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Ronelle Alexander: THE PARADOX OF THE INSTANT TRILINGUAL
Second, how can such a transformation happen in an instant? One single,
internally consistent language cannot trifurcate overnight into three separate languages.
Here, the obvious question is whether there ever actually existed ‘one’
single language before that point? Was the incipient trilingual state already present?
If so, to what extent was it present, and to what extent was this recognized
before the so-called instantaneous breakup? Why in common parlance does one
constantly encounter the belief that Serbo-Croatian split into the three successor
languages at that one specific point in time (1991) identified as the dissolution of
Yugoslavia?
Finally, why does the breakup produce a trilingual speaker instead of a
bilingual one? The bipartite name of the now-defunct language, Serbo-Croatian,
suggests an amalgam, or a compromise, or a partnership between two partners –
something like a marriage. If such a partnership ends in divorce, the two partners
go their separate ways. Why is the result of the breakup then not the two elements
of that binomial, namely Serbian and Croatian? Whence the third partner?
The scholar to whom this volume is dedicated has already given intelligent
– indeed, eloquent – answers to all these questions (see especially Bugarski 2004,
Bugarski 2005, Bugarski 2010). In particular, it was he who articulated the difference
between ‘language as communicative system’ and ‘language as symbolic
system’, a distinction which figured crucially in both my own previous treatments
of these issues (Alexander 2002-03, Alexander 2006: 379-426). Yet some of the
questions still rankle, partly because they are so closely linked with the violence
and disruptions of the breakup, and partly because the actors involved still hold
very divergent views. In what follows, I treat the above questions in reverse order,
and offer some observations on recent events both in the hope that the views
of a knowledgeable outsider may yet contribute something, and in homage to one
of the very few scholars of the question who is respected by all sides.
2. How many languages? Bi-, tri- or quadri-lingual?
An outsider might indeed have expected Serbo-Croatian to dissolve into Serbian
and Croatian, especially as it was clear from the outset that the continued existence
of Yugoslavia as a state depended on a successful coalition between these
two central peoples, the Serbs and the Croats, each of whom came to the union
with its own separate history, cultural traditions, and literary norms. Indeed, the
best single answer to many of the above-articulated questions is the laconic,
much quoted sentence by Croatia’s cultural icon Miroslav Krleža, according to
which there is a single language … koji Hrvati zovu hrvatskim a Srbi srpskim
(“… which the Croats call Croatian and the Serbs Serbian”). Missing from this
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