Notes on Ante Star？evi？’s language

Sa？etak The language of Ante Star？evi？ (1823–1896), an extremely important Croatian politician and writer, was considered as “peculiar” even by Star？evi？’s contemporaries (e.g. Mihovil Pavlinovi？). However, little has been said about this peculiarity by Croatian linguists except the fact that since 1850. Star？evi？ consistently wrote Ecavian, literary Croatian in the second half of the 19th century being Jekavian. In the paper several features of Star？evi？’s language are recognized and analyzed which might have been “peculiar” to his contemporaries. These are (1) unreal conditional clause with the conjunction da + budem (perfect present of biti ‘to be’) + active participle, (2) anterior temporal clause with the conjunction kon ？to or nakon ？to ‘after which’, (3) prepositional phrase u supor ‘as opposed to, conversely’ (+ dative), (4) disjunctive use of the conjunction ali ‘but’, and (5) future tense formed by budem + infinitive