Pavle Solaric’s orthographic and grammatical principles and the beginning of Serbian language standardisation

Abstract

In an attempt to relate Pavle Solaric, a somewhat marginalised and forgotten figure in the history of the Serbian language standard, to an actual place, this paper analyses the foundations of the language standard he established in a wider cultural and philological context. It puts special emphasis on his philological, grammatographic, and etymological principles, as well as on his views about the structure and orthography of the future Serbian language standard. Being a representative of the Enlightenment among Serbs, with his remarkable erudition, wide range of interests, confidence and philological precision, inspired primarily by Dositej Obradovic?s tenets of the standardised Serbian language, Pavle Solaric established a model basis for the future reformative interventions. Therefore, he should undoubtedly be considered one of the first in a long line of scholars whose ideas contributed to the eventual constitution of the standardised Serbian language.