Accent Features on Radio Station Mostar

This article compares accented words of radio presenters, journalists and guests on Radio station Mostar with the accent norm of the Croatian language. A total of 115 examples, based on data collected from three months of listening to different radio shows, were analysed. The first part of the paper discusses variants offered as dubletes and tripletes in three contemporary Croatian manuals: two dictionaries and one `language advisor'. The choice of marked variants as well as deviations were sorted taking into consideration the parts of speech (nouns which prevail, adjectives, verbs and adverbs). It was found that changes of tone (melody) or length are less frequent than changes of stress, which could or could not be compared with changes of the other two features. So called short rising accent is involved in by far the most changes found in the data. Two thirds of stress shifts are directed towards the end of the word, and just one third towards the beginning of the word.