Intelligibility as a Criterion for Determining Linguistic Identity

O različitim aspektima identiteta čovjek oduvijek traga pronalazeći smisao i objašnjenja za sebi bitna životna pitanja. Tako je i jezični identitet kao nositelj kulturnih i društvenih vrijednosti jedno od pitanja koje uvijek nanovo pokreću rasprave. Granice univerzalno primjenjive klasifikacije broja jezika nema jer se ona kreće između modela jedinstvenoga identiteta, kroz svoje osnovne oblike – tipološki, rodoslovni i vrijednosni, do složenoga identiteta koji obuhvaća i najmanje razlike dvaju jezika. Okosnicu rada čini kriterij razumljivosti koji je u novije vrijeme u jezikoslovlju primjenjivan osobito na hrvatskom i srpskom jeziku čime se želi dokazati da je visok stupanj razumljivosti temeljni dokaz o postojanju jednog jezika, srpskohrvatskoga. Da bi se osporila ta tvrdnja, provedeno je istraživanje o razumijevanju srpskog jezika na populaciji hrvatskih srednjoškolaca. Naglasak je ponuđenih pitanja stavljen na leksičku razinu jer je leksik instrumentarij svakoga jezika. Rezultati su pokazali slabo poznavanje značenja leksema srpskoga jezika, ali izrazito veliko prepoznavanje leksema koji ne ulaze i ne čine hrvatski leksički korpus.People have long sought the meaning and explanation of various aspects of their identity in attempting to answer life’s important questions. The issue of linguistic identity as bearer of cultural and social values has been the subject of many discussions. There is no universally applicable classification of the number of languages, as the models which are commonly used range from the unique identity model and its main forms – typological, genealogical and value-related, to the complex identity model that includes even the smallest differences between any two languages. The focus of the paper is on the criterion of intelligibility, which has recently been very often used in linguistics, particularly when analyzing differences between Croatian and Serbian, with the aim to prove a high level of mutual intelligibility between the two and consequently, the existence of a single language, Serbo-Croatian. To dispute this conclusion, we conducted a study on how well the Serbian language is understood among the Croatian secondary school population. The questions we asked focused on the lexical level because vocabulary is the core instrument of every language. We found that this population has a poor understanding of the meaning of lexemes in Serbian, but a good recognition of the lexemes which are not part of the Croatian lexical corpus