Janez Rotar
K dvojini v slovenskem in hrvaškem jeziku
On The Dual in Slovene and Croatian
Slovenski sinopsis
English synopsis
English summary
Slovenski sinopsis
Dvojina ima v slovenščini nenadomestljivo vlogo tako pomensko kot v oblikoslovno-skladenjskem obsegu, in sicer na visoki ravni, v knjižnem standardnem jeziku, kot tudi na nižji socialno-zvrstni ravni. Ekspresivnost dvojine je na eni in na drugi ravni veliko večja, kot jo napoveduje sama terminološka oznaka: gramatična kategorija števila.
English synopsis
In Slovene, the dual plays a significant role both in the semantic and the morphological and syntactic systems, on the levels of both the standard literary language and colloquial registers. On both levels, the expressive value of the dual is much greater than might be deduced from its terminological description: a grammatical category of number. The article discusses examples from both types of language illustrating this claim.
English summary
The Croatian folk ballad Marko Kraljevič i brat mu Andrijaš (Prince Marko and his brother Andrijaš, first published in 1556) is used to illustrate the disappearance of the dual paradigm as a grammatical category of number and its replacement by the plural. The lyrical poem Notturno by the Croatian poet Tin Ujević, in which the lyrical subject is adressed with the sociative plural, illustrates the possibility of misinterpreting an implied dual form as a plural one. A confirmation is found in the Slovene translation, there the Croatian plural form was mechanically replaced by a plural instead of the authentic Slovene dual, which would be the only appropriate rendering in this poem. A seminar translation into Slovene testifies to the exactness of the dual for a lyrical poem in which the speaker is addressing a singular addressee.
The second part illustrates that it is not possible to use the dual in polite address of two persons or a couple when each member of the pair or couple would individually require a plural form of politeness. Particularly delicate in this respect is the sociative dual, which »connects« the speaker and the addressee, because --- on lower colloquial levels of language situational context brings out unintentional or intentional subtones. Polite forms of address thus exclude the use of the sociative dual.
