What are the Slavic languages. Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary. Views on classification after J. Dobrovsky
Slavic countries are states that have existed or still exist, with most of their population of Slavs (Slavic peoples). The Slavic countries of the world are those countries in which the Slavic population is about eighty to ninety percent.
What countries are Slavic?
Slavic countries of Europe:
But still, to the question “the population of which country belongs to the Slavic group?” The answer immediately suggests itself - Russia. The population of the Slavic countries today is about three hundred million people. But there are other countries in which Slavic peoples live (these are European states, North America, Asia) and speak Slavic languages.
The countries of the Slavic group can be divided into:
- West Slavic.
- East Slavic.
- South Slavic.
The languages in these countries originated from one common language (it is called Proto-Slavic), which once existed among the ancient Slavs. It was formed in the second half of the first millennium AD. It is not surprising that most of the words are consonant (for example, Russian and Ukrainian languages are very similar). There are also similarities in grammar, sentence structure, and phonetics. This is easy to explain if we take into account the duration of contacts between the inhabitants of the Slavic states. The lion's share in the structure of the Slavic languages is occupied by Russian. Its carriers are 250 million people.
Interestingly, the flags of the Slavic countries also have some similarities in color scheme, in the presence of longitudinal stripes. Does it have something to do with their common origin? More likely yes than no.
The countries where Slavic languages are spoken are not so numerous. Nevertheless, Slavic languages still exist and flourish. And it's been hundreds of years! This only means that the Slavic people are the most powerful, steadfast, unshakable. It is important that the Slavs do not lose the originality of their culture, respect for their ancestors, honor them and keep traditions.
Today there are many organizations (both in Russia and abroad) that revive and restore Slavic culture, Slavic holidays, even names for their children!
The first Slavs appeared in the second or third millennium BC. Of course, the birth of this mighty people took place in the region of modern Russia and Europe. Over time, the tribes developed new territories, but still they could not (or did not want to) go far from their ancestral home. By the way, depending on the migration, the Slavs were divided into eastern, western, southern (each branch had its own name). They had differences in lifestyle, agriculture, some traditions. But still the Slavic "core" remained intact.
A major role in the life of the Slavic peoples was played by the emergence of statehood, war, and mixing with other ethnic groups. The emergence of separate Slavic states, on the one hand, greatly reduced the migration of the Slavs. But, on the other hand, from that moment on, their mixing with other nationalities also fell sharply. This allowed the Slavic gene pool to firmly gain a foothold on the world stage. This affected both the appearance (which is unique) and the genotype (hereditary traits).
Slavic countries during World War II
The Second World War brought great changes to the countries of the Slavic group. For example, in 1938 the Czechoslovak Republic lost its territorial unity. The Czech Republic ceased to be independent, and Slovakia became a German colony. The following year, the Commonwealth came to an end, and in 1940 the same thing happened with Yugoslavia. Bulgaria sided with the Nazis.
But there were also positive aspects. For example, the formation of anti-fascist trends and organizations. A common misfortune rallied the Slavic countries. They fought for independence, for peace, for freedom. Especially such movements gained popularity in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia.
The Soviet Union played a key role in World War II. The citizens of the country selflessly fought against the Hitler regime, against the cruelty of the German soldiers, against the Nazis. The country has lost a huge number of its defenders.
Some Slavic countries during the Second World War were united by the All-Slavic Committee. The latter was created by the Soviet Union.
What is Pan-Slavism?
The concept of pan-Slavism is interesting. This is a direction that appeared in the Slavic states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was aimed at uniting all the Slavs of the world on the basis of their national, cultural, everyday, linguistic community. Pan-Slavism promoted the independence of the Slavs, praised their originality.
The colors of Pan-Slavism were white, blue and red (the same colors appear on many national flags). The emergence of such a direction as pan-Slavism began after the Napoleonic wars. Weakened and "tired", the countries supported each other in difficult times. But over time, Pan-Slavism began to be forgotten. But now there is again a tendency to return to the origins, to the ancestors, to the Slavic culture. Perhaps this will lead to the formation of the Neo-Pan-Slavist movement.
Slavic countries today
The twenty-first century is a time of some kind of discord in the relations of the Slavic countries. This is especially true for Russia, Ukraine, EU countries. The reasons here are more political and economic. But despite the discord, many residents of countries (from the Slavic group) remember that all the descendants of the Slavs are brothers. Therefore, none of them wants wars and conflicts, but only warm family relations, as our ancestors once had.
The Slavic group of languages is the closest from this family to the Baltic group, so some scholars combine these two groups into one - Balto-Slavic subfamily Indo-European languages. The total number of speakers of Slavic languages (for whom they are native languages) is over 300 million. The main number of speakers of Slavic languages lives in Russia and Ukraine.
The Slavic group of languages is divided into three branches: East Slavic, West Slavic And South Slavic. The East Slavic branch of languages includes: Russian language or Great Russian, Ukrainian, also known as Little Russian or Ruthenian, and Belarusian. Together these languages are spoken by about 225 million people. The West Slavic branch includes: Polish, Czech, Slovak, Lusatian, Kashubian and the extinct Polabian language. Living West Slavic languages are today spoken by approximately 56 million people, mostly in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The South Slavic branch consists of Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovene and Macedonian. The Church Slavonic language also belongs to this branch. The first four languages are spoken collectively by more than 30 million people in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia, Macedonia and Bulgaria.
All Slavic languages, according to linguistic research, are rooted in one common ancestor language, usually called Proto-Slavic, which, in turn, separated much earlier from Proto-Indo-European language(about 2000 BC), the ancestor of all Indo-European languages. The Proto-Slavic language was probably common to all Slavs as early as the 1st century BC, and already starting from the 8th century AD. Separate Slavic languages begin to form.
General characteristics
colloquial Slavic languages very similar to each other, stronger than the Germanic or Romance languages among themselves. However, even if there are common features in vocabulary, grammar and phonetics, they still differ in many aspects. One of the common characteristics of all Slavic languages is the relatively large number of consonants. A striking example of different usage is the variety of positions of the main stress in individual Slavic languages. For example, in Czech, the stress falls on the first syllable of a word, and in Polish, on the next syllable after the last, while in Russian and Bulgarian, the stress can fall on any syllable.
Grammar
Grammatically, the Slavic languages, with the exception of Bulgarian and Macedonian, have a highly developed system of noun inflections, up to seven cases(nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional and vocative). The verb in Slavic languages has three simple times(past, present and future), but is also characterized by such a complex characteristic as the species. The verb can be imperfect (shows the continuity or repetition of the action) or perfect (denotes the completion of the action) form. Participles and gerunds are widely used (one can compare their use with the use of participles and gerunds in English). In all Slavic languages, except for Bulgarian and Macedonian, there is no article. The languages of the Slavic subfamily are more conservative and therefore closer to Proto-Indo-European than the languages of the Germanic and Romance groups, as evidenced by the preservation by the Slavic languages of seven of the eight cases for nouns that were characters for the Proto-Indo-European language, as well as the development of the form of the verb.
Vocabulary
The vocabulary of the Slavic languages is predominantly of Indo-European origin. There is also an important element of the mutual influence of the Baltic and Slavic languages on each other, which is reflected in the vocabulary. Borrowed words or translations of words go back to Iranian and German groups, and also to Greek, Latin, and Turkic languages. Influenced the vocabulary and languages such as Italian and French. Slavic languages also borrowed words from each other. The borrowing of foreign words tends to be translated and imitated rather than simply absorbed.
Writing
Perhaps it is in writing that the most significant differences between the Slavic languages lie. Some Slavic languages (in particular, Czech, Slovak, Slovene and Polish) have a script based on the Latin alphabet, since the speakers of these languages belong predominantly to the Catholic denomination. Other Slavic languages (for example, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian) use Cyrillic adaptations as a result of the influence of the Orthodox Church. The only language, Serbo-Croatian, uses two alphabets: Cyrillic for Serbian and Latin for Croatian.
The invention of the Cyrillic alphabet is traditionally attributed to Cyril, a Greek missionary who was sent by the Byzantine emperor Michael III to the Slavic peoples who were then in the 9th century AD. in what is now Slovakia. There is no doubt that Cyril created the predecessor of the Cyrillic alphabet - Glagolitic, based on the Greek alphabet, where new symbols were added to denote Slavic sounds that did not find a match in the Greek language. However, the very first Cyrillic texts dating back to the 9th century AD. not preserved. The most ancient Slavic texts preserved in the church Old Church Slavonic date back to the 10th and 11th centuries.
The structure of the word, the use of grammatical categories, the structure of the sentence, the system of regular sound correspondences, morphonological alternations. This proximity is explained both by the unity of the origin of the Slavic languages, and by their long and intensive contacts at the level of literary languages and dialects. There are, however, differences of a material, functional and typological nature, due to the long-term independent development of Slavic tribes and nationalities in different ethnic, geographical, historical and cultural conditions, their contacts with related and unrelated ethnic groups.
According to the degree of their proximity to each other, Slavic languages are usually divided into 3 groups: East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages), South Slavic (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian languages) and West Slavic (Czech, Slovak, Polish with a Kashubian dialect that has retained a certain genetic independence, Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian languages). There are also small local groups of Slavs with their own literary languages. Thus, the Croats in Austria (Burgenland) have their own literary language based on the Chakavian dialect. Not all Slavic languages have come down to us. At the end of the XVII - beginning of the XVIII centuries. the Polish language disappeared. The distribution of Slavic languages within each group has its own characteristics (see East Slavic languages, West Slavic languages, South Slavic languages). Each Slavic language includes a literary language with all its stylistic, genre and other varieties and its own territorial dialects. The ratios of all these elements in the Slavic languages are different. The Czech literary language has a more complex stylistic structure than Slovak, but the latter better preserves the features of dialects. Sometimes the dialects of one Slavic language differ from each other more than independent Slavic languages. For example, the morphology of the Shtokavian and Chakavian dialects of the Serbo-Croatian language differ much more deeply than the morphology of the Russian and Belarusian languages. The proportion of identical elements is often different. For example, the category of diminutive in Czech is expressed in more diverse and differentiated forms than in Russian.
Of the Indo-European languages, the Slavic languages are closest to the Baltic languages. This proximity served as the basis for the theory of the "Balto-Slavic proto-language", according to which the Balto-Slavic proto-language first emerged from the Indo-European proto-language, later splitting into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. However, most modern scientists explain their special closeness by the long contact of the ancient Balts and Slavs. It has not been established in which territory the separation of the language continuum from the Indo-European took place. It can be assumed that it took place to the south of those territories that, according to various theories, belong to the territory of the Slavic ancestral home. There are many such theories, but all of them do not localize the ancestral home where the Indo-European proto-language could be. On the basis of one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavonic), the Proto-Slavic language was later formed, which is the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages. The history of the Proto-Slavic language was longer than the history of individual Slavic languages. For a long time it developed as a single dialect with an identical structure. Later, dialect variants appear. The process of transition of the Proto-Slavic language, its dialects into independent Slavic languages was long and complicated. It took place most actively in the second half of the first millennium of our era, during the formation of the early Slavic feudal states in the territory of South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. During this period, the territory of Slavic settlements increased significantly. Areas of various geographical zones with different natural and climatic conditions were mastered, the Slavs entered into relationships with peoples and tribes standing at different stages of cultural development. All this was reflected in the history of the Slavic languages.
The Proto-Slavic language was preceded by the period of the Proto-Slavic language, elements of which can be restored with the help of the ancient Indo-European languages. The Proto-Slavic language in its main part is restored with the help of data from the Slavic languages of various periods of their history. The history of the Proto-Slavic language is divided into three periods: the most ancient - before the establishment of close Balto-Slavic language contact, the period of Balto-Slavic community and the period of dialectical fragmentation and the beginning of the formation of independent Slavic languages.
The individuality and originality of the Proto-Slavic language began to take shape even in the early period. It was then that a new system of vowel sonants was formed, consonantism became much simpler, the stage of reduction became widespread in the ablaut, the root ceased to obey the ancient restrictions. According to the fate of the middle palate and the Proto-Slavic language is included in the group satəm ("sьrdьce", "pisati", "prositi", cf. Latin "cor" - "cordis", "pictus", "precor"; "zьrno", "znati", "zima", cf. Latin "granum", "cognosco", "hiems"). However, this feature was implemented inconsistently: cf. Proto-Slavic “*kamy”, “*kosa”, “*gąsь”, “gordъ”, “bergъ”, etc. Proto-Slavic morphology represents significant deviations from the Indo-European type. This primarily applies to the verb, to a lesser extent - to the name. Most of the suffixes were already formed on the Proto-Slavic soil. Proto-Slavic vocabulary is distinguished by great originality; already in the early period of its development, the Proto-Slavic language experienced a number of significant transformations in the field of lexical composition. Having retained in most cases the old Indo-European lexical fund, at the same time he lost many old Indo-European lexemes (for example, some terms from the field of social relations, nature, etc.). Many words have been lost in connection with various kinds of prohibitions. For example, the name of the oak was forbidden - the Indo-European "*perkuos", whence the Latin "quercus". The old Indo-European root has come down to us only in the name of the pagan god Perun. In the Slavic languages, the taboo “*dąbъ” was established, from where the Russian “oak”, the Polish “dąb”, the Bulgarian “db”, etc. The Indo-European name of the bear has been lost. It is preserved only in the new scientific term "Arctic" (cf. Greek "αρκτος"). The Indo-European word in the Proto-Slavic language was replaced by the taboo phrase "*medvědь" - "honey eater". During the period of the Balto-Slavic community, the Slavs borrowed many words from the Balts. During this period, vowel sonants were lost in the Proto-Slavic language, diphthongic combinations appeared in their place in position before consonants and the sequences “vowel sonant before vowels” (“sьmürti”, but “umirati”), intonation (acute and circumflex) became relevant features. The most important processes of the Proto-Slavic period were the loss of closed syllables and softening of consonants before iot. In connection with the first process, all ancient diphthongic combinations into monophthongs, syllabic smooth, nasal vowels arose, a syllable division shifted, which, in turn, caused a simplification of consonant groups, the phenomenon of intersyllabic dissimilation. These ancient processes have left their mark on all modern Slavic languages, which is reflected in many alternations: cf. Russian “reap - reap”, “take - take”, “name - yen”, Czech “žíti - žnu”, “vzíti - vezmu”, Serbo-Croatian “zheti - we press”, “uzeti - uzmem”, “ime - names” . Softening of consonants before iot is reflected in the form of alternations s/š, z/ž and others. All these processes had a strong impact on the grammatical structure, on the system of inflections. In connection with the softening of consonants before the iot, the process of the so-called first palatalization of the posterior palate was experienced: [k] > [č], [g] > [ž], [x] > [š]. On this basis, even in the Proto-Slavic language, the alternations k / č, g / ž, x / š were formed, which had a great influence on nominal and verbal word formation. later, the so-called second and third palatalizations of the posterior palate began to operate, as a result of which alternations of k / c, g / z, x / s arose. The name changed by cases and numbers. In addition to the singular and plural, there was a dual number, which was later lost in almost all Slavic languages. There were nominal stems that performed the functions of definitions. In the late Proto-Slavic period, pronominal adjectives arose. The verb had the stems of the infinitive and the present tense. From the former, the infinitive, supine, aorist, imperfect, participles with "-l", participles of the real past tense with "-vъ" and participles of the passive voice with "-n" were formed. From the foundations of the present tense, the present tense, the imperative mood, the participle of the active voice of the present tense were formed. Later, in some Slavic languages, the imperfect began to form from this stem.
Even in the depths of the Proto-Slavic language, dialectical formations began to form. The most compact was the group of Proto-Slavic dialects, on the basis of which the East Slavic languages later arose. There were three subgroups in the West Slavic group: Lechit, Lusatian Serb and Czech-Slovak. The most differentiated dialectically was the South Slavic group.
The Proto-Slavic language functioned in the pre-state period in the history of the Slavs, when tribal social relations dominated. Significant changes occurred during the period of early feudalism. This was reflected in the further differentiation of the Slavic languages. By the XII-XIII centuries. there was a loss of super-short (reduced) vowels [b] and [b] characteristic of the Proto-Slavic language. In some cases they disappeared, in others they turned into full vowels. As a result, there have been significant changes in the phonetic and morphological structure of the Slavic languages. Many common processes have gone through the Slavic languages in the field of grammar and lexical composition.
For the first time, Slavic languages received literary processing in the 60s. 9th century The creators of Slavic writing were the brothers Cyril (Konstantin the Philosopher) and Methodius. They translated liturgical texts from Greek into Slavonic for the needs of Great Moravia. The new literary language was based on the South Macedonian (Thessalonica) dialect, but in Great Moravia it adopted many local linguistic features. Later it was further developed in Bulgaria. In this language (usually called the Old Church Slavonic language), the richest original and translated literature was created in Moravia, Pannonia, Bulgaria, Rus', and Serbia. There were two Slavic alphabets: Glagolitic and Cyrillic. From IX century. Slavic texts have not been preserved. The oldest date back to the 10th century: the Dobrujan inscription 943, the inscription of Tsar Samuil 993, etc. From the 11th century. many Slavic monuments have already been preserved. Slavic literary languages of the era of feudalism, as a rule, did not have strict norms. Some important functions were performed by foreign languages (in Rus' - Old Church Slavonic, in the Czech Republic and Poland - Latin). The unification of literary languages, the development of written and pronunciation norms, the expansion of the sphere of use of the native language - all this characterizes the long period of formation of the national Slavic languages. The Russian literary language has gone through a centuries-old and complex evolution. He absorbed folk elements and elements of the Old Slavonic language, was influenced by many European languages. It developed without interruption for a long time. The process of formation and history of a number of other literary Slavic languages went differently. Czech Republic in the 18th century literary language, which reached in the XIV-XVI centuries. great perfection, almost disappeared. The German language dominated in the cities. During the period of national revival, the Czech “wake-ups” artificially revived the language of the 16th century, which at that time was already far from the vernacular. The whole history of the Czech literary language of the XIX-XX centuries. reflects the interaction of the old book language and colloquial. The development of the Slovak literary language proceeded differently. Not burdened by old book traditions, it is close to the folk language. in Serbia until the 19th century. the Church Slavonic language of the Russian version dominated. In the XVIII century. began the process of rapprochement of this language with the people. As a result of the reform carried out by V. Karadzic in the middle of the 19th century, a new literary language was created. This new language began to serve not only the Serbs, but also the Croats, in connection with which it began to be called Serbo-Croatian or Croatian-Serbian. The Macedonian literary language was finally formed in the middle of the 20th century. Slavic literary languages have developed and are developing in close communication with each other. The study of Slavic languages is carried out by Slavic studies.
Slavic languages- a group of related languages of the Indo-European family. Distributed throughout Europe and Asia. The total number of speakers is more than 400 million people. They differ in a high degree of closeness to each other, which is found in the structure of the word, the use of grammatical categories, the structure of the sentence, semantics, the system of regular sound correspondences, and morphonological alternations. This proximity is explained by the unity of the origin of the Slavic languages and their long and intense contacts with each other at the level of literary languages and dialects.
The long independent development of the Slavic peoples in different ethnic, geographical, historical and cultural conditions, their contacts with various ethnic groups led to the emergence of material, functional and typological differences.
According to the degree of their proximity to each other, Slavic languages are usually divided into 3 groups:
- East Slavic
- South Slavic
- West Slavic.
The distribution of Slavic languages within each group has its own characteristics. Each Slavic language includes in its composition the literary language with all its internal varieties and its own territorial dialects. Dialect fragmentation and stylistic structure within each Slavic language is not the same.
Branches of Slavic languages:
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In addition to these languages, polyvalent languages, that is, speakers (like all modern national literary languages) both in the function of written, artistic, business speech, and in the function of oral, everyday, colloquial and stage speech, the Slavs also have "small" literary, almost always brightly dialect-colored languages. These languages, with limited use, usually function alongside national literary languages and serve either relatively small ethnic groups or even individual literary genres. There are also such languages in Western Europe: in Spain, Italy, France and in German-speaking countries. The Slavs know the Ruthenian language (in Yugoslavia), the Kaikavian and Chakavian languages (in Yugoslavia and Austria), the Kashubian language (in Poland), the Lyash language (in Czechoslovakia), etc.
On a rather vast territory in the basin of the Elbe River, in Slavic Laba, lived in the Middle Ages Polabian Slavs who spoke the Polabian language. This language is a severed branch from the Slavic language "tree" as a result of the forced Germanization of the population that spoke it. He disappeared in the 18th century. Nevertheless, separate records of the Polabian words, texts, translations of prayers, etc., have come down to us, from which it is possible to restore not only the language, but also the life of the disappeared Polabyans. And at the International Congress of Slavists in Prague in 1968, the famous West German Slavist R. Olesh read a report in the Polabian language, thus creating not only literary written (he read from typescript) and oral forms, but also scientific linguistic terminology. This indicates that almost every Slavic dialect (dialect) can, in principle, be the basis of a literary language. However, not only Slavic, but also another family of languages, as numerous examples of the newly written languages of our country show.
Classification methods for Slavic languages
The first printed information about the Slavic languages was usually presented as a list, i.e. enumeration. This is what the Czech J. Blagoslav did in his grammatical work on the Czech language of 1571 (published only in 1857), in which he notes Czech, then “Slovene” (probably Slovak), where he also included the language of the Croats, then follows Polish language; he also mentions the southern (possibly Church Slavonic), "Mazovian" (actually a Polish dialect), "Moscow" (i.e. Russian). Yu. Krizhanich, comparing in the XVII century. some Slavic languages, spoke of the proximity of some of them to each other, but did not dare to classify them. "List classifications" of Slavic languages, i.e. an attempt to single them out by enumeration and thereby distinguish them from other Indo-European languages is also characteristic of the 18th century, although occasionally they are also found in the 19th century. So, in 1787-1789. By decree of Empress Catherine, a two-volume book “Comparative Dictionaries of All Languages and Dialects” was published in St. Petersburg - an attempt to collect information about all the languages \u200b\u200bof the world known by that time and give them parallel lists of words. It is important for us that among “all languages and dialects” there were also 13 Slavic languages (“dialects”) submitted here: the words there are given “1 - in Slavonic, 2 - Slavic-Hungarian, 3 - Illyrian, 4 - Bohemian, 5 - Serbian, 6 - Vendsky, 7 - Sorabsky, 8 - Polabsky, 9 - Kashubsky, 10 - Polish, 11 - Little Russian, 12 - Suzdal" + 13 "in Russian"; “Slavic-Hungarian” is Slovak, “Vendsky” is one of the Lusatian Serb languages, “Suzdal” is social jargon! F. Mikloshich in "Morphology of Slavic Languages" (1852) gives languages in the following order: a) Old Church Slavonic, b) New Slavonic (Slovene), c) Bulgarian, d) Serbian (and Croatian), e) Little Russian, or Ukrainian (and Belarusian ), f) Great Russian, g) Czech (and Slovak), h) Polish, i) Upper Lusatian, j) Lower Lusatian; but without Polabian and Kashubian.
Classification by J. Dobrovsky.
Attempts to classify the Slavic languages on a scientific basis date back to the beginning of the 19th century. and are associated with the name of the founder of Slavic philology J. Dobrovsky. For the first time, a list of Slavic languages and dialects was given by Dobrovsky in 1791-1792. in the book "History of the Czech Language and Literature", published in German. There was no classification yet. He singled out the “full” Slavic language and listed its dialects, including Russian, “Polish with Silesian”, “Illyrian” with Bulgarian, “Rats-Serbian”, Bosnian, “Slavonian” (dialects of the historical region of Slavonia in Croatia), "Dalmatian and Dubrovnik", Croatian with Kajkavian, with "Wind" (Slovenian), "Czech with Moravian, Silesian and Slovak", Lusatian. In the second edition of this book (1818) and especially in his main work on the Old Church Slavonic language according to its dialects (“Institutiones linguae slavicae dialecti veteris”, 1822), Dobrovsky for the first time presents a scientific classification of Slavic languages, dividing them into two groups (each with 5 languages ):
- A (Eastern): Russian, Church Slavonic (Slavica vetus), "Illyrian", or Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, or "Vindian" ("in Krajina, Styria and Carinthia");
- B (Western): Slovak, Czech, “Vendian Upper Sorbian” (= Upper Sorbian) and “Vendian Lower Sorbian” (= Lower Sorbian), Polish.
J. Dobrovsky relied on 10 signs of phonetic, word-forming and lexical properties, cf .:
In the future, features 3 (l-epenteticum), 4 (combinations , ) and 6 (combinations , ) will be regularly, up to the present day, used by researchers when comparing three subgroups of Slavic languages. Other signs will remain unclaimed, for example, the prefix rose-, which is also characteristic of the East Slavic languages, in particular, for Ukrainian (rozum ‘mind’). In addition, the classification lacks several languages - Ukrainian, Kashubian, Bulgarian.
Views on classification after J. Dobrovsky.
Soon after Dobrovsky, the largest Slavist of the 19th century took up the classification of Slavic languages. P. Y. SHAFARIK. In the book "History of Slavic languages and literatures" (1826) and especially in the famous "Slavic antiquities" (1837) and "Slavic ethnography" (1842), he, following Dobrovsky, presented a two-component classification of "Slavic dialects":
- 1) southeastern group: Russian, Bulgarian, "Illyrian" (Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian);
- 2) northwestern group: "Lechitic" (Polish, Kashubian), Czech (Czech, Moravian, Slovak), Polabian (+ Upper and Lower Lusatian).
Of the 10 signs of Dobrovsky, Shafarik used only two phonetic ones - No. 3 and No. 4, he considered the rest to be insignificant. On the other hand, he added the following feature: the loss of [d] and [t] before [n] in the southeastern ones and the preservation - in the western ones of the type ϖ ν?τι - vadnouti ‘wither’. It is significant that A. Schleicher, the creator of the “family tree” hypothesis, applied it to the Slavic languages as well. Thus, outlining the development of the northeastern branch of the Indo-European languages (1865), he proposed the following scheme for the differentiation of the Slavic languages:
Here the western group is opposed to the combined southern and eastern. There are no Slovak, Kashubian, Belarusian languages, but Ukrainian is reflected along with Great Russian. Two-component classifications suffered from large generalizations, the omission of certain languages, and, in addition, were based on a minimum number of linguistic distinguishing features. Here is a summary table of the most important two-component classifications of the Slavic languages of the 19th century to see how far the three-component classification that replaced them has gone:
Reading the above table horizontally and vertically, it is not difficult to establish which languages and how are reflected in a particular classification; a dash (sign -) may indicate that the author did not know about the existence of a particular language or considered it to be an adverb (dialect) of a larger language, etc.
The three-component classification model and its shortcomings.
The two-component classification is being replaced by a three-component one. Doubts about the two-component classification proposed by J. Dobrovsky were expressed by A. Kh. Vostokov, pointing out that the Russian language, in a number of its characteristics, occupies an independent position between the southern and western languages. It can be said that the idea of a three-component division of the Slavic languages goes back to Vostokov, which was later supported by M. A. Maksimovich (works of 1836, 1838, 1845), N. Nadezhdin (1836), the Czech F. Palatsky (1836) and others. Maksimovich developed Vostokov's idea, highlighting the western, southern (or transdanubian) and eastern branches. Palacki, emphasizing the geographical principle, divided the Slavic languages into southwestern (= South Slavic), northwestern (= West Slavic) and East Slavic. This classificatory model was reinforced throughout much of the 19th century. In its approval, a special role was played by I. I. Sreznevsky (1843).
Based on historical and ethnographic (community of historical destinies of certain groups of Slavic peoples, commonality of material and spiritual culture, etc.) and linguistic criteria, he proposed to distribute the Slavic "dialects" as follows:
- 1) Eastern dialects: Great Russian, Ukrainian;
- 2) southwestern dialects (= South Slavic): Old Church Slavonic, Bulgarian, Serbian and Croatian, "Horutanian" (= Slovenian);
- 3) northwestern dialects (= West Slavic): Polish, Polabian, Lusatian, Czech and Slovak.
Classification by I. I. Sreznevsky used up to the present. True, some changes have been made to it, for example, in terms: instead of "adverbs" - languages; in the names of subgroups - respectively East Slavic, South Slavic and West Slavic; Belarusian is included in East Slavic, and Kashubian is included in West Slavic.
However, this classification has also been criticized. The fact is that the material of each Slavic language or dialect is quite diverse and does not always fit into the framework of classifications, which, as a rule, are based on taking into account only a few - usually phonetic - signs, according to which languages are included in one or another subgroup. Outside the classification principles are numerous linguistic features that bring together languages traditionally assigned to different subgroups. Such signs are often simply not taken into account.
Isogloss method and its role in the classification of dialects and languages.
Only in the twentieth century the procedure for identifying language parallels using the isogloss method began to take shape. This method is formulated as the establishment on a linguistic (dialectological) map of the lines of distribution of one or another linguistic phenomenon in order to determine the degree of proximity between dialects and dialects within individual languages and between languages - within individual linguistic subgroups or groups. The isogloss method, applied to linguistic material of all levels (i.e., phonetic, grammatical, lexical), allows you to more clearly determine the place and relationship of related languages to each other, which may lead to a revision of some provisions of the traditional classification. O.N. Trubachev (1974) rightly wrote about this at one time, pointing out the insufficiency of the three-component classification, which poorly takes into account the original dialect fragmentation of the Proto-Slavic language:
- “1) West Slavic, East Slavic and South Slavic language groups were secondarily consolidated from components of very different linguistic origins,
- 2) the original Slavia was not a linguistic monolith, but its opposite, i.e.<…>a complex set of isoglosses"
According to some experts, within the East Slavic subgroup, Russian and Ukrainian are more distant from each other, while Belarusian occupies, as it were, an intermediate position between them (there is also, however, an opinion about the great proximity of the Belarusian and Russian languages). Be that as it may, but some features bring Belarusian closer to the Russian language (for example, Akanye), others - to Ukrainian (for example, the presence of a long-past tense in both languages). It has long been noted that the Ukrainian language has a number of features that unite it with the South Slavic languages (especially with their western part), for example, inflection of verbs 1 l. pl. h. present tense -mo: write-mo ‘we write’, practice-mo ‘we work’, etc. - cf. South Slavic Serbian-Croatian write-mo, for the sake of-mo, Slovenian. piše-mo, dela-mo, etc.
Methods based on phonetic and word-formation material
Attempts, on the basis of some signs, to establish in which direction the development of the speech array took place after the collapse of the Proto-Slavic language, do not stop to this day. The latest hypothesis on this issue belongs to the Belarusian Slavist F.D. Klimchuk (2007). He analyzes the phonetic development in modern Slavic languages and dialects of a number of elements in the ancient words selected especially for these purposes - ten, black grouse, wild, quiet and smoke. Here is how these words look in phonetic transmission:
In accordance with this, the Slavic dialect continuum is divided into two zones - northern and southern. To prove this, it is necessary to formulate the conditions and trace the form in which the selected phonetic elements were realized in specific Slavic languages and dialects. This is about
- a) realization of consonants [d], [t], [z], [s], [n] before etymological [e], [i];
- b) about the distinction between vowels [i] and y [ы] or their merging into one sound.
In the northern zone, the consonants [d], [t], [z], [s], [n] in the indicated position are soft, in the southern zone they are hard (i.e. velarized or non-velarized, often called semi-soft). The vowels [i] and y [ы] in the northern zone retained their quality, in the southern zone they merged into one sound. In the Proto-Slavic, Old Slavonic and Book Old Russian languages of the early period, the vowels [i] and y [ы] differed from each other, representing two independent sounds. The consonants [d], [t], [z], [s], [n] before the etymological [e], [i] in these languages were pronounced “semi-softly”. In other words, they were solid but not velarized. The Proto-Slavic model for the implementation of consonants [d], [t], [z], [s], [n] before [e], [i] was preserved only in some regions and microregions of Slavia - in many dialects of the Carpathians and the upper reaches of the river. San, sometimes in Polissya, as well as in the northern and southern parts of Russia. In a significant part of the dialects of the Slavic languages of the northern zone, the soft consonants [d], [t] have changed into , respectively. This phenomenon has received the name tsekanya-zekanya.
Studying the distribution of more than 70 suffixes of nouns across the Slavic territory, as well as conducting a group analysis of geographical and ichthyological (the name of fish and everything connected with them) vocabulary, A. S. Gerd and V. M. Mokienko (1974) singled out on this basis four Slavic areas opposed to each other:
- 1) West East Slavic - South Slavic;
- 2) West East Slavic + Slovenian - South Slavic (except Slovenian);
- 3) East Slavic - West South Slavic;
- 4) North Slavic and West South Slavic - East South Slavic (Bulgarian and Macedonian).
Quantitative method based on phonetic and morphological features.
In the twentieth century another approach to the study of the ways of the collapse of the Proto-Slavic language and the establishment of the degree of closeness of the Slavic languages in relation to each other is taking shape. This approach is called quantitative or statistical. The Pole J. Chekanovsky was the first to use it in relation to the Slavic material in 1929. Based on the list provided to him by T. Ler-Splavinsky of several dozen phonetic and morphological features characteristic of various regions of Slavia, Chekanovskiy compiles a special table indicating the presence ~ absence of such features in a particular language, after which, using special statistical techniques, it establishes an index of proximity between languages.
The Lusatian Serbo languages occupy a central place in the area of the West Slavic languages. The Polabian language is closer to Czech and Slovak than to Polish. Chekanovsky also comes to the conclusion that there were deep ties between the Lechitic languages and the Northern Great Russian dialects. Moreover, the author believes that the future East Slavic massif, under the influence of the Avar raids, broke away from the northern massif, which united both Western and Eastern Slavs.
Before the arrival of the Hungarians in the Pannonian lowland (the end of the 9th century), the western and southern Slavs formed a wide belt stretching from north to south (to the Balkans). The expansion of the Hungarians separated the western and southern Slavs. Traces of former connections in the form of common features are noted in the language of Czechs and Slovaks, on the one hand, and in Slovenian dialects, on the other. And in the South Slavic massif itself, there was a division into a western branch (Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian) and an eastern branch (Old Slavic, Bulgarian, and later Macedonian). Chekanovsky believed that his conclusions should shake the existing opinion about the straightforwardness of the division of the Proto-Slavic into three arrays.
Method of lexical-statistical modeling.
A qualitatively new turn marks the appearance in 1994 of A. F. Zhuravlev's monograph "Lexico-statistical modeling of the system of Slavic linguistic kinship" (based on a doctoral dissertation defended in 1992). The author for the first time refers to the Proto-Slavic lexical material, which by hundreds of times exceeds the phonetic-morphological features traditionally used to determine linguistic kinship. There is a significant difference between these two categories of features: if phonetic-morphological features evolve mainly by replacing some elements with others, then the development of the dictionary proceeds mainly through the accumulation (cumulation) of more and more new words. In addition, the author rightly considers the vocabulary to be more stable over time than phonetics and morphology, and this refers to the vocabulary of its most ancient layer. Zhuravlev makes a continuous selection from the first 15 issues of the "Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages" edited by O. N. Trubachev (before the word * lokas 'puddle, pothole on the road') - a total of 7557 positions (headwords), while he avoids post-Proto-Slavic, bookish and some other categories of words that were absent in the Proto-Slavic time. Interesting statistics of the Proto-Slavic vocabulary, preserved in the analyzed Slavic languages and dialects, turned out to be:
It should be noted that the presented data was to a certain extent influenced by such a factor as the completeness or incompleteness of the collected vocabulary for a particular language (as, for example, for Polab - an extinct language and known only from records and written monuments).
Taking into account the derived indices of genetic proximity, the Russian language, for example, is characterized by the following relationships:
- a) within the East Slavic subgroup: North and South Great Russian dialects are lexically closer to Belarusian than to Ukrainian;
- b) outside the East Slavic subgroup, the statistical similarity of the Proto-Slavic lexical heritage of the North Great Russian dialect is closer to the Serbo-Croatian language,
- c) while the South Great Russian dialect is turned to Polish,
- d) the Russian language as a whole at the level of Proto-Slavic vocabulary is closer to Polish
- e) and to Serbo-Croatian.
The difference between the results obtained by phonostatistical and lexico-statistical methods is found, for example, in the qualification of languages with the highest degree of similarity: in the first case, at the language level, these are Czech and Slovak, and in the second, Serbo-Lusatian. Zhuravlev is inclined to believe that such a discrepancy is caused primarily by the difference in the supporting material - phonetics and vocabulary, and by the inconsistency and unequal pace of their historical development. At the same time, both approaches allow us to conclude that the West Slavic group as a whole demonstrates its inhomogeneous, i.e. heterogeneous character. In this regard, the idea is expressed that the practice of the initial division of the Proto-Slavic into western and eastern massifs and further into eastern and southern or western and southern should give way to other, more complex and multidimensional relationships.
Traditional classification, taking into account some of the latest data
As you can see, the totality of some features divides the Slavic language array in one direction, the totality of others - in another. Moreover, even within the planned zones themselves, linguistic and dialectal isoglosses can be distributed in different directions, depriving the subgroups (western, southern and eastern) of the known genetic classification of more or less clear boundaries, on the contrary, outlining them either as intersecting with each other, or as entering into each other, then in the form of isolated situations that turned out to be torn off from the main array, etc. All this suggests that both the Proto-Slavic speech array and the arrays formed after its collapse were characterized by a constant quality - the original dialect fragmentation, the lack of clear boundaries between local speech arrays, their mobility, etc.
Taking into account the achievements of the isogloss method, quantitative analysis of the proximity of languages and dialects, as well as taking into account situations of linguistic continuity, etc., the traditional three-component classification of Slavic languages can currently be schematically represented as follows:
East Slavic:
South Slavic:
West Slavic:
Thus, the problem of classifying Slavic languages has not been finally resolved. It is believed that its solution will depend on the compilation of the All-Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA), the question of which was raised at the I International Congress of Slavists in Prague in 1929. Since 1961, the Commission on OLA, which includes specialists on linguistic geography and dialectology of all Slavic and a number of non-Slavic countries. The material is collected in 850 Slavonic (usually rural) settlements, including some resettlement territories. For this purpose, a questionnaire was compiled, including 3,454 questions - on phonetics, grammar, vocabulary and word formation. The distribution of signs is studied and they are mapped (the principle applies: one sign - one map), while paying attention to isoglosses and their bundles, i.e. clusters.
Since 1965, the Institute of the Russian Language. V. V. Vinogradov Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow regularly publishes collections of studies and materials under the general title “Common Slavic Linguistic Atlas. Materials and Research”, and in 1988 the first issue of the atlas appeared, dedicated to the reflexes of the yat (* e) in the modern Slavic territory. Words with reflexes of the specified vowel are given in transcription. For the first time, it is possible to see, for example, a word and its transcription in all its phonetic subtleties in the vast territory inhabited by modern Slavs.
As an example, let's take the Proto-Slavic word *celovekъ 'man' and see in what pronunciation forms it really appears in different Slavic areas (the stroke "indicates that the syllable following it is stressed): clovjek - clouk - clajk - c'lo" vek - c'lo "vik - šlo" vik - co "vek - c'ojek - cojak - cvek - coek - clov'ek - cala" v'ek - colo "v'ik - c'ila" v'ek - cuek - c'elo "v'ek - c'olo" v'ek - š'ila "v'ek - cu?ov'ek etc. etc.
What does such a linguo-geographic distribution of this word show? And the fact that in reality the word in the process of historical development undergoes serious phonetic changes. What remains of the phonetic elements that made up the Proto-Slavic word *celovekъ? Only one element turned out to be stable - the final one - k, while the first element appears either in a hard or in a soft form, or generally turns into a whistling ([s], ) or hissing ([ š], [ š']) ; [e] is preserved somewhere, but somewhere it turns into [i], [o], [a] or disappears altogether. The fate of subsequent vowels and consonants is also tortuous. This method shows us how one and the same word really lives in different Slavic areas. From this we can conclude how complex phonetic and other processes are and how difficult it is for scientists to follow them and classify their results for certain purposes. Nevertheless, the three-term genetic classification of the Slavic languages, which has already become a classic, is still actively used by researchers.
SLAVIC LANGUAGES, a group of languages belonging to the Indo-European family, spoken by more than 440 million people in Eastern Europe and North and Central Asia. The thirteen currently existing Slavic languages are divided into three groups: 1) the East Slavic group includes Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian; 2) West Slavic includes Polish, Czech, Slovak, Kashubian (which is spoken in a small area in northern Poland) and two Lusatian (or Serbo-Lusatian) languages - Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian, common in small areas in eastern Germany; 3) the South Slavic group includes: Serbo-Croatian (spoken in Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina), Slovene, Macedonian and Bulgarian. In addition, there are three dead languages - Sloven, which disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century, Polabsky, which became extinct in the 18th century, and also Old Slavonic - the language of the first Slavic translations of the Holy Scripture, which is based on one of the ancient South Slavic dialects and which was used in worship in the Slavic Orthodox Church, but was never the everyday spoken language ( cm. OLD SLAVONIC LANGUAGE).
Modern Slavic languages have many words in common with other Indo-European languages. Many Slavic words are similar to the corresponding English ones, for example: sister – sister,three - three,nose - nose,night and etc. In other cases, the common origin of the words is less clear. Russian word see related to Latin videre, Russian word five related to German funf, Latin quinque(cf. musical term quintet), Greek penta, which is present, for example, in a borrowed word pentagon(lit. "pentagon") .
An important role in the system of Slavic consonantism is played by palatalization - the approach of the flat middle part of the tongue to the palate when pronouncing a sound. Almost all consonants in Slavic languages can be either hard (non-palatalized) or soft (palatalized). In the field of phonetics, there are also some significant differences between the Slavic languages. In Polish and Kashubian, for example, two nasalized (nasal) vowels have been preserved - ą And ERROR, disappeared in other Slavic languages. Slavic languages differ greatly in stress. In Czech, Slovak and Sorbian, the stress usually falls on the first syllable of a word; in Polish - to the penultimate one; in Serbo-Croatian, any syllable can be stressed except for the last one; in Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, the stress can fall on any syllable of a word.
All Slavic languages, except Bulgarian and Macedonian, have several types of declension of nouns and adjectives, which change in six or seven cases, in numbers and in three genders. The presence of seven cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, local or prepositional and vocative) testifies to the archaism of the Slavic languages and their closeness to the Indo-European language, which supposedly had eight cases. An important feature of the Slavic languages is the category of the verb form: every verb refers either to the perfect or to the imperfect form and denotes, respectively, either a completed, or a lasting or repetitive action.
The habitat of the Slavic tribes in Eastern Europe in the 5th–8th centuries. AD expanded rapidly, and by the 8th c. the common Slavic language spread from the north of Russia to the south of Greece and from the Elbe and the Adriatic Sea to the Volga. Up to the 8th or 9th c. it was basically a single language, but gradually the differences between the territorial dialects became more noticeable. By the 10th c. there were already predecessors of modern Slavic languages.
