Comparison of Standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian - Grammar - Accentuation

Accentuation

In general, the Shtokavian dialects that represent the foundation of the standard languages have four pitch accents on stressed syllables: falling tone on a short vowel, written e.g. ⟨ı̏⟩ in dictionaries; rising tone on a short vowel, written e.g. ⟨ì⟩; falling tone on a long vowel, written e.g. ⟨î⟩; and rising tone on a long vowel, written e.g. ⟨í⟩. In addition, the following unstressed vowel may be either short, ⟨i⟩, or long, ⟨ī⟩. In declension and verb conjugation, accent shifts, both by type and position, are very frequent.

The distinction between four accents and preservation of post accent lengths is common in vernaculars of western Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in parts of Serbia, as well as in parts of Croatia with strong Serb immigration. In addition, a distinct characteristics of some vernaculars is stress shift to proclitics (e.g. phrase u Bosni (in Bosnia) will be pronounced /ùbosni/ instead of /ubȍsni/ as in northern parts of Serbia.

The northern vernaculars in Serbia also preserve the four-accent system, but the unstressed lengths have been shortened or disappeared in some positions. However, the shortening of post-accent lengths is in progress in all Shtokavian vernaculars, even in those most conservative in Montenegro. Stress shift to enclitics is, however, in northern Serbia rare and mostly limited to negative verb constructs (ne znam = I don't know → /nȅznām/).

The situation in Croatia, is however, different. A large proportion of speakers of Croatian, especially those coming from Zagreb, do not distinguish between rising and falling accents. This is considered to be a feature of the Zagreb dialect, which has strong Kajkavian influence, rather than standard Croatian.

In Croatian official linguistics, most of the literature in circulation promotes the four-accent system. Serbian standard language is based on four-accent-system that is common in most of Serbian vernaculars. Both dialects that are considered to be base of standard Serbian language (East-Herzegovinian and Šumadija-Vojvodina dialects) have four accents. Bosnian language is officially founded on East-Bosnian dialects, which are of Old-Shtokavian type, but in practice the norm is Neo-Shtokavian accentuation just like in Croatian and Serbian.