2008
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Paul-Louis Thomas, « Changements linguistiques en bosniaque-croate-monténégrin-serbe », Revue des Études Slaves, ID : 10.3406/slave.2008.7132
Linguistic Changes in Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian The author of this paper is examining how Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are changing today, based on doublets found in dictionaries of language difficulties, grammars, style guides... Changes can be observed at different levels: in prosody (with evolutions of the common accentuation system, combining short and long vowels with rising and falling tones), in morphology (with a tendency to a single theme in noun inflexions, due to a receding of assibilation, of the mobile vowel and all of the alternation pattern; a tendency for flexional endings to be unified after consonants that are no longer palatal; an extension of the differential suffix -ov), in syntax (with an extension of the conjunction bez da, the use of the perfective present with the adverb možda, the use of accusative with passive pronominal verbs, the use of the animate accusative form of the masculine relative pronoun instead of the inanimated form with antecedents referring to things or notions, like in automobil kojeg — instead of koji — je kupio 'the car that he boughť). The standard languages may or may not accept these changes. However their presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia as well as Montenegro clearly shows the deep single foundation underlying the BCMS linguistic system.