, dešerme, juzeli, kesa, mal, mašrapa, milć, tefter (absent from all the manuals), rakija, šinik (absent from RJA and STACHOWSKI 1967), kavga, kapičija, kujunžija, ortak, čauš, čoha (absent from STACHOWSKI 1967). The importance of studying Turkish loanwords from the pre-standard epoch is presented through the etymological analysis of the word dešerme, hitherto not mentioned in a single dictionary of the Serbian language, descriptive nor etymological. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 178007: Etimološka istraživanja srpskog jezika i izrada Etimološkog rečnika srpskog jezika]

Keywords

• Serbian language
• diachrony
• etymology
• Turkish loanwords
• dešerme
• Ljubomir Stojanović