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Declension of Adjectives in Croatian Church Slavonic

The declensional pattern of adjectives in Croatian Church Slavonic (CCS) has been presented and compared to the situation in Old Church Slavonic (OCS). The research is based on the corpus of texts for the Dictionary of The Croatian Redaction of Church Slavonic, which is currently being compiled in the Old Church Slavonic Institute in Zagreb. The research focused predominantly on the liturgical Croatian Glagolitic texts from the 14th and the 15th century, but attestations from non-liturgical texts were also taken into consideration, to the extent in which they respect the CCS language norm. The research has shown that in the Croatian Glagolitic liturgical texts short and long forms of adjectives have been preserved. The absence of short or long form of a particular adjective is related to its meaning, much like in OCS. Both soft and hard declensional patterns, which are characteristic of the OCS declension, have been generally preserved, but one can sporadically notice their neutralization. In the declension of the long forms of adjectives, one can observe the strong influence of the hard pronominal declension pattern or sometimes even its predominance, as in the dative singular masculine and neuter. The neutralization between the hard and the soft stems and the influence of the pronominal declension pattern are the most prominent features marking the difference between the CCS declension system and the OCS one.

Croatian Church Slavonic; declension; adjectives

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