Shtokavian Dialect - General Characteristics

General Characteristics

General characteristics of Štokavian are the following:

1. što or šta as the demonstrative/interrogative pronoun
2. differentiation between two short (in addition to two or three long) accents, rising and falling, though not in all Štokavian speakers
3. preservation of unaccented length, but not consistenly across all speeches
4. /u/ as the reflex of Common Slavic back nasal vowel /ǫ/ as well as the syllabic /l/ (with the exception of central Bosnia where a diphthongal /uo/ is also recorded as a reflex)
5. initial group of v- + weak semivowel yields u- (e.g. unuk < Common Slavic *vъnukъ)
6. schwa resulting from the jer merger yields /a/, with the exception of Zeta-South Sandžak dialect
7. metathesis of vьse to sve
8. čr- > cr-, with the exception of Slavonian, Molise and Vlachia (Gradišće) dialect
9. word-final -l changes to /o/ or /a/; the exception is verbal adjective in the Slavonian southwest
10. d' > /dʑ/ (<đ>) with numerous exceptions
11. cr > tr in the word trešnja "cherry"; some exceptions in Slavonia, Hungary and Romania
12. /ć/ and /đ/ from jt, jd (e.g. poći, pođem); exceptions in Slavonian and Eastern Bosnian dialect
13. so-called "new iotation" of dentals and labials, with many exceptions, especially in Slavonia and Bosnia
14. general loss of phoneme /x/, with many exceptions
15. ending -ā in genitive plural of masculine and feminine nouns, with many exceptions
16. ending -u in locative singular of masculine and neuter nouns (e.g. u gradu, u m(j)estu)
17. infix -ov- / -ev- in the plural of most monosyllabic masculine nouns, with many exceptions (e.g. in the area between Neretva and Dubrovnik)
18. syncretism of dative, locative and instrumental plural of nouns, with many exceptions
19. preservation of ending -og(a) in genitive and accusative singular of masculine and neuter gender if pronominal-adjectival declension (e.g. drugoga), with exceptions on the area of Dubrovnik and Livno
20. special form with the ending -a for the neuter gender in nominative plural of pronominal-adjectival declension (e.g. ova m(j)esta and no ove m(j)esta)
21. preservation of aorist, which is however missing in some areas (e.g. around Dubrovnik)
22. special constructs reflecting old dual for numerals 2-4 (dva, tri, četiri stola)
23. lots of so-called "Turkisms" (turcizmi) or "Orientalisms", i.e. words borrowed from Ottoman Turkish

As can be seen from the list, many of this isoglosses are missing from particular Štokavian idioms, just as many of them are shared with neighboring non-Štokavian dialects.