Towards a Serbian urban dialectology: Linguistic notes to a Dorcol idiolect
On the basis of a limited corpus, the author concludes that the idiolect of a woman from Belgrade, born in Dorcol 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 (zap?mti, zami?sli), (b) that in the two-syllable words metataxis is present (ze?na, co?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?zem, ne vi?dite, ne p?tam), (d) that a postaccentual length can generally appear after a short rising accent in the position s?sir, d?v?jka, although optional shortening (raz?mes, p?kazem) 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 (d?go, d?go), (f) that the non-discrimination of two pairs of affricates is preserved, i.e. that the pronunciation of [djdz] gospodjdza appears somewhat harder and there is also a slightly softened articulation of [c?] ve?c?e, c?e?kaj; (e) that the accusative suppresses the locative with the prepositions na and u (on ne moze da dubi na glavu), in addition to the proper use of the locative (jos uvek sam bila sva u groznici). Our corpus has not confirmed: (a) the Balkan model of the future tense I (ce kaze), but analytically one (ja cu da kleknem; a ona ce da kaze), as well as the simple and the complex one (dacu pa cu napisati treci), (b) the use of the preposition with with the instrumental of agency (strugala nozem). 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 obicaj da prica; ja treba da odnesem; svi hoce da mi pomognu; nemojte da dolazite; obicno volim da idem za Zadusnice, etc.). In addition, there are examples of postpositive use of the congruent future tense. (Ja nikad nisam rekla: tata, u zivotu mom, ni ja ni braca moja).