Historical development and contemporary usage of discourse structuring elements based on verba dicendi in Croatian

Modern Croatian features four functional domains which are marked
by constructions based on two non-finite forms of verba dicendi, namely the
adverbial participle govoreći ‘speaking’ and the past participle rečeno ‘said’:
a) stance-marking with the prototypical construction adv + non-finite verbum
dicendi (e.g. iskreno govoreći / rečeno ‘frankly speaking’);
b) contextualization with the prototypical construction govoreći / rečeno + adj.ins +
noun.ins (e.g. nogometnim žargonom rečeno ‘speaking (lit. said) in soccer
jargon’);
c) quotative indexing with the prototypical construction govoreći / rečeno +
noun.ins+ noun.gen (e.g. govoreći rječnikom sv. Pavla ‘lit. speaking in the
language of St. Paul’)
d) direct speech marking with the help of “plain” govoreći.

Only with the formant rečeno ‘said’ is the construction semi-productive, which
implies a crystallization of functions: “plain” govoreći seems to be developing
towards an exclusive marker of direct speech, whereas rečeno ‘said’ is turning
into the preferable formant for all the modified constructions that are associated
with discourse functions.
The diachronic part of the paper is concerned with the development of the four
constructions mentioned above and proposes an explanation for the current crys-
tallization of functions: firstly, the semantic structure of reći ‘say’ predisposes this
verb for discourse functions. Secondly, historical language contact with German
may have enhanced the rooting of discourse structuring constructions with rečeno
‘said’ in Croatian, as German also features a semi-productive construction based
on the past participle gesagt ‘said’ that serves discourse functions.