The accent of foreign vocabulary in the light of linguistic contacts

Abstract

The new-stokavian accentual or, more broadly, prosodic »four-accent system may be denoted as a sort of phonological atavism of modern Serbo-Croatian. At the present time the system as a whole is rather old-fashioned and unpractical. Its weak representation in the main cities is already well known and often pointed out. Were it not otherwise us spread as it is, it would be hardly usable in the standard language. The accent of foreign vocabulary which is here dealt with, is a special field of this complex system. As a rule there are three types of prosodic reception of foreign words: type I or »original« one (also »dialectal«, i.e. pre-new-älokavian), such as kàsa: mada terasa : natüra, temelj : oltär/är, and types II and III od »adapted« ones (both new-ätokavian, the former older and the latter newer), such as tèrasa natura, temelj : dltär and kàsa : móda, teràsa : natura respectively. Of the three types only a combination of II and 111 is admitted today at the standard level, namenly (kàsa)lkàsa : moda, terasa : natura, tèmelj : òltàr, though type I is still widespread, especially in cultured speech. As to the origin of the three types all of them can be derived in the last resort from linguistic contacts between the Serbo-Croatian prosodic subsystems and the systems of the foreign languages concerned. This is illustrated here by one example of a phrase given in Italian and German as well as, incidentally, in Turkish, but pronounced, as it really happens, in different Serbo-Croatian types. Yet nowadays the pressure of some other languages is at work, e.g. that of French, English and Russian, whereat a process of crossing of the three types of prosodic reception mentioned above takes place. In this way the speech practice obscures the more or less simple rules of this proceeding.