Jože Toporišič’s Contribution to Slovenian Dialectology

Abstract

In 1961 with his treatment of vowels and accent in his native dialect, Mostec pri Brežicah, Toporišič contributed to the gradual assertion of the structuralist approach within post­war Slovenian dialectology. Although he primarily researched the Slovenian literary language, because of his work on his local dialect, he was included in many dialectological projects. His representation of the history of Slovenian dialectology and encouragement for further dialect study were just as important. Both of these, 1) his research of his own dialect according to the structuralist approach, and 2) his thorough overview of the history of Slovenian dialect studies, can be considered Toporišič’s principal contribution to dialectology. Of course, we can divide his work into several areas. Besides the two previously mentioned, they are: 3) the encyclopedic treatment of individual dialects and their history, 4) the presentation of Slovenian dialects within the frame of social variation in textbooks and grammars for their illustration, 5) selection of dialect texts, 6) his editorial work, most important for dialectology being his editing of the second book of the collected work of Fran Ramovš and several collections from the Škrabec and Pleteršnik Symposia. In the end we simply regret that, besides his “successful attempt” with his first study, Toporišič’s dialectological ambitions were not fulfilled on a large scale.