The relation between the grammatical norm and linguistic practice in the twilight of the Kajkavian literary language

Sažetak: The paper deals with the relation between the language usage made by the Kajkavian transla-tor Ivan Krizmanić and the language described (prescribed) in the Kajkavian grammar book written by Ignac Kristijanović. Both of these authors belong to the last users of Kajkavian lit-erary language, which ceased to be used in the 1840s. Using the methods of historical sociolinguistics, analysis is conducted on two levels. Macro level analysis deals with sociolinguistics of society during the lifetime of Ivan Krizmanić and Ignac Kristijanović, while on micro level we compare Krizmanić's variable language forms at the morphological level, with those described by Ignac Kristijanović in his grammar book. Macro level analysis showed that Ivan Krizmanić (1766 – 1852), like many other Croatian cul-ture promoters of the first half of the 19th century, started writing in Croatian language only at a later stage of his life, when he was 43 years old. Having embraced Kajkavian literary lan-guage, which had been used in writing and publishing since the middle of the 16th century, he translated the works written in German (Schiller's poem "Freygeisterei der Leidenschaft"), in English (John Milton’s Paradise Lost), in Latin (the homily “Prodečtvo Piuša VI”), and in Štokavian (“Osmanšćica” by Ivan Tomko Mrnavić and “Sveta Rožalija” by Antun Kanižlić) into Kajkavian literary language. Influenced by Illyrian social group, which implemented što-kavian language in NW Croatia as a standard language, Krizmanić changes his language iden-tity (1842) and starts using štokavian language instead of kajkavian. Ignac Kristijanović (1796 – 1884), Krizmanić’s contemporary, is the last Kajkavian grammari-an (Grammatik der kroatischen Mundart, 1837), and the very last advocate of standardization and implementation of Kajkavian literary language in north-western Croatia. Micro level analysis showed that there are some discrepancies between the linguistic practice and grammatical norm in the twilight of Kajkavian literary language. It also showed that, con-sidering analyzed language forms, Kristijanović did not look up to his contemporary Kriz-manić when compiling his grammar book, which suggests that he had normative pretentions.