A Note on the Nature and the Status of Standard Serbo-Croatian in Bosnia Hercegovinia

In the standard language controversy which has been going on in Yugoslavia for over two decades there remain two questions on which serious and reasonable specialists stiJI disagree. One is the question whether the Croats have the right to caIJ their variant of the standard language by the single name Croatian rather than by the joint name Croato-Serbian or Serbo-Croatian (or Croatian and Serbian/Serbian and Croatian). The 1974 constitution gave them the legal right to use the single name. Dunatov (1978) and Brozovic (1984) give several sociolinguistic arguments for the correctness of this position. The other question concerns the number of standard language variants on the territories of the republics of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Hercegovinia, and Montenegro. Everyone now agrees that there are at least two variants: the Western or Croatian or Zagreb variant, and the Eastern or Serbian or Belgrade variant. The last linguist to deny the existence of even these two variants was Stevanovic (1965) in a work that actuaIJy gives one of the most complete inventories of the features that differentiate the two variants. The different names, Western vs. Eastern, Croatian vs. Serbian, Zagreb vs. Belgrade, each emphasize the different components which have contributed to the development and the preservation of the differences, namely the areal, the ethnic, and the principal cultural center components. Of the three components, the areal is the most non-controversial and wiIJ be used here. The problem with the "one standard with two-variants" solution is that it leaves out large areas of the Serbo-Croatian-speaking territory, namely Montenegro and Bosnia-Hercegovinia, where the forms of the standard Serbo-Croatian do not correspond completely to either the Western or the Eastern variant. What then is the status of these forms of standard Serbo-Croatian? This paper is concerned with only one of these forms of standard Serbo-Croatian, that in Bosnia-Hercegovinia. It has been described over the years in various ways: as the coexistence of the Western and Eastern variants, as a hybrid of the two variants, as the interpenetration of the two variants, or as the neutralization of the oppositions that define the two variants. That latter view is convincingly argued by Jankovic in a series of perceptive articles (1967, 1978, 1982). The answer to the question whether the form of the Serbo-Croatian standard in BosniaHercegovinia is a variant depends on how one defines the term variant. Brozovic defined standard langauge variants as follows: "Variants are adaptations of a single standard language to tradition and to contemporary needs of a nation as a specific ethno-social formation," (1970:35). Jankovic, while praising this definition as the first serious attempt at a formal definition, nevertheless finds it wanting. In his opinion, it overemphasizes the ethnic component and makes no provision for the areal one. He proposes the following modification: "Variants are adaptations of a single multi-territorial standard language to the conditions, needs and traditions of a given uniquely structured socio-cultural milieu," (1984: 58). Both of these definitions, however, are too general to provide a clear answer to the question whether a given set of linguistic and sociolinguistic differences (i .e., adaptations) constitute a standard language variant. Is there, for example, a minimum of differences or adaptations? The existence of such a minimum is implied by those who argue that the