On the periphrastic future budem + infinitive in serbo-croatian

Abstract

actional verbs with the infinitive, the aspectual-temporal compound form bodo + infinitive, which in West and East Slavic functions as the imperfective future as against the perfective present pro fuluro, takes a special place, notedly in South-Slavic where its Serbo-Croatian form budem + infinitive has been until today insufficiently examined. Here it is generally considered as a čakavian and Ragusan »dialectalisme« or provincialism«. Yet a deeper insight into the matter gives another picture of the state, at which three questions remain open: its diatopic diffusion, its place in the system of future formations and its origin. In the preceeding paper only the first of these three questions is treated. The periphrasis budem + infinitive, as it is already known, is proper above all to the Croatian part of the Serbo-Croatian linguistic area, for which reason it is here dealt with as such. When considered from the diachronic point of view, the compound form in question appears to have been used from the XIVth and even, may-be, from the end of the XIIIth up to the middle of the XIXth century on all stages of the Croatian literary language, except in kajkavian: in its čakavian, ikavian- štokavian and partly in its jekavian-štokavian phase. The same results from the data on its synchronic and diatopic diffusion. It is still in use first of all in both costal and inland Dalmatia, then on the Croatian Littoral, in Istria and the Lika, as well as partly in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Slavonia. In the ekavian East it seems to be competely unknown. In other words, it is still to be heard more or less in all regions where it has been historically recorded. It is, therefore, an interdialectal property of spoken language in the western part of the Serbo-Croatian linguistic area. The compound form at issue has disappeared from the literary use in the middle of the XIXth century in connection with the last reform of the standard language. Its use in the spoken language of the