Resumen de Croatian linguistic loyalty

Radoslav Katicic

• The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the phenomenon of Croatian linguistic loyalty and to o€er some explanations concerning its background, the di€erent forms and expressions it has taken in the course of time, and its present state. It is a major weakness of what is called SerboCroatian studies that it has failed so far to take this loyalty into account as a factor in the central South-Slavic linguistic area. But the essential point is that, when KaradzÏicÂ's model was introduced into the ®nal stage of Croat linguistic standardization as its supreme criterion, it was no longer the supreme criterion of Serbian linguistic standardization. The prevalence of heteronomy at that crucial point of Croatian standardization is therefore only apparent.