Montenegrin dialects have long been treated as part of the Serbian or Serbo-Croatian language in traditionalist dialectology. Even though they are among the best studied dialects of Slavic languages, this is the first monograph offering a synthesis of Montenegrin dialects. In Dialectology of the Montenegrin Language, Adnan Cirgic addresses them as a compact unit, mostly corresponding to Montenegrin state borders, with isoglosses that cross those borders—much like the behavior of dialects in general. Cirgic brings a different approach to classifying Montenegrin dialects, free from the ideological shackles imposed by unitarian language policy in the former Yugoslav federation, which included Montenegro as one of its constituent members. In addition to classifying Montenegrin dialects and summarizing features of individual dialects and speech groups, this book also presents a comprehensive history of research on those dialects since the nineteenth century, along with an exhaustive dialectological bibliography of Montenegro.
