Serbian dialectology in the past, present and future
Authors: Remetic Slobodan 
Published: March 2018

Although the beginnings of Serbian dialectology are related to the work of
Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic, this linguistic discipline was academically
established in the early 20th century, when Milan Resetar and Aleksandar
Belic appeared on the scene simultaneously. Owing to their exchange of
opinions, the conceptions in classifying Serbian dialects evolved over the
1905-1910 period more noticeably than in the whole of earlier or later
research. The 20th century is considered to be the golden age of Serbian
dialectology, the primary academic preoccupation of the two greatest Serbian
linguists of the last century: Aleksandar Belic and Pavle Ivic. Though
certain milestones were hit in the mentioned period (many blank spots were
removed from the dialectal maps; dozens of monographic descriptions were
published on individual speech types; valuable initial results were achieved
in the domain of urban dialectology; valuable studies were completed in the
domain of dialectal lexicography and onomasticon, many questions were
answered in Serbian historical dialectology, etc.), as things turned out,
serious and comprehensive tasks were transferred into the third millennium.
In order to pass the final judgement on the relevant matters of the
discipline, it is necessary to define the areals of some phonological
features on the territory of Serbia and eastern Bosnia, details that earlier
researchers have missed. The results of the study of the Serbian dialectal
complex were predominantly published in the Serbian Dialectological Review
(Srpski dijalektoloski zbornik), a respectable journal established in 1905
in the Serbian Royal Academy after the publication of Aleksandar Belic?s
seminal Dialects of Eastern and Southern Serbia. The paper emphasises the
unequal degree of study of the Serbian dialectal mosaic, in which as a rule
the area of the western republics of the former state ?takes precedence,?
where the Serbian speeches did not have a priority status. During the latest
war operations, the extensive zones were temporarily left without Serbs,
which imposed the duty onto dialectologists to establish the language
credentials of the vast areas in their study of the refugees? speech. The
most important tasks of Serbian dialectology were thematically and
geographically encompassed in a comprehensive long-term project
?Dialectological Research of the Serbian Language Area,? a joint enterprise
of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences and its Institute of the Serbian
Language. A relevant position within the project is occupied by the
compilation of the Serbian Dialectological Atlas, a task facing serious,
often hardly solvable problems. The historical events from the close of the
last century destroyed the perspective of compiling the Serbo-Croatian
Dialectological Atlas, and imposed upon us the task of additional inclusion
of Serbian speeches from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia into the atlas
of Serbian dialects. Particular problems arise from the impossibility of
field work on the territory of Croatia, from where since the dissolution of
the former state we have not inherited a single studied Serbian spot, and
that considerable deficit is mostly relieved through the study of refugees?
speech. Thirty-odd still unstudied spots from the mentioned area are an
obstacle to the final editing and prepress of the First Lexical Volume of
the Atlas. The paper stresses the unused student potential in the collection
of oral linguistic heritage and appeals to the dialectologists that, in such
tasks, they should assist the amateur enthusiasts in the collection and
treatment of homeland oral linguistic tradition.