Comparative Slavic Studies

1954 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-90
Author(s):  
Roman Jakobson
Keyword(s):  
Motion Picture ◽  
Slavic Language ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Sound Track ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Sound Pattern ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Comparative Aspect ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Grammatical Framework

“Slavic Studies”—the very expression implies their comparative aspect and raises the question: what enables us to refer to Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Lusatian Sorbs, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Russians by the single all-encompassing term, the “Slavic” peoples? What is their common denominator?It is indisputable that the Slavic peoples are to be defined basically as Slavic-speaking peoples. If speech is the point of departure, the problem becomes primarily a linguistic one. Since the pioneering work of the Czech Abbé Dobrovský (1753–1829), comparative linguistics has proved the existence of a common ancestral language for all the living Slavic languages and has largely reconstructed the sound pattern, grammatical framework and lexical stock of this Common (or Primitive) Slavic language. The problem of where and by whom this Common Slavic language was spoken is being gradually solved by persistent efforts to synchronize the findings of comparative linguistics, toponymy, and archeology. The archeologists' data are like a motion picture without its sound track; whereas the linguists have the sound track without the film. Thus, interdepartmental teamwork becomes indispensable.

scholarly journals Languages used in the Vilniškiai subdialect

2013 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Vytautas Kardelis
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
The State ◽  
Slavic Language ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Study Type ◽  
Linguistic Attitudes

Based on the data collected during dialectological expeditions in 2009–2012 in the districts of Švenčionys, Ignalina and Utena, the article discusses the state of the languages used in the area under investigation. Since the expeditions were more of a pilot study type of research, the data provided in the article are preliminary and are indicative of possible guidelines for a further, comprehensive and thorough investigation. With respect to the languages used, the whole region under investigation could be divided into the following areas: Linguistically homogeneous or more or less homogeneous areas: the area of dialectal language, marked by the usage of either the subdialect of Vilniškiai or Uteniškiai (the area of Labanoras–Ignalina–Salakas); the areas of the variations of Slavic languages in which: a) Slavic language variations are dominant with minimal use of Lithuanian (area of Gaidė), b) there is some linguistic dynamics and change in linguistic attitudes (area of Bačkininkai). Linguistically heterogeneous areas: Slavic language variations are used together with partially non-dialectal Lithuanian, however, Slavic language variations dominate. These areas include the regions of Pabradė-Joniškis and Turmantas; the dialect is used together with Slavic language variations, but the Lithuanian language is dominant (the dialect and partially non-dialectal language). This area encompasses Strūnaitis-Švenčionėliai, Didžiasalis, Neverėnai;  the dialect, Slavic language variations and non-dialectal Lithuanian are used (Svirkos-Adutiškis area). This division could be useful for prospective sociolinguists and especially valuable in the research of language contacts; in addition, it may facilitate researchers in their choice of methodology for studies of this kind.

scholarly journals Universal Annotation of Slavic Verb Forms

2016 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-193
Author(s):  
Daniel Zeman
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Many

Abstract This article proposes application of a subset of the Universal Dependencies (UD) standard to the group of Slavic languages. The subset in question comprises morphosyntactic features of various verb forms. We systematically document the inventory of features observable with Slavic verbs, giving numerous examples from 10 languages. We demonstrate that terminology in literature may differ, yet the substance remains the same. Our goal is practical. We definitely do not intend to overturn the many decades of research in Slavic comparative linguistics. Instead, we want to put the properties of Slavic verbs in the context of UD, and to propose a unified (Slavic-wide) application of UD features and values to them. We believe that our proposal is a compromise that could be accepted by corpus linguists working on all Slavic languages.

Slavic constructed languages in the internet age

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-315
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Slavic Language ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Internet Age ◽  
Slavic Linguistics ◽  
User Communities

Slavic constructed languages have been widely neglected by interlinguistics and Slavic linguistics so far; however, the number of projects for a common Slavic language has been growing since the 17th century, beginning with Juraj Križanić’s Ruski jezik (1666) and continuing up to Arnošt Eman Žídek’s Slovan (1940) and beyond. The construction of Slavic languages has recently been experiencing a revival through the spread of the internet since the 1990s. This has manifested itself mainly in three extensively elaborated projects with their own websites and user communities: Slovio (1999), Slovianski (2006) and Novoslovienski (2010). These three projects — one of them schematic, two of them naturalistic — are presented in the historical context of Slavic language construction from the 17th century up to the present and analyzed structurally in terms of their writing systems, their grammars and the composition of their lexicons. Although their chances of implementation in practice in the context of European language policy are currently rather marginal, they should be valued as a unique phenomenon in Slavic cultural history.

scholarly journals Этимологическое гнездо *ber- в праславянском языке: Реконструкция, словообразование, семантика

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Наталия [Nataliia] Вячеславовна [Viacheslavovna] Пятаева [Piataeva]
Keyword(s):  
General Practice ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Slavic Language ◽  
Semantic Description ◽  
European Origin ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Semantic Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
Root Group ◽  
Roman Alphabet

The Etymological Nest *ber- in the Proto-Slavic Language: Reconstruction, Word-Formation, SemanticsThe article presents a multidimensional (phonetic, etymological, derivational, morphological and semantic) description of the etymological nest (EN) *ber- ‘take’, reconstructed for the Proto-Slavic period in the history of the Russian and other Slavic languages. The root *ber-, around which the EN was formed, belongs to ancient Slavic roots and has Indo-European origin, which led to the natural phonetic variants reflecting the Proto-Slavic and Indo-European alternations: *ber- // *bor- // *bьr- // *bir-.At the Proto-Slavic level, 137 units with the root *ber- are reconstructed, organized in the EN in accordance with the relations of word-formation pro­ductivity and semantic motivation of lexemes as part of word-formation pairs, chains and paradigms: (1) the nucleus of the nest is the etymon *bherəmņ // *bherəmen ‘carry, burden’, reconstructed for the Proto-Indo-European lan­guage, which served as the basis for three Proto-Slavic innovations *bermę ‘burden; armful, bundle; fetus; *berdja ‘pregnant; foal (about animals)’; *bьrati *berǫ ‘take, take away, grab, pluck; receive, borrow, accept; enter into a mar­riage union’; (2) in accordance with a general practice adopted in etymological dictionaries, reconstructed lexemes are marked with an asterisk (*) and are represented in the Roman alphabet for the Proto-Indo-European and Proto- Slavic preliterate periods, and in Cyrillic for the period between the eleventh and the seventeenth centuries; (3) at the first stage of derivation, derivatives are arranged in the following order: verbs, verbal names, participles, prefixed verbs, composites; within these groups, words are arranged alphabetically; (4) the phonetic variants of a lexeme are separated with a double slash (//); (5) meanings are given in single quotation marks. The reconstruction of the EN *ber- and the semantic development of its main lexemes are given in two diagrams at the end of the article.A review of the material indicates that (1) the old Indo-European mean­ing ‘carry, load’ moved to the periphery of the EN *ber-, continuing to exist exclusively in the formations associated with the stem *bermę, and partly with *berdja; (2) a new meaning ‘take’ (*bьrati) became the most relevant for the semantic development of the EN *ber- in Late Slavic; its connection with the original ‘carry’ is seen in the fact that they correlate with adjacent sequen­tial actions aimed at the attached object: ‘take’ what? – ‘object to be attached’ → ‘carry’ what? – ‘attached object’; (3) the new Proto-Slavic meaning ‘take’ (*bьrati), inherent in EN *ber-, determined the synonymy of this root group with the EN *em- (*jęti, *jьmati ‘take’). Gniazdo etymologiczne *ber- w języku prasłowiańskim. Rekonstrukcja, słowotwórstwo, semantyka W artykule przedstawiono wielowymiarowy opis gniazda etymologicz­nego *ber- ‘brać’ (w aspekcie fonetycznym, etymologicznym, derywacyjnym, morfologicznym i semantycznym), zrekonstruowanego dla okresu prasłowiań­skiego w historii języka rosyjskiego i innych języków słowiańskich. Rdzeń *ber-, wokół którego powstało gniazdo etymologiczne, należy do pierwotnych rdzeni słowiańskich i ma pochodzenie indoeuropejskie, co oznaczało rozwój naturalnych wariantów fonetycznych, odzwierciedlających oboczności pra­słowiańskie i indoeuropejskie: *ber- // *bor- // *bьr- // *bir-.Na poziomie prasłowiańskim zrekonstruowano 137 jednostek z rdzeniem *ber-, które zorganizowano w ramach gniazda zgodnie z relacjami produktywno­ści słowotwórczej i motywacji semantycznej leksemów w ramach par, łańcuchów i paradygmatów słowotwórczych: 1) jądrem gniazda jest zrekonstruowany dla języka praindoeuropejskiego etymon *bherəmņ // *bherəmen ‘nieść, brzemię’, który posłużył za podstawę dla trzech prasłowiańskich innowacji *bermę ‘brzemię; naręcze, tobołek; płód’; *berdja ‘brzemienna (o zwierzętach); źrebię’; *bьrati *berǫ ‘brać, zabrać, chwycić, wyrwać; otrzymać, pożyczyć, przyjąć; zawrzeć małżeństwo’; 2) zgodnie z powszechną praktyką przyjętą w słowni­kach etymologicznych zrekonstruowane leksemy są oznaczone gwiazdką (*) i zapisane w alfabecie łacińskim dla praindoeuropejskich i prasłowiańskich okresów przedpiśmiennych oraz cyrylicą dla okresu od XI do XVII wieku; 3) na pierwszym etapie derywacji derywaty są ułożone w następującej kolejności: czasowniki, rzeczowniki odczasownikowe, imiesłowy, czasowniki przedrost­kowe, złożenia; w tych grupach słowa są ułożone alfabetycznie; 4) warianty fonetyczne leksemu są oddzielone podwójnym ukośnikiem (//); 5) znaczenia podano w pojedynczych cudzysłowach. Rekonstrukcję gniazda etymologicz­nego *ber- i rozwój semantyczny jego głównych leksemów przedstawiono na dwóch wykresach na końcu artykułu.Przegląd materiału wskazuje, że 1) dawne indoeuropejskie znaczenie ‘nieść, brzemię’ przeszło na obrzeża gniazda etymologicznego *ber- i utrzymało się nadal wyłącznie w formacjach związanych z rdzeniem *bermę i częściowo *berdja; 2) nowe znaczenie: ‘brać’ (*bьrati) stało się najbardziej istotne dla semantycznego rozwoju gniazda *ber- w okresie późnosłowiańskim; związek tego znaczenia z pierwotnym ‘nieść’ przejawia się w fakcie korelacji pomiędzy nimi w sekwencji działań na umocowany obiekt: ‘brać’ co? – ‘obiekt do umo­cowania’ → ‘nieść’ co? – ‘umocowany obiekt’; 3) nowe prasłowiańskie znaczenie ‘brać’ (*bьrati), nieodłącznie związane z gniazdem *ber-, określiło synonimię tej grupy rdzeniowej z gniazdem *em- (*jęti, *jьmati ‘brać’).

scholarly journals Multilingualism and Dictionaries

2015 ◽  
pp. 43-55
Author(s):  
Wojciech Paweł Sosnowski ◽  
Violetta Koseska-Toszewa
Keyword(s):  
Correct Choice ◽  
Electronic Version ◽  
Slavic Language ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Equal Status ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Faster Development ◽  
Multiple Languages

Multilingualism and DictionariesThe Russian-Bulgarian-Polish dictionary that we (Wojciech Sosnowski, Violetta Koseska-Toszewa and Anna Kisiel) are currently developing has no precedent as far as its theoretical foundations and its structure are concerned. The dictionary offers a unique combination of three Slavic languages that belong to three different groups: a West Slavic language (Polish), a South Slavic language (Bulgarian) and an East Slavic language (Russian). The dictionary describes semantic and syntactic equivalents of words between the languages. When completed, the dictionary will contain around 30,000 entries. The principle we build the dictionary on is that every language should be given equal status. Many of our data come from the Parallel Polish-Bulgarian-Russian corpus developed by us as part of the CLARIN-PL initiative. In the print version, the entries come in the order of the Cyrillic alphabet and they are not numbered (except for homonyms, which are disambiguated with Roman numbers). We selected the lemmas for the dictionary on the basis of their frequency in the corpus. Our dictionary is the first dictionary to include forms of address and most recent neologisms in the three languages. Faithful to the recent developments in contrastive linguistics, we begin with a form from the dictionary’s primary language and we define it in Polish. Subsequently, based on this definition, we try to find an equivalent in the second and the third language. Therefore, the meaning comes first and only then we look for the form (i.e. the equivalent) that corresponds to this meaning. This principle, outlined in Gramatyka konfrontatywna języków polskiego i bułgarskiego (GKBP), allows us to treat data from multiple languages as equal. In the dictionary, we draw attention to the correct choice of equivalents in translation; we also provide categorisers that indicate the meaning of verbal tenses and aspects. The definitions of states, events and their different configurations follow those outlined in the net model of verbal tense and aspect. The transitive vs. intransitive categorisers are vital for the languages in question, since they belong to two different types: synthetic (Bulgarian) and analytic (Polish and Russian). We predict that the equal status of every language in the dictionary will facilitate easier and faster development of an electronic version in the future.

Báthory András római bíborosi címtemploma, a pannóniai szláv misszió és Szent Adorján kultuszának összefüggései

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-23
Author(s):  
Ádám Somorjai
Keyword(s):  
Slavic Language ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Lake Balaton ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Common Heritage ◽  
Latin Word ◽  
Western Shore ◽  
Carolingian Empire ◽  
The Times ◽  
The City

In the year 2019 were celebrated the thousand years of the foundation of the Zalavár Benedictine Monastery under the Patrocinium of Saint Hadrian the Martyr on the western shore of the Lake Balaton in Hungary, and this is an occasion to contemplate the significance of this place and of this heritage. Though the Abbey is not existent after 1950, its beginnings are more important in the Carolingian Empire, after the Avar Period, as the Salzburg Benedictine missionaries christianized the territory and as the Slavic Prince Pribina came under Carolingian rule. It was this time to found the first church of Saint Hadrian, a Martyr in Nicomedia in the times of Diocletian’s persecution and which relics were translated to Rome in the 5th or 6th Century. The cult became important in this Church, which building was identical with the Roman Curia, i. e. the Senate, and the consecration of this church on September 8th became the feast of the Saint in the Occident. This became a titular church and was the titular church of the Transylvanian Cardinal András Báthory, in the 16th century. Turning to Pribina, he gathered Saints Cyril and Methodius and their pupils in this church and against the opposition of the Archbishops of Salzburg, gained Pontifical permission of Pope Hadrian II to celebrate Christian liturgy in Slavic language in his Province and the nomination of Methodius to Metropolite of Pannonia. This early beginnings were important for the Hungarian christianization and explain why Saint Stephen the first King of Hungary received so easily the Roman blessings, i. e. the Holy Crown and the erection of the Metropoly of Esztergom in his kingdom. In medieval Hungary the name of the kingdom was alternating “Hungary” and “Pannonia”, in Christian inter- pretation “Pannonia Sacra”. This aspect could help to concile Slavic (e. g. Slovakian) and Hungarian interpretation of their common history. This history is living today in the use of the word “Church”, which originates of the Latin word “Castellum” (etymon of the city name “Keszthely” at the Lake Balaton), which is in the Western Slavic languages: “Kosciól” (Polish), “Kostel” (Czech and Slovak). In Polish means both as building and as gathering of people, in Czech and Slovak only as building. In Hungarian the use of the Latin word “templum” is rooted, as building. Common heritage of the ancient Roman word “Castellum”.

scholarly journals Proto-Slavic verbs with the prefix *ob-/o-: morphophonology, derivation, semantics

2019 ◽  
pp. 333-354
Author(s):  
Svetlana Tolstaya
Keyword(s):  
Circular Motion ◽  
Slavic Language ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Original Distribution ◽  
Etymological Dictionary ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Semantic Types

The article examines Proto-Slavic verbs with the prefix *ob-/o-, which was reconstructed in the Etymological dictionary of the Slavic languages (issue 26– 31). The author comes to the conclusion that the original morphophonological principle of the prefix distribution (ob- before root vowels and sonorants, obefore obstruents) had already been defied in the Late Proto-Slavic language under the influence of two main factors: derivational and semantic ones. Words formed from nouns retained the original distribution more consistently than those derived form verbs. The deviation from the rule in the latter (in particular, the appearance of the allomorph ob- before obstruents) is associated with certain semantic types (the semantics of circular motion, whole coverage, distribution and others), which started taking the variant ob- in contrast to the variant oassociated with other semantic types.

scholarly journals COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE RESULTS OF DECIPHERING THE MIDDLE TEXT ON THE ROSETTA STONE

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tome Boševski ◽  
Aristotel Tentov
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Slavic Language ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Rosetta Stone ◽  
State Official ◽  
Different Order

A b s t r a c t: In this text we present comparative analisys of the words and the expressions obtained after reading of complete middle text on the Rosetta Stone [15], by implementing our origtinal methodology presented in [12]. We have identified over 420 different words and expressions which preserve their meaning in contemporary Macedonian language and its dialects, but also they keep their meaning in archaic or contemporary in other Slavic languages. Identification and analysis of sentences and their structure will be subject of further researh. Going further in depth with analysis and comparing our reading results of the middle text on the Rosetta Stone, [15], with well known previous results of reading so called ancient Greek text, presented in [4], [5], [6], and [9], one can easily conclude that two texts, so called demotic text, and so called ancient Greek text are identical only by their content of the pharaoh’s orders. By all means, these two texts have different sentences structures, and different order of words within it. This fact is very logic and obvious in all cases where we compare two identical texts written in two different languages, and it is valid even today. Based on our research we can further improve this conclusion in the direction that the pharaoh’s decree on the middle text is written on the language of the Ancient Macedonians, with the script (signs) of the living masters in that period of Ancient Egypt. These language and script were state official language and official script in year 196 BC, after more than 100 years of the rulling of Ptolemaic Dynasty over Ancient Egypt. The language that we identified on the middle text on the Rosetta Stone definitely poses characteristics of a Slavic language. Many words that we identified in the middle text still exist in modern Slavic languages, or in their archaic forms, in respective Slavic language. Respectively, in lexical sense, we can identify that this language has very strong Slavic characteristics. This becomes more obvius after careful reading of presented multi-language dictionary.

scholarly journals The characteristic of freedom in the quotes and aphorisms of the French-language and Russian-language aging politicians of the late XX century

Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 94-106
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Sergeevna Grishenkova
Keyword(s):  
Senior Citizens ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
French Language ◽  
Professional Experience ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Comparative Aspect ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Similarities And Differences

The goal of this work lies in determination of similarities and differences in characteristic of freedom in the quotes and aphorisms of French and Russian aging politicians of the late XX century. The subject of this research is the semantics of French and Russian quotes and aphorisms that reveal the nature of freedom in the compared languages. The topic of the characteristic of freedom in the speeches of aging politicians was selected as it did not receive due attention within comparative linguistics. Using the material of French and Russian quotes and aphorisms, the author determines the aspects for outlining the characteristic of freedom in form of thematic groups of these lexical unites in the compared languages. The scientific novelty consists in the fact that this work is first to reveal similarities and differences of the characteristics of freedom in the popular quotes and aphorisms of French-language and Russian-language aging politicians of the XX century. The conclusion is made on the presence of the following similarities: didactic manner in their appeal to the public, interest in blissful future of their countries, resemblance of their life and professional experience in the speech. Some difference were also detected. The uniqueness of composition of the compared characteristics of freedom is associated with the specificities of historical development of France and Russia of that time, which outlines the prospects of research on this topic. The acquired results may be valuable in giving a course of lectures on comparative lexicology of French and Russian languages, elaboration of methodology for analyzing speech of senior citizens in the comparative aspect.

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