Senior researcher: dr. sc. Anita Peti-Stantić
Project assistants: dr. sc. Ivana Latković, Irena Miličić, Danja Šilović Karić

Summary: This project will encompass research on Slavic linguistic typology and the general and comparative history of South Slavic languages and cultures. Its focus will be on discovering and interpreting the different types of relations between the Croatian language and culture (as a starting point) and other closely related languages and cultures. In the typological portion of the project we will attempt to define “close relationship” through at least four levels of relations between first and second languages or dialects together with their associated cultures. All researchers will be dealing with two primary domains: 1. Typological relationships (particularly correlations of syntactic and morphological categories, with an emphasis on the stylistic potential of linear sentence organization, but also the position of so called “hybrid genres” in the context of interculturality) 2. Standardological problems (on the linguistic side, studying the typology of intra- and extralinguistic forces that led to the formation of the South Slavic standard languages; on the cultural-civilizational side, questioning the established patterns of writing non-fictional texts as well as their impact on the formation of the popular-scientific functional style in both diachronic and synchronic perspective). This research plan will be realized by using data on three levels: 1. A comparative analysis of cultural-civilizational concepts and terminology will be conducted; the main goal of this part of the research is to systematize syntactic and popular-scientific terminology in a comparative perspective, beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century. 2. An analysis of the distinctive or stylistic potential of certain specific linguistic features belonging to a given functional linguistic system and a comparison of these features with other linguistic systems. 3. An investigation of standard-language competence, which will be based on the establishment and analysis of a comparative historical framework for the recontextualization of the history of prestandardization forces before the formation of the individual standard languages on the one hand, and on the other with the completion and publication of the results of an ongoing project on standardological linguistic and communicative competence in the Croatian language. In the course of the project, two graduate students will complete and defend their master’s theses under the mentorship of the project leader.