摘要：The nouns with suffix -ōst in the Croatian language are of the feminine gender with a zero (morpheme) ending and typologically they qualify as an invariable type because they have a constant accent in the paradigm and the accent of these nouns mostly corresponds with their adjectival stem. The postaccentual lenght in the suffix appears only in the nominative (and accusative) singular and as it is predictable, it is not a typological mark. The accentual variations are very frequent in trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic nouns, between the initial accent and the long rising accent before the suffix (nȁivnōst – naı́vnōst, pòbōžnōst – pobóžnōst, ıs̏ cr̄pnōst – iscŕpnōst). In the language usage there is a tendency of shifting accents to the initial syllable, hence in this paper the author identifies the reasons for the metatony and the impact of the language usage on normative books of the Croatian language. On the other hand, normative books of Croatian still mark the double paradigmatic accent (the accent of locative singular and genitive, dative, locative and instrumental plural) of these nouns (for example: L sg. u žȁlosti – u žalòsti, G pl. žȁlostı̄ – žalòstı̄, DLI sg. žȁlostima− žalòstima), and the author wishes to find out whether any of these variations exist in speech, since there is a strong tendency to language simplification by cancelling accentual variations in the paradigm. Hence, the aim of this paper was to investigate the volume of the accentual variations of these nouns within the normative books and the language usage and also to find the normative position of these double accentual variants.
关键词：doublet; i-type; lexical accent; non-changeable type; standard accentuation; suffix -ōst
