From Serbo-Croatian to Serbian

Abstract

After a discussion of the previous and current sociolinguistic situation of Standard Serbo-Croatian/Standard Serbian and the schematization of the phases in the cycle of the language planning process, ten 'optimal' steps will be proposed: selection, description, prescription, elaboration, acceptance, implementation, expansion, cultivation, evaluation and reconstruction. Any standard language should satisfy most of the suggested steps. In the case of Standard Serbian, five 'new' explanatory steps should be added to the proposed schematization - as an indispensable accessory tool to understand the principles and tendencies underlying the Serbian-Croatian relation: integration, variation, polarization, disintegration and promotion. In addition, the author points to some general linguistic (and cultural) issues - which are now, it seems, equipped with certain concrete language indications - as a possible basis for the investigation of different, linguistic and extralinguistic, 'Balkanistic' and 'Europeanistic' trends. For example, 'Balkanization', among other features, includes the growing number of the South Slavic (standard) languages (Slovenian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, etc.), the reduction of the adjectival and numerical declensions, etc., while 'Europeanization' includes openness to internationalisms in the lexicon (vs. 'purism'), cultures and languages in contact, nominalizations in syntax, urban dialects, as well as many other phenomena. © Walter de Gruyter.