Language, Dialect, or Variant? The Status of Croatian and Its Place in the South Slavic Dialect Continuum

Abstract

As we have argued in the previous chapter, dialects, languages, and standard languages are essentially sociolinguistic constructs. It is not possible to use only structural or historical criteria or the degree of mutual intelligibility to determine whether two varieties are part of the same language or different languages, and these criteria are at any rate not as straightforward as they would initially appear. Nevertheless, arguments of this type have been common with respect to the status of the language varieties spoken in the South Slavic region between Slovenia in the northwest and Macedonia and Bulgaria in the southeast. This chapter will examine specific linguistic facts that have been used to characterize the different language varieties in this central South Slavic region, including the larger dialect groups that are typically assumed, their historical origin, and the dialectal bases of the standard languages; we will also consider different interpretations of the linguistic data by scholars.