Towards a Serbian urban dialectology: Linguistic notes to a Dorćol idiolect

Abstract

On the basis of a limited corpus, the author concludes that the idiolect of a woman from Belgrade, born in Dorćol in 1916, generally corresponds with descriptions of the Belgrade idiom from the first half of the twentieth century. The paper asserts: (a) that it has a four-accent system, but with optional preservation of falling accents after the first syllable (zapâmti, zami“sli), (b) that in the two-syllable words metataxis is present (že“na, čo“vek), (c) that there is no transmission of accents to the prepositions (na groblje, kod vas; na grob), whereas there is the optional shift to the verb negation (ne volite, ali i: ne la“žem, ne vi“dite, ne pîtam), (d) that a postaccentual length can generally appear after a short rising accent in the position šèšir, dèvōjka, although optional shortening (razùmeš, pòkažem) can also occur in this position, (e) that there is an optional shortening of long accented syllables (bo“lovi, na“meru), but no lenghtening of the short ones, except in emphasis (dûgo, dûgo), (f) that the non-discrimination of two pairs of affricates is preserved, i.e. that the pronunciation of [đdž] gospođdža appears somewhat harder and there is also a slightly softened articulation of [č‘] ve“č´e, č‘e“kaj; (e) that the accusative suppresses the locative with the prepositions na and u (on ne može da dubi na glavu), in addition to the proper use of the locative (još uvek sam bila sva u groznici). Our corpus has not confirmed: (a) the Balkan model of the future tense I (će kaže), but analytically one (ja ću da kleknem; a ona će da kaže), as well as the simple and the complex one (daću pa ću napisati treći), (b) the use of the preposition with with the instrumental of agency (strugala nožem). Although the earlier works have not referred to the use of the infinitive, we can conclude that it, along with various semantic groups of verbs, is completely suppressed by the da + present construction (ona nema običaj da priča; ja treba da odnesem; svi hoće da mi pomognu; nemojte da dolazite; obično volim da idem za Zadušnice, etc.). In addition, there are examples of postpositive use of the congruent future tense. (Ja nikad nisam rekla: tata, u životu mom, ni ja ni braća moja). [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 178020: Dijalektološka istraživanja srpskog jezičkog prostora]

Keywords

• dialectology
• phonetic and morphosyntactic analysis
• idiolect
• Dorćol
• transcript
• telephone conversation