On one kind of reduplication in old Serbian sacral poetry

Abstract

In this work the author treats the issue of parallelism, but only one kind of it, namely parallelism as a reduplication of different lexical units (concepts) which have between them the general copulative conjunction "i (and)" as a sign of their parallel relation. This reduplication, the author believes, is not purely a lexical-conceptual, but also a syntactic and stylistic phenomenon. Therefore the reduplication method has been analysed from the syntactic, semantic and stylistic standpoints. It was conveyed from Old Testament books, the Psalms and the Byzantine rhetoric of the time into old Serbian religious poetry, and became a principle there. It expresses, in this poetry, a certain regularity (canonicity) and symmetry, in accordance with the spiritual world-views of that time.

Keywords

• old Serbian poetry
• parallelism
• reduplication