Yarmak V. Semantics and Pragmatics of Temporality in the Serbian Literary Discourse: Structural, Stylistic and Comparative Aspects

The object of research is a complex of preterit forms and other means of past time designation in the Serbian and East Slavic languages. The aim of research is to reveal conformities and peculiarities of functioning of past tense forms from the point of view of formal and semantic criteria, in terms of synchrony and with elements of diachronic analysis. The research methods are as follows: linguistic observation and description, semantic, structural, contextual and component analysis, comparative, typological, and empirical methods. The scientific novelty of research: for the first time the basis of research is a complex of literary devices and stylistic figures with preterit verb forms and other grammatical means acting as part of them; an integrative comparative and typological approach taking into account a totality of extra-lingual phenomena, ontological, philosophic and other parameters; another newness is East Slavic comparative context. The practical significance of the research: its results can be used while teaching practical courses of the present-day literary Serbian language; courses on the history, historical grammar, dialectology of Serbian; methodology of its teaching as a foreign language; stylistics of modern Serbian; special courses dealing with inter-Slavic literary translation; in lexicographical practice.