Serbian grammar today

Abstract

The paper surveys research on Serbian grammar over the past fifty-odd years, approximately from the 1970s up to the present day. The paper aims at demonstrating the most relevant results of the study of Serbian grammar and at emphasising the novelties in this period. The 1970s are a time in which the study of Serbian was seen as a continuation of postwar research, and at the same time results of more recent research were being introduced to academic work, results of newer theories were being accepted, phenomena that previously did not appear in the focus of attention in Serbian scholarship were also being studied, and the research was founded on stylistically diverse corpus of the Serbian language. That was also a time of the inclusion of young academics who are still active today. New insights were given into a number of phenomena that had been topics of earlier grammatical research, but many linguistic items were also described that had been studied little or not at all. Numerous blank spots in the grammatical description of Serbian were filled in. It can be said that Serbian grammatical research in this period is on a par with the achievement of global linguistic and Slavic scholarship. All the above-mentioned leads to the conclusion that the past fifty years is a period in which great results were achieved in the grammatical research of Serbian. That facilitated the modernisation of instruments of the Standard Serbian language.

Keywords

• Serbian language
• grammar
• morphology
• word formation
• syntax