engleski

"Chronology and Semantics of the Earliest Latin Loanwords in Croatian"

The purpose of this paper is to chronologically and semantically analyse the earliest Latin loanwords in Croatian language, in order to create a picture of the earliest language contacts between Roman people that continued to live in cities on the eastern Adriatic coast and the Slavic newcomers. Loanwords seem important because they, sorted into chronological frames, give us a glimpse into the daily life of people using those words and tell us what they needed to borrow and at what time. The chronology of borrowings will mostly be established on the basis of the chronology of the sound changes that took place in both "the donor language" and "the receiving language". Also, historical circumstances will be taken in account, as well as the verifiability and the distribution of the most probable Latin source for the loanword. The paper deals with the loanwords from two periods: 1) before the 7th century and 2) between the 7th and the 9th century. These are the periods most easily distinguished according to the chronology of the sound changes in Slavic. The loanwords will also be divided into semantic groups, according to their meaning as well as the time of borrowing. It can be shown that most of the loanwords borrowed before the 9th century belong to the semantic fields of: plants, animals (including quite a lot of fish names), house types and house supplies, agriculture (including fishing and winemaking), travel and trade (including sea- travel) and religious terminology. This is, of course, the period when the Slavs were settling into a new country and learning to live in a different new way, near the sea and from the sea.

Chronology, semantics, Latin loanwords in Croatian, language contacts

nije evidentirano