Literary Language and Literary Dialect in Medieval and Early Modern Slavonic Literatures

Attempted is the classification of certain Slavonian texts, written before the advent of standardized languages in the late eighteenth century, according to their amount & type of standardization. Although Old Church Slavonic texts demonstrate a high degree of linguistic uniqueness, they all employ certain standardized uses attributable to a certain few model sources. The Croatian vernacular literature of the sixteenth century is marked by the appearance of various "literary dialects." The Czech literary language between 1300 & 1600 displays the highest degree of linguistic "homogeneity" & comes the closest to being a standard lang. It can be labeled a "literary lang" as opposed to the more loose "literary dialects." A. Sbragia