The morphology of the Kajkavian dialect of Podravina

Sa？etak This article contains a description of the morphological system of the varieties of the Podravina Kajkavian dialect, whose main characteristic is that the place of stress is limited to the last two syllables of a word or accentual unit. It analyses dialectological data from a total of 22 Kajkavian local varieties geographically located in the north of Croatia. Local varieties of the Podravina Kajkavian dialect have preserved a number of archaic characteristics in the morphological system: the supine; special forms of the dative, locative, and instrumental plural (in most varieties); the zero ending in the genitive plural of e-type nouns (for the most part); and the old form of the genitive pronoun for non-living things ？esa (except in the eastern part of the region). In most varieties of the dialect, the present verb ending -jo / -j is limited to type V (with some minor deviations). On the other hand, these varieties have also undergone numerous changes in their morphological systems, as have most varieties of the Kajkavian dialect group. These include the loss of the dual (except for a few surviving forms accompanying the numbers dva ‘two’, tri ‘three’, and ？etiri ‘four’); a reduction in the number of declinations; the simplification of verb and noun base forms by a reduction in the number of alternations; the loss of distinction between living and non-living in the accusative singular of a-type masculine nouns; the loss of the aorist, the imperfect, and the past participle ending in -v, -v？i; and the reduction to one future tense. In addition to those innovative features which have become common to a great majority of Kajkavian varieties and dialects, the Podravina Kajkavian dialect also features some innovations that have arisen either from internal development or under the influence of the ？tokavian systems with which it borders. The influence of ？tokavian is most prominent in the easternmost local varieties of the Podravina Kajkavian dialect, which is to be expected due to their direct contact. In the eastern region of the Podravina Kajkavian dialect, the following innovations have occurred: the leveling of plural forms for dative, locative, and instrumental in noun and adjective-pronoun declension (e.g., in DLI pl. of e-type nouns, the endings -ama / -amā; in DLI pl. of a-type nouns, the ending - prevails); the ending -ā in the nominative and accusative plural of a-type neuter nouns (also occurring in some western local varieties of the dialect); the L and I plural pronoun forms n？ma / nam？, v？ma / vam？; in the extreme eastern varieties,