Srpski kao diplomatski jezik jugoistočne Evrope XVI veka (na primeru pisma Mehmed-paše Sokolovića Andrašu Batoriju)

Abstract

The paper provides the edition of text in original graphics, linguistically modernized text and the photographic recording of the letter by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha to the Hungarian army commander Andrew Bátory in October 1551. The letter is significant not only because it represents the only preserved cyrillic document by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha but also because it provides the explicit confirmation of entitling Serbian as the language of diplomatic intercommunication of Turkish and Hungarian officials in the 16th century. Philologically, the letter is significant as the testimony of mixing Western and Eastern orthographic traditions, as well as the testimony of the developmental processes in Serbian South-Eastern dialects in the 16th century. Along with the linguistic features representing the common characteristics of the contemporary Kosovo-Resavian and Prizren-Timok dialects (dat. sg. mene, tebe; present forms nesam, nesmo; absence of the distinction between direction cases and location cases; masculinization of the feminine nouns by ending them to a consonant; 1st person sg.. of aorist with -hmo), the letter likewise records the features directing to the separation of these dialectal formations in the 15th century: -е in loc. sg. in feminine nouns, -em in instrum. sg. of adjectives, alternations from /ə/ to /а/ and /l/ at the end of a syllable to /о/, point to developmental tendencies bringing about the formation of Kosovo-Resavian dialects, and Balkanistic innovations (the usage of a general case and the doubling of the object), the use of <č> with the value of /ć/, as well as the pronoun ovaja can serve as a testimony to the formation of Prizren-Timok dialects in this period.