Примењена лингвистика у част Ранку Бугарском - Језик у

Ronelle Alexander: THE PARADOX OF THE INSTANT TRILINGUAL
justified in standing up for the rights of the Croatian people. Kordić, by contrast,
points out that the ‘one’ language never was unified but was always pluricentric,
and that the nationalist zeal with which the Croatian language is defended is
based upon untruthful allegations.
One thing is clear however, and this is that there was no instantaneous split
of one language into more than one. Whatever was the status of Croatian at various
points during the history of Yugoslavia, it is clear that there was a separate
functioning norm long before 1991. Whether this was the insufficiently recognized
Croatian language, or one of the several norms of the pluricentric Serbo-
Croatian language, depends on one’s point of view.
4. The paradox whereby “one” is simultaneously “more than one”
Somewhat over a decade ago, I commenced work on what would become an
extensive treatment of the post-Yugoslav linguistic situation. My central organizational
concept was the simultaneous existence of one language at the communicative
level and three languages at the cultural-symbolic level, and my belief
was not only that both ‘the one’ and ‘the three’ could be described at the same
time, but that students could be taught the underlying common core in a way that
allowed them to acquire active knowledge of one of the three separate languages
and passive knowledge of the other two. When it became evident that such a project
must encompass two separate volumes, Ellen Elias-Bursać joined the undertaking
as co-author of the second. The first volume, therefore (Alexander 2006),
is a detailed descriptive grammar accompanied by a lengthy sociolinguistic commentary
discussing how such a situation had come into being. The other volume,
now in a second edition (Alexander and Elias-Bursać 2010), is a classroom textbook
whose minimal grammar explanations contain cross-references to the more
detailed explanations in the companion volume.
The central concern of both books is the common core, since, as Ranko
Bugarski has claimed in a now-famous 2007 interview with a Croatian journalist,
svaki je naški devedeset posto vaški (“90% of what we say is the same as what
you say”). This core is referred to as BCS, an acronym devised from the initial
letters of the three separate language names (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian) listed
in alphabetical order. That which is consistently different is identified not only
by the letters B, C, and S (which refer, of course, to the three distinct codes) but
also by the letters E and J, which refer to ekavian and ijekavian pronunciation
(and, of course, spelling). The separation of the two sets is very important, since
although the standard forms of B and C are consistently ijekavian, that of S permits
both pronunciations. Any element of linguistic structure which is perceived
by speakers to belong specifically to one (or more) of the three separate systems
100