Abstract:
The paper presents an analysis of (1) the formation structure, (2) syntactic and semantic relations among the constituents of nominal compounds, for the purpose of determining the extent to which compounds continue the tradition of the Middle Ages, the tradition originating from Russian Church Slavonic, and the degree to which they correspond to the state in modern Serbian. The analysis involves the terminology from the field of Mathematical Geography and Astronomy found in textbooks from the pre-standard phase in the development of the Serbian language (1783-1867). The adoption of foreign formation models when translating texts dates back to ancient monuments. At first, Greek had the role of a giving language. However, in the 18th century, this role was taken by German (<Latin) and Russian. This tendency has been present to a great extent in the word formation process of compouding. The analysed corpus shows that, in the pre-standard phase in the development of the Serbian language, there was a significant number of compounds formed not only through calquing, but also through more original compouding. Being in competition with internationalisms, compounding could not survive due to the language politics of that time.
