The 16th-Century Slovenian Literary Standard and Slovenian Manuscript Texts from the Second Half of the 16th Century and Early 17th Century

Abstract

In the article, selected Slovenian manuscripts written between 1550 and 1623 are studied in light of their adherence to the established (Protestant) language standard of the period or their deviation from it, with the aim of assessing the diffusion of the Protestant standard to non-religious texts produced in the central Slovenian area in the given period. The adherence to the standard is assessed on the basis of some orthographical, phonological and morphological features of the texts which are compared to the same features in the works of the dominant Protestant writers, especially Dalmatin’s Bible, and to the standard set in the Catholic EVANGELIA INU LYSTVVI 1612. The analysis shows that the sociolinguistic situation in the second half of the 16th century and the first quarter of the 17th century can be described as diglossic, with the language of the majority of analyzed manuscripts being not distinctly dialectal nor entirely adhering to the Protestant language standard, though greater adherence to the established standards is observable in the manuscripts written by priests; in general, manuscripts can be characterized as hybrid, their language combining dialectal reflections with features characteristic of the Protestant standard.

Keywords

• history of the Slovenian language
• standardization
• non-standard varieties
• historical linguistics
• historical sociolinguistics