Stjepan Ivšić (; 13 August 1884 – 14 January 1962) was a

Croat The Croats (; hr, Hrvati ) are a South Slavic ethnic group who share a common Croatian ancestry, culture, history and language. They are also a recognized minority in a number of neighboring countries, namely Austria, the Czech Republic, Ge ...

ian linguist, Slavic specialist, and accentologist.

Biography

After finishing primary school in Orahovica, he attended

secondary school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' secondary education, lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) ...

Osijek Osijek () is the fourth-largest city in Croatia, with a population of 96,848 in 2021. It is the largest city and the economic and cultural centre of the eastern Croatian region of Slavonia, as well as the administrative centre of Osijek-Baranja ...

and Požega. At the

Faculty of Philosophy A faculty is a division within a university or college comprising one subject area or a group of related subject areas, possibly also delimited by level (e.g. undergraduate). In American usage such divisions are generally referred to as colleges ...

at the

University of Zagreb The University of Zagreb ( hr, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, ; la, Universitas Studiorum Zagrabiensis) is the largest Croatian university and the oldest continuously operating university in the area covering Central Europe south of Vienna and all of ...

he studied Croatian and

classical philology Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

, and later specialized at the universities in Krakow,

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

, and

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. He received his PhD in 1913 with the thesis ''Prilog za slavenski akcenat'' (A Contribution on Slavic Accent). He served as a professor at the secondary school in Gornji Grad in Zagreb from 1909 to 1915, and thenceforth as a professor of Slavic Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. The focal point of Ivšić's research was Croatian Štokavian subdialects, on which he published several very important studies (''Šaptinovačko narječje'', 1907; ''Današnji posavski govor'', 1913). He was especially interested in the accentuation of Croatian subdialects and Old Slavic grammars. He was the first to determine the existence of the neoacute in all three Croatian dialects. In 1928 he participated in the efforts of state committee to create a common

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...

for Croatian and Serbian. In the paper ''Jezik Hrvata kajkavaca'' (1936) he partitioned dialects of

Kajkavian Kajkavian (Kajkavian noun: ''kajkavščina''; Shtokavian adjective: ''kajkavski'' , noun: ''kajkavica'' or ''kajkavština'' ) is a South Slavic regiolect or language spoken primarily by Croats in much of Central Croatia, Gorski Kotar and nort ...

language (not including the ''goranski'' subdialects ) into four major groups. He extensively studied Croatian Glagolitic heritage, especially its special language features, on which he published several works. In 1934 he tracked the

Baška tablet Baška tablet ( hr, Bašćanska ploča, ) is one of the first monuments containing an inscription in the Croatian recension of the Church Slavonic language, dating from . The inscription is written in the Glagolitic script. It was discovered in 1 ...

from Krk to Zagreb and wrote an enthusiastic article about it called ''Sveta Lucija u Jurandvoru i njezin dragi kamen'' ('' Jutarnji list'', 1934). In 1937 he became the vice president of the Croatian Language Society, and in 1938 the editor of the journal ''Hrvatski jezik'' (Croatian Language). He served as the chancellor of the University of Zagreb from 1939 to 1943. During the period of the

Independent State of Croatia The Independent State of Croatia ( sh, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH; german: Unabhängiger Staat Kroatien; it, Stato indipendente di Croazia) was a World War II-era puppet state of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It was established in p ...

he refused an offer to serve as the head of the Croatian State Office for Language and advocated a phonology-based orthography as opposed to the official etymological-morphological one (known as ''korienski'' 'root').

Legacy

In the spring of 1945, due to alleged collaboration with the enemy, he was sentenced to exile from Zagreb and lost his membership in the Academy of Sciences and Arts. He was the only one to sign the conclusion of Novi Sad agreement, with the note "I give this signature with the remark that the statement in Act 4 of the conclusion cannot be used for promoting Ekavian pronunciation in the present-day Ijekavian area." A high school in Ivšić's native

Orahovica Orahovica is a town in Slavonia, Croatia. It is situated on the slopes of the mountain Papuk and positioned on the state road D2 Varaždin- Koprivnica- Našice- Osijek. History The name Orahovica is derived from the word ''orah'', meaning ...

bears his name.Stjepan Ivšić High School
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Works

* ''Srpsko-hrvatski jezik. Izgovor i intonacija s recitacijama na pločama'' (with M. Kravar; Zagreb, 1955) * ''Slavenska poredbena gramatika'' (prepared by R. Katičić and J. Vrana, Zagreb. 1970) * ''Izabrana djela iz slavenske akcentuacije'' (prepared by B. Finka, Munich, 1971), * ''Jezik Hrvata kajkavaca'' (prepared by J. Lisac, Zaprešić, 1996)

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ivsic, Stjepan 1884 births 1962 deaths People from Orahovica Linguists from Croatia Slavists Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb alumni Rectors of the University of Zagreb Members of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Burials at Mirogoj Cemetery 20th-century linguists

Biography

Legacy

Works

See also

Notes

References