Development of the present tense in Bosnian legal texts of medieval Bosnia

Abstract

The paper deals with the development of the present tense in Bosnian legal texts of medieval Bosnia with the aim of better understanding the present tense and its continuations in the modern Bosnian language. The work is based on the corpus of charters that were created in the area of medieval Bosnia in the period from the 12th to the 15th century. We chose the corpus of charters because they are relatively far from the Church Slavonic language and are closer to the living vernacular. Present continuations are tabulated and accompanied by appropriate examples. This paper also includes a comparative analysis of the occurrence of present tenses in the Gospels. We chose this approach so that the relationship between Old Church Slavonicism and the influence of the vernacular language could be better observed. In part of this work, the method of learning and mastering the present tense is also methodologically explained through the teaching process at the faculty, because in our work with students we noticed the need for a more transparent presentation.