THE ACQUISITION AND APPLICATION OF POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS IN CONTEMPORARY SERBIAN LANGUAGE

This paper analyzes the acquisition and application of possessive pronouns in contemporary Serbian language. When analyzing the current situation in standard Serbian, some characteristics that differ from the official language norm are noticeable. Serbian grammars prescribe rules of application/distribution of all possessive pronouns which exist in the language. Although these rules are defined, they are not precise enough, because many situations which occur in the language have not been taken into consideration. The distribution (or the actual use) of possessive pronouns in reality often differs from the above mentioned prescribed rules: the possessive pronoun svoj is often substituted with other possessive pronouns which coexist in the language. It is assumed that in some cases these substitutions are arbitrary. The aim of this article is to explain when these substitutions are arbitrary and when they are not, and which psycholinguistic reasons exist that concern this issue. Aiming to prove this phenomenon, children (of pre-school and school age) and university-students have been tested. Some interesting examples have been taken from the CHILDES language-corpus. Examples from the Corpus of contemporary Serbian language and from many other sources (books, mass-media, free speech) have also been taken into consideration, but only a few of them will be mentioned/quoted in this article. The language/pronoun use has been observed by adults as well. Keywords: possessive pronouns, acquisition, application, grammar, psycholinguistic factors, Serbia