From: Mate Kapovic
Message: 35928
Date: 2005-01-15
----- Original Message -----
From: "willemvermeer" <wrvermeer@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2005 6:37 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Croatian dialectology (was: Latin ibex akin to
Portuguese bezerro?)
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Mate Kapovic" <mkapovic@...> wrote:
>
>
>> For Cakavian, there is a monograph by Milan Mogus "Cakavsko
>> narjecje" (1977)but that's only phonology.
>
>
> Mogus's book is only about *defining* what is C^akavian, which is an
> uninteresting question to begin with on the well-known principle
> that "what is" questions are unilluminating, and not made more
> interesting by the way Mogus deals with it. (The book confuses the
> issues and is totally unhistorical. It is a public disgrace and
> should have been branded as such.)
Haha yeah, I agree. I don't have a very good opinion on the book as well,
but for now there is nothing else unfortunately.
> The same holds for Mogus's "Fonoloski razvoj hrvatskog jezika"
> (1971), which commits the mistake of taking seriously Zvonimir
> Junkovic's theory of Slavic accentology, which I bet you guys are
> unaware of.
Oh I am aware. I read Junkovic's "Jezik Antuna Vramca i porijeklo
kajkavskoga dijalekta". The fact is that Junkovic's theory is really just
Kurylovicz's theory if I am not mistaking (and Mogus just copied everything
from Junkovic). Also, what Junkovic writes about Kajkavian and Slovene
accentuation in the mentioned book is also garbage. It *is* a shame that
many Croatian dialectologists just accept it as it is. The problem here
really is that our dialectologists do know the dialects but their knowledge
of other stuff, like Proto-Slavic is very very poor (with some exceptions,
like Brozovic).
> I recall meeting a Croatian linguist telling me that "as a Croat" he
> was ashamed that that was all they had to offer. (Of course he was
> wrong: if you have the blazing light of Stjepan Ivsic, who not only
> put all of us in his debt by describing the "Danasni Posavski govor",
> but also happened to discover Stang's law more than half a century
> before Stang, there is no need to be ashamed of anything and you're
> absolved from collective guilt for all eternity, for God's sake.)
Yes, Ivsic was a genius. I have just made the same kind of remark about him
really discovering "Stang's" Law in a recent article of mine. The law should
be really called Ivsic's Law but that's the way it goes I guess. Some
authors just remain ignored for no apparent reason (of course, except the
fact that Prilog za slavenski akcenat was never translated from Croatian).
> Sorry for that, but it came from the heart and I'll always be an
> unequivocal Ivsic fan, even if he became a wee bit alcoholic in old
> age and mislaid the manuscript of Marulic's translation of 'De
> imitatione Christi". IT DOESN'T MATTER if you've written "Prilog za
> slavensku akcentologiju.
No need to apologize... :) Ivsic was a great linguist, but the said truth is
that no one came to step into his shoes in the right manner after his death
(his main and only real pupil is also briliant but has an aversion to
writing so he left untill now practically nothing written, unlike Ivsic).
Mate