Romance lexical elements in the dialect of Baške Oštarije

Abstract: The goal of this article is to complete and enrich the current knowledge on Romance elements in the dialects of Lika and, consequently in the dialect of Baške Oštarije. Although it is placed on the geographical border between Lika and Podgorje and formally belongs to the municipality of Karlobag, the dialect of Baške Oštarije is in all its components, including the lexical one, corresponding to the Lika dialects. Those are štokavsko–ikavski dialects of the Western štokavski dialects. Since the history of Baške Oštarije was somewhat different than that of the Adriatic coast area, the quantity of Romance loanwords in the dialect of Baške Oštarije cannot be compared to that in the dialects of the Adriatic area, but is a significant indicator that the linguistic contacts do not necessarily need to match the historical ones.