Retro-digitization and interpretation of Croatian grammar books before Illyrism – RETROGRAM

The Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics presents the project "Retro-digitization and interpretation of Croatian grammar books before Illyrism – RETROGRAM", which aims to create a web portal of Croatian grammar books before Illyrism.

The retro-digitization of Croatian grammar books implies the transfer of printed media to computer-readable and searchable text. In this project, it also includes a multilevel mark-up of transcribed or translated grammar text and its connection with facsimiles.

The user will be able to browse grammar books facsimiles, read transcribed or translated text,  and search it by predetermined parameters (which will allow conjugation and declension paradigms search).

The main aim of the project is to create a web portal of Croatian grammar books before Illyrism, which would include facsimiles of selected grammar books with basic information, transcription or translation, and an index of historical grammar and linguistic terminology. The portal will be equipped with thematic searching possibilities on the morphology level. The main objective of the project is to intensify research activities and the interpretation of the Croatian pre-standard grammars within the scope of modern linguistic disciplines (e.g. cognitive approach), to complete existing knowledge about the morphological development of the Croatian language, its normative descriptions, and development of linguistic terminology in the pre-standard period. Conclusions on the formation of the Croatian language grammar model will also be based on the analysis of the Latin language grammar structure. Contrastive analysis of Latin and Croatian grammar meta-text and terminology will lead to conclusions about the influence of Latin language description on Croatian linguistic concepts in the pre-standard period. Therefore, the observed grammar corpus requires not only Croatistic but also Neo-Latin research methodology. The result will be an open-access web portal, accessible to scholars and the general public, available for a further upgrade after the completion of the project. This project will also have an impact on the preservation of the listed Croatian linguistic material and heritage. Connection to facsimiles will enable comprehensive research on orthography and traductological aspects of the selected texts. The creation of retro-digitized resources in Croatia is still in its beginnings and the existing resources do not include grammar books from the pre-standard period of the Croatian language. Therefore, there is no repository that would contain a digitized and searchable database of Croatian language grammar books of the period, no model that could be applied, and no systematically conducted scholarly research in the field. The aim of the proposed project is to change this situation. This project would offer a model for similar future research not only in Croatian but also in European philology.

Project information

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