The Pitve Subdialect from Hraste to Our Day

Usporedbom dvaju većih i dvaju manjih radova o pitavskom govoru u rasponu od šezdesetak godina pokušava se utvrditi što se u tom razdoblju promijenilo, što se sačuvalo, kao i to što takvo, dijalektološki relativno kratko, razdoblje znači za jedan organski govor.This paper studies linguistic developments in the Pitve subdialect, on the Island of Hvar, during the last sixty years. It draws on the available research, especially Mate Hraste’s study of the Hvar dialect, in order to identify areas of linguistic change and innovation. As expected, innovations are not many. Some of them tend towards a simplification of the system, such as changes from diphthongs to monophthongs, while others render the subdialect more distinctive, such as the emergence of new phonotactic rules in the distribution of consonants. The Pitve subdialect has a number of dual forms. It is interesting that some of them have persisted since Hraste carried out his research in the area (notably the dual case endings), i.e. that the system has not entirely dispensed with the less frequently occurring variants. Most of the basic features have, however, remained the same, among them those that make the speech of Pitve distinctive in the immediate as well as the wider dialect context. This goes to show that, in spite of various influences (especially that of the standard language) which during the period studied here proved stronger than before, linguistic diversity nonetheless persists