Fluminensia: Journal for Philological Research (Jan 2005)
SINTAX IN THE GRAMMAR OF CROATIAN LANGUAGE WRITTEN BY PARČIĆ IN 1873
Abstract
Dragutin Parčić published, a grammar of Croatian language in Italian, in Zadar, in 1873: ˝GRAMMATICA DELLA LINGUA SLAVA (ILLIRICA) ˝. The first part of the book deals with morphology in detail and it is followed by the part dedicated to the syntax (pg 117-184). The material is devided into three parts: Concordanca (Agreement), Uso e Reggimento (Usage and Function) and Construzione (Word Order). The work deals with the first part of the syntax - Agreement and the emphasis is put on the syntactic differences between Croatian and Italian languages, observed from Parčić's perspective. Among other things, he covers the genitive of negation, partitive constructions in genitive case, as well as special aspects of concord as a result of a dual form. Most of the mentioned as well as some other features are explained in the terms of diachronic linguistics, for example, adverbs ljetos, zimus, jesenas (this summer, this winter, this autumn), or ljeti and zimi (in summer, in winter). Nevertheless, direct stylistic comments on the level of syntax are rare. For instance the use of syntagms such as put putovati in poetic language or a comments on word order in a sentence. Through this grammar book, Parčić also tries to establish a language norm for some syntactic features. For example, he deals with the usage of supine with the verbs of motion. However future grammarians dealt with such features in prescriptive grammar books no more. To conclude, Parčić's syntax is commonly used for the analysis in the context of the history of the Croatian syntactic descriptions.
