What is an Indo-European family. Slavic languages



Plan:

    Introduction
  • 1 Classification
  • 2 Origin
  • 3 History of development
  • 4 Phonetics
  • 5 Writing
  • 6 Literary languages
  • Literature
    Notes

Introduction

Slavic languages

Slavic languages- a group of related languages ​​of the Indo-European family. Distributed throughout Europe and Asia. Total number more than 400 million speakers. 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.


1. Classification

According to the degree of their proximity to each other, Slavic languages ​​are usually divided into 3 groups: East Slavic, South Slavic and 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:

  • East Slavic branch
    • Old Russian †
      • Western Russian †
      • Old Novgorod dialect †
        • Pomeranian
      • Old Russian †
        • Russian
          • Pomeranian
          • donskaya balachka
      • Belorussian
      • Ukrainian
        • Ruthenian
        • donskaya balachka
  • West Slavic branch
    • Lechitic subgroup
      • Pomeranian languages
        • Kashubian
        • Slovenian †
      • Polabian †
      • Polish
        • Silesian
    • Lusatian subgroup
      • Upper Lusatian
      • Lower Lusatian
    • Czecho-Slovak subgroup
      • Slovak
      • Czech
        • knanite †
        • Moravian
  • South Slavic branch
    • Eastern group
      • Bulgarian
      • Macedonian
      • Old Church Slavonic †
      • Church Slavonic
    • Western group
      • Serbo-Croatian group:
        • Croatian
        • Bosnian
        • Montenegrin
        • Serbian
          • Slavic Serbian †
      • Slovenian

2. Origin

The Slavic languages ​​within the Indo-European family are closest to the Baltic languages. The similarity between the two groups served as the basis for the theory of the "Balto-Slavic parent language", according to which the Balto-Slavic parent language first emerged from the Indo-European parent language, later splitting into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. However, many scientists explain their special closeness by the long contact of the ancient Balts and Slavs, and deny the existence of the Balto-Slavic language. It has not been established in which territory the separation of the Slavic language continuum from the Indo-European / Balto-Slavic 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 homelands. From one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavic), the Proto-Slavic language was 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. Dialect variants arose later. The process of transition of the Proto-Slavic language into independent languages ​​took place most actively in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium AD. e., during the formation of the early Slavic states on the territory of the South-East and of Eastern Europe. During this period, the territory of Slavic settlements increased significantly. Areas of various geographical zones with various natural and climatic conditions, the Slavs entered into relationships with the population of these territories, standing at different stages of cultural development. All this was reflected in the history of the Slavic languages.

The history of the Proto-Slavic language is divided into 3 periods: the most ancient - before the establishment of close Balto-Slavic language contact, the period of the Balto-Slavic community and the period of dialect fragmentation and the beginning of the formation of independent Slavic languages.


3. History of development

Bascan Plate, XI century, Krk, Croatia

In the early period of the development of the Slavic proto-language, a new system vowel sonants, consonantism was greatly simplified, the stage of reduction became widespread in the ablaut, the root ceased to obey the ancient restrictions. The Proto-Slavic language is included in the satem group (sürdce, pisati, prositi, cf. lat. cor, - cordis, pictus, precor; zürno, znati, zima, cf. lat. granum, cognosco, hiems). However, this feature was implemented inconsistently: cf. Praslav *kamy, *kosa. *gǫsь, *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.

Novgorod birch bark of the 14th century

Most of the suffixes were already formed on the Proto-Slavic soil. In the early period of its development, the Proto-Slavic language experienced a number of transformations in the field of vocabulary. Having retained in most cases the old Indo-European vocabulary, at the same time he lost some 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 (taboos). For example, the name of oak was lost - the Indo-European perkuos, whence the Latin quercus. The old Indo-European root is preserved only in the name of the pagan god Perun. In the Slavic language, the taboo dǫbъ was established, from where Rus. "oak", Polish dab, bulg. db, etc. The Indo-European name for the bear has been lost. It is preserved only in the new scientific term "Arctic" (cf. Greek. ἄρκτος ). The Indo-European word in the Proto-Slavic language was replaced by a taboo combination of the words *medvědь (originally "honey eater", from honey and *ěd-).

Zograph codex, X-XI centuries.

The period of the Balto-Slavic community is characterized by the borrowing of 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 of “vowel sonant before vowels” (sьmürti, but umirati), intonations (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 turned 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 - names” , Czech ziti - znu, vziti - vezmu; Serbohorv. jeti - click, uzeti - let's know, ime - names. The softening of consonants before the iot is reflected in the form of alternations s - sh, z - zh, etc. 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. the first palatalization of the posterior palate: k > h, d > f, x > w. On this basis, even in the Proto-Slavic language, alternations k: h, g: w, x: sh were formed, which had big influence into nominal and verbal word formation.

Later, the second and third palatalizations of the posterior palate developed, as a result of which alternations arose k: c, g: dz (s), x: s (x). 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 ​​(it remained rudimentary in Ukrainian and Croatian).

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 first, the infinitive, supine, aorist, imperfect, participles in -l, participles of the real past tense in -v, and participles of the passive voice in -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.

Dialects began to form in the Proto-Slavic language. There were three groups of dialects: Eastern, Western and Southern. From them, the corresponding languages ​​were then formed. The group of East Slavic dialects was the most compact. There were 3 subgroups in the West Slavic group: Lechit, Lusatian and Czech-Slovak. The South Slavic group was dialectally the most differentiated.

The Proto-Slavic language functioned in the pre-state period in the history of the Slavs, when tribal social order. Significant changes occurred during the period of early feudalism. In the XII-XIII centuries. there was a further differentiation of the Slavic languages, there was a loss of the super-short (reduced) vowels ъ and ь 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, in their lexical composition.


4. Phonetics

Slavic languages ​​are characterized by the presence of palatalization of consonants - 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 hard (non-palatalized) or soft (palatalized). In the field of phonetics, there are some significant differences between the Slavic languages. Polish and Kashubian retain two nasal vowels, ą and ę, which are lost in other Slavic languages. In different Slavic languages, stress is realized in different ways. 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.


5. Writing

Slavic languages ​​received their first 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. At its core, the new literary language had a 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 most ancient date back to the 10th century: the Dobrudzhan inscription of 943, the inscription of Tsar Samuil of 993, the Varosha inscription of 996, and others. Starting from the XI century. more Slavic monuments have been preserved.

Modern Slavic languages ​​use alphabets based on Cyrillic and Latin. The Glagolitic alphabet is used in Catholic worship in Montenegro and in several coastal areas in Croatia. In Bosnia, for some time, the Arabic alphabet was also used in parallel with the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.


6. Literary languages

In the era of feudalism, Slavic literary languages, as a rule, did not have strict norms. Sometimes the functions of the literary language were performed by foreign languages ​​(in Rus' - the Old Slavonic language, in the Czech Republic and Poland - the Latin language).

The Russian literary language has gone through a centuries-old and complex evolution. He absorbed folk elements and elements Old Church Slavonic, has been influenced by many European languages.

Czech Republic in the 18th century literary language, which reached in the XIV-XVI centuries. great perfection, almost disappeared. dominated the cities German. During the period of national revival in the Czech Republic, the language of the 16th century was artificially revived, which at that time was already far from the national language. History of the Czech literary language of the 19th-20th centuries. reflects the interaction of the old book language and colloquial. The Slovak literary language had a different history, it developed on the basis of the vernacular. 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 Vuk Karadzic in the middle of the 19th century, a new literary language was created. The Macedonian literary language was finally formed in the middle of the 20th century.

In addition to the "big" Slavic languages, there are a number of small Slavic literary languages ​​(microlanguages), which usually function along with national literary languages ​​and serve either relatively small ethnic groups or even individual literary genres.


Literature

  • Meie A. Common Slavic language, trans. from French, Moscow, 1951.
  • Bernstein S. B. Essay on comparative grammar of Slavic languages. Introduction. Phonetics. M., 1961.
  • Bernstein S. B. Essay on comparative grammar of Slavic languages. Alternations. nominal bases. M., 1974.
  • Kuznetsov P. S. Essays on the morphology of the Proto-Slavic language. M., 1961.
  • Nachtigal R. Slavic languages, trans. from Slovenia., M., 1963.
  • Entry to the historically historical development of the words of the Yan language. For red. O. S. Melnichuk. Kiev, 1966.
  • National revival and formation of Slavic literary languages. M., 1978.
  • Boshkovich R. Fundamentals of Comparative Grammar of Slavonic Languages. Phonetics and word formation. M., 1984.
  • Birnbaum H. Proto-Slavic language. Achievements and problems of its reconstruction, trans. from English, M., 1987.
  • Vaillant A. Grammaire comparee des langues slaves, t. 1-5. Lyon - P., 1950-77.

Notes

  1. Balto-Slavonic Natural Language Processing 2009 - w3.erss.univ-tlse2.fr/index.jsp?perso=kupsc&subURL=bsnlp/m/CFP.html
  2. http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/worldlang.htm - www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/worldlang.htm
  3. Languages ​​Spoken by More Than 10 Million People (Languages ​​spoken by more than 10 million people) according to the encyclopedia - www.webcitation.org/query?id=1257013011437361 Encarta. Archived from the original - encarta.msn.com/media_701500404/languages_spoken_by_more_than_10_million_people.html October 31, 2009.
  4. Omniglot - www.omniglot.com/writing/macedonian.htm
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 considered by some as a separate language
  6. Fasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language. - starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/query.cgi?basename=\usr\local\share\starling\morpho\vasmer\vasmer&root=/usr/local/share/starling/morpho&morpho=0 - 1st ed. - T. 1-4. - M., 1964-1973.

This abstract is based on an article from the Russian Wikipedia. , Slavic languages.
The text is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

sla

See also: Project:Linguistics

Slavic languages. According to the publication of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences "Languages ​​of the World", volume "Slavic Languages", M., 2005

Indo-Europeans

Indo-European languages
Anatolian Albanian
Armenian · Baltic · Venetian
Germanic Greek Illyrian
Aryan: Nuristani, Iranian, Indo-Aryan, Dardic
Italian (Romance)
Celtic Paleo-Balkan
Slavic · Tocharian

in italics dead language groups highlighted

Indo-Europeans
Albanians Armenians Balts
Veneta Germans Greeks
Illyrians Iranians Indo-Aryans
Italics (Romans) Celts
Cimmerians· Slavs · Tokhary
Thracians · Hittites in italics now non-existing communities are highlighted
Proto-Indo-Europeans
Language Homeland Religion
Indo-European 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.

Classification

According to the degree of their proximity to each other, Slavic languages ​​are usually divided into 3 groups: East Slavic, South Slavic and 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:

  • South Slavic branch
    • Eastern group
      • Bulgarian (ISO 639-1: bg; ISO 639-3: bul)
      • Macedonian (ISO 639-1: mk; ISO 639-3: mkd)
      • Old Church Slavonic † (ISO 639-1: cu; ISO 639-3: chu)
      • Church Slavonic (ISO 639-1: cu; ISO 639-3: chu)
    • Western group
      • Serbo-Croatian group/Serbo-Croatian language (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: hbs):
        • Bosnian (ISO 639-1: bs; ISO 639-3: boss)
        • Serbian (ISO 639-1: sr; ISO 639-3: srp)
          • Slavic Serbian † (ISO 639-1: - ;ISO 639-3: -)
        • Croatian (ISO 639-1: hr; ISO 639-3: hrv)
          • Kajkavian (ISO 639-3: kjv)
        • Montenegrin (ISO 639-1: - ;ISO 639-3: -)
        • Molise-Slavonic (ISO 639-3: svm)
      • Slovenian (ISO 639-1: sl; ISO 639-3: slv)

Origin

The Slavic languages ​​within the Indo-European family are closest to the Baltic languages. The similarity between the two groups served as the basis for the theory of " 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, many scientists explain their special closeness by the long contact of the ancient Balts and Slavs, and deny the existence of the Balto-Slavic language.

It has not been established in which territory the separation of the Slavic language continuum from the Indo-European / Balto-Slavic 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 homelands. [ ] From one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavic), the Proto-Slavic language was 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. Dialect variants arose later.

The process of transition of the Proto-Slavic language into independent languages ​​took place most actively in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium AD, during the formation of the early Slavic 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 the inhabitants of these territories, who stood at different stages of cultural development. All this was reflected in the history of the Slavic languages.

History of development

In the early period of the development of the Slavic proto-language, a new system of vowel sonants developed, consonantism became much simpler, the stage of reduction became widespread in ablaut, and the root ceased to obey the ancient restrictions. The Proto-Slavic language is included in the satem group (sürdce, pisati, prositi, cf. lat. cor, - cordis, pictus, precor; zürno, znati, zima, cf. lat. granum, cognosco, hiems). However, this feature was not fully realized: cf. Praslav *kamy, *kosa. *gǫsь, *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.

Dialects began to form in the Proto-Slavic language. There were three groups of dialects: Eastern, Western and Southern. From them, the corresponding languages ​​were then formed. The group of East Slavic dialects was the most compact. There were 3 subgroups in the West Slavic group: Lechitic, Lusatian Serb and Czech-Slovak. The South Slavic group was dialectally the most differentiated.

The Proto-Slavic language functioned in the pre-state period in the history of the Slavs, when the tribal social system dominated. Significant changes took place during the period of early feudalism. In the XII-XIII centuries. there was a further differentiation of the Slavic languages, there was a loss of the super-short (reduced) vowels ъ and ь 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, in their lexical composition.

Phonetics

In the field of phonetics, there are some significant differences between the Slavic languages.

In most Slavic languages, the opposition of vowels in longitude / brevity is lost, at the same time in Czech and Slovak languages ​​(excluding North Moravian and East Slovak dialects), in the literary norms of the Shtokavian group (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin), and also partly in Slovene these differences persist. In the Lechitic languages, Polish and Kashubian, nasal vowels are preserved, which are lost in other Slavic languages ​​(nasal vowels were also characteristic of the phonetic system of the extinct Polabian language). For a long time, nasals were retained in the Bulgarian-Macedonian and Slovenian language areas (in the peripheral dialects of the respective languages, relics of nasalization are reflected in a number of words to this day).

Slavic languages ​​are characterized by the presence of palatalization of consonants - 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 hard (non-palatalized) or soft (palatalized). Due to a number of depalatalization processes, the opposition of consonants in terms of hardness / softness in the languages ​​of the Czech-Slovak group is significantly limited (in Czech, the opposition t - t', d - d', n - n', in Slovak - t - t', d - d', n - n', l - l', while in the West Slovak dialect due to assimilation t', d' and their subsequent hardening, as well as hardening l', as a rule, only one pair is presented n - n', in a number of Western Slovak dialects (Povazhsky, Trnavsky, Zagorsky) paired soft consonants are completely absent). The opposition of consonants in terms of hardness / softness did not develop in the Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian and Western Bulgarian-Macedonian language areas - from the old paired soft consonants, only n' (< *nj), l' (< *lj) have not undergone hardening (primarily in the Serbo-Croatian area).

Stress in Slavic languages ​​is realized in different ways. In most Slavic languages ​​(except Serbo-Croatian and Slovene), the polytonic Proto-Slavic stress has been replaced by a dynamic one. The free, mobile nature of the Proto-Slavic stress was preserved in the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Bulgarian languages, as well as in the Torlak dialect and the northern dialect of the Kashubian language (the extinct Polabian language also had a mobile stress). In the Central Russian dialects (and, accordingly, in the Russian literary language), in the South Russian dialect, in the North Kashubian dialects, as well as in the Belarusian and Bulgarian languages, this type of stress caused the reduction of unstressed vowels. In a number of languages, primarily in West Slavic, a fixed stress has formed, assigned to a certain syllable of a word or bar group. The penultimate syllable is stressed in the Polish literary language and most of its dialects, in the Czech North Moravian and East Slovak dialects, in the southwestern dialects of the southern Kashubian dialect, and also in the Lemko dialect. The first syllable is stressed in the Czech and Slovak literary languages ​​and most of their dialects, in the Lusatian languages, in the South Kashubian dialect, and also in some Goral dialects of the Lesser Polish dialect. In Macedonian, the stress is also fixed - it falls no further than the third syllable from the end of the word (accent group). In the Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian languages, the stress is polytonic, multi-local, the tonic characteristics and the distribution of stress in word forms are different in dialects. In the Central Kashubian dialect, the stress is different, but is assigned to a certain morpheme.

Writing

Slavic languages ​​received their first literary processing in the 60s. ninth 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. At its core, the new literary language had a South Macedonian (Thessalonica) dialect, but in Great Moravia it adopted many local linguistic features. It was later developed further in Bulgaria. The richest original and translated literature in Moravia, Pannonia, Bulgaria, Rus', and Serbia was created in this language (usually called Old Church Slavonic). There were two Slavic alphabets: Glagolitic and Cyrillic. From IX century. Slavic texts have not been preserved. The most ancient date back to the 10th century: the Dobrudzhan inscription of 943, the inscription of Tsar Samuil of 993, the Varosh inscription of 996 and others. Starting from c. more Slavic monuments have been preserved.

Similarities and differences of Slavic languages

Due to historical reasons, the Slavic languages ​​managed to maintain significant similarities with respect to each other. At the same time, almost each of them has a number of unique features.

Eastern group Western group Southern group
Russian Ukrainian Belorussian Polish Slovak Czech Serbo-Croatian Bulgarian Macedonian Slovenian
Number of carriers 250 45 6,4 40 5,2 9,5 21 8,5 2 2,2
NearestBelorussian Ukrainian Kashubian Czech Slovak Slovenian Macedonian Bulgarian Serbo-Croatian
Writing


branch

Languages ​​of Eurasia

Indo-European family

Compound

East Slavic, West Slavic, South Slavic groups

Separation time:

XII-XIII centuries n. e.

Language group codes GOST 7.75–97: ISO 639-2: ISO 639-5: See also: Project:Linguistics Slavic languages. According to the publication of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences "Languages ​​of the World", volume "Slavic Languages", M., 2005

Indo-Europeans

Indo-European languages
Anatolian Albanian
Armenian Baltic Venetian
Germanic Illyrian
Aryan: Nuristani, Iranian, Indo-Aryan, Dardic
Italian (Romance)
Celtic Paleo-Balkan
Slavic· Tocharian

italicized dead language groups

Indo-Europeans
Albanians Armenians Balts
Venetians Germans Greeks
Illyrians Iranians Indo-Aryans
Italics (Romans) Celts
Cimmerians Slavs Tokhars
Thracians Hittites in italics now defunct communities
Proto-Indo-Europeans
Language Homeland Religion
Indo-European Studies
p o r

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.

  • 1 Classification
  • 2 Origin
    • 2.1 Modern research
  • 3 Development history
  • 4 Phonetics
  • 5 Writing
  • 6 Literary languages
  • 7 See also
  • 8 Notes
  • 9 Literature

Classification

According to the degree of their proximity to each other, Slavic languages ​​are usually divided into 3 groups: East Slavic, South Slavic and 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:

  • East Slavic branch
    • Belarusian (ISO 639-1: be; ISO 639-3: Bel)
    • Old Russian † (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: orv)
      • Old Novgorod dialect † (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: -)
      • Western Russian † (ISO 639-1: - ;ISO 639-3: -)
    • Russian (ISO 639-1: en; ISO 639-3: rus)
    • Ukrainian (ISO 639-1: UK; ISO 639-3: ukr)
      • Rusyn (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: rue)
  • West Slavic branch
    • Lechitic subgroup
      • Pomeranian (Pomeranian) languages
        • Kashubian (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: csb)
          • Slowinski † (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: -)
      • Polabian † (ISO 639-1: -; ISO 639-3: pox)
      • Polish (ISO 639-1: pl; ISO 639-3: pol)
        • Silesian (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: szl)
    • Lusatian subgroup
      • Upper Lusatian (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: hsb)
      • Lower Sorbian (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: dsb)
    • Czech-Slovak subgroup
      • Slovak (ISO 639-1: sk; ISO 639-3: slk)
      • Czech (ISO 639-1: cs; ISO 639-3: ces)
        • knaanite † (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: czk)
  • South Slavic branch
    • Eastern group
      • Bulgarian (ISO 639-1: bg; ISO 639-3: bul)
      • Macedonian (ISO 639-1: mk; ISO 639-3: mkd)
      • Old Church Slavonic † (ISO 639-1: cu; ISO 639-3: chu)
      • Church Slavonic (ISO 639-1: cu; ISO 639-3: chu)
    • Western group
      • Serbo-Croatian group/Serbo-Croatian language (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: hbs):
        • Bosnian (ISO 639-1: bs; ISO 639-3: boss)
        • Serbian (ISO 639-1: sr; ISO 639-3: srp)
          • Slavic Serbian † (ISO 639-1: - ;ISO 639-3: -)
        • Croatian (ISO 639-1: hr; ISO 639-3: hrv)
          • Kajkavian (ISO 639-3: kjv)
        • Montenegrin (ISO 639-1: - ;ISO 639-3: -)
      • Slovenian (ISO 639-1: sl; ISO 639-3: slv)

Origin

Genealogical tree of modern Slavic languages ​​according to Gray and Atkinson

The Slavic languages ​​within the Indo-European family are closest to the Baltic languages. The similarity between the two groups served as the basis for the theory of the "Balto-Slavic parent language", according to which the Balto-Slavic parent language first emerged from the Indo-European parent language, later splitting into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. However, many scientists explain their special closeness by the long contact of the ancient Balts and Slavs, and deny the existence of the Balto-Slavic language.

It has not been established in which territory the separation of the Slavic language continuum from the Indo-European / Balto-Slavic 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 homelands. From one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavic), the Proto-Slavic language was 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. Dialect variants arose later.

The process of transition of the Proto-Slavic language into independent languages ​​took place most actively in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium AD, during the formation of the early Slavic states in the territory of South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. This period significantly increased the territory of Slavic settlements. Areas of various geographical zones with different natural and climatic conditions were mastered, the Slavs entered into relationships with the population of these territories, standing at different stages of cultural development. All this was reflected in the history of the Slavic languages.

The history of the Proto-Slavic language is divided into 3 periods: the most ancient - before the establishment of close Balto-Slavic language contact, the period of the Balto-Slavic community and the period of dialect fragmentation and the beginning of the formation of independent Slavic languages.

Modern research

In 2003, Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson, scientists from the University of Oklad, published their study in the scientific journal Nature. modern languages Indo-European family. The data obtained indicate that the Slavic linguistic unity broke up 1300 years ago, that is, around the 8th century AD. And the Balto-Slavic linguistic unity broke up 3400 years ago, that is, around the 15th century BC.

History of development

Main article: History of the Slavic languages Bascan Plate, XI century, Krk, Croatia

In the early period of the development of the Slavic parent language, a new system of vowel sonants developed, consonantism became much simpler, the stage of reduction became widespread in ablaut, and the root ceased to obey the ancient restrictions. The Proto-Slavic language is included in the satem group (sürdce, pisati, prositi, cf. lat. cor, - cordis, pictus, precor; zürno, znati, zima, cf. lat. granum, cognosco, hiems). However, this feature was not fully realized: cf. Praslav *kamy, *kosa. *gǫsь, *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.

Novgorod birch bark of the 14th century

Most of the suffixes were already formed on the Proto-Slavic soil. In the early period of its development, the Proto-Slavic language experienced a number of transformations in the field of vocabulary. Having retained in most cases the old Indo-European vocabulary, at the same time he lost some 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 (taboos). For example, the name of oak was lost - the Indo-European perkuos, whence the Latin quercus. In the Slavic language, the taboo dǫbъ was established, from where “oak”, Pol. dąb, Bulgarian. db, etc. The Indo-European name for the bear has been lost. It is preserved only in the new scientific term "Arctic" (cf. Greek ἄρκτος). The Indo-European word in the Proto-Slavic language was replaced by a taboo combination of the words *medvědь (originally "honey eater", from honey and *ěd-).

Zograph codex, X-XI centuries.

During the period of the Balto-Slavic community, vowel sonants were lost in the Proto-Slavic language, in their place diphthongic combinations arose in position before consonants and the sequences of “vowel sonant before vowels” (sьmürti, but umirati), intonations (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 turned 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. "reap - reap"; “to take - I will take”, “name - names”, Czech. ziti - znu, vziti - vezmu; Serbohorv. zheti - zhaњem, uzeti - let's know, name - names. The softening of consonants before the iot is reflected in the form of alternations s - sh, z - zh, etc. All these processes had a strong impact on the grammatical structure, on the system of inflections. due to the softening of consonants before the iot, the process of the so-called. the first palatalization of the posterior palate: k > h, d > f, x > w. On this basis, even in the Proto-Slavic language, the alternations k: h, g: w, x: w were formed, which had a great influence on nominal and verbal word formation.

Later, the second and third palatalizations of the posterior palate developed, as a result of which alternations arose k: c, g: dz (s), x: s (x). 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, except for Slovene and Lusatian, while the rudiments of dualism are preserved in almost all Slavic languages.

There were nominal stems that performed the functions of definitions. the late Proto-Slavic period arose pronominal adjectives. The verb had the stems of the infinitive and the present tense. From the first, the infinitive, supine, aorist, imperfect, participles in -l, participles of the real past tense in -v, and participles of the passive voice in -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.

Dialects began to form in the Proto-Slavic language. There were three groups of dialects: Eastern, Western and Southern. From them, the corresponding languages ​​were then formed. The group of East Slavic dialects was the most compact. The West Slavic group had 3 subgroups: Lechit, Lusatian and Czech-Slovak. The South Slavic group was dialectally the most differentiated.

The Proto-Slavic language functioned in the pre-state period in the history of the Slavs, when the tribal social system dominated. Significant changes occurred during the period of early feudalism. XII-XIII centuries there was a further differentiation of the Slavic languages, there was a loss of the super-short (reduced) vowels ъ and ь 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, in their lexical composition.

Phonetics

In the field of phonetics, there are some significant differences between the Slavic languages.

In most Slavic languages, the opposition of vowels in longitude / brevity is lost, at the same time in Czech and Slovak languages ​​(excluding North Moravian and East Slovak dialects), in the literary norms of the Shtokavian group (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin), and also partly in Slovene these differences persist. Lechitic languages, Polish and Kashubian, retain nasal vowels that are lost in other Slavic languages ​​(nasal vowels were also characteristic of the phonetic system of the extinct Polabian language). For a long time, nasalizations were retained in the Bulgarian-Macedonian and Slovene language areas (in the peripheral dialects of the respective languages, relics of nasalization are reflected in a number of words to this day).

Slavic languages ​​are characterized by the presence of palatalization of consonants - 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 hard (non-palatalized) or soft (palatalized). due to a number of depalatalization processes, the opposition of consonants in terms of hardness / softness in the languages ​​of the Czech-Slovak group is significantly limited (in Czech, the opposition t - t', d - d', n - n' has been preserved, in Slovak - t - t', d - d' , n - n', l - l', while in the West Slovak dialect, due to the assimilation of t', d' and their subsequent hardening, as well as the hardening of l', as a rule, only one pair of n - n' is represented, in a number of West Slovak dialects ( Povazhsky, Trnavsky, Zagorsky) paired soft consonants are completely absent). The opposition of consonants in terms of hardness / softness did not develop in the Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian and Western Bulgarian-Macedonian language areas - from the old paired soft consonants, only n '(< *nj), l’ (< *lj) не подверглись отвердению (в первую очередь в сербохорватском ареале).

Stress in Slavic languages ​​is realized in different ways. In most Slavic languages ​​(except Serbo-Croatian and Slovene), the polytonic Proto-Slavic stress was replaced by a dynamic one. The free, mobile nature of the Proto-Slavic stress was preserved in the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Bulgarian languages, as well as in the Torlak dialect and the northern dialect of the Kashubian language (the extinct Polabian language also had a mobile stress). in Central Russian dialects (and, accordingly, in the Russian literary language), in the South Russian dialect, in the North Kashubian dialects, as well as in Belarusian and Bulgarian, this type of stress caused the reduction of unstressed vowels. in a number of languages, primarily in West Slavic, a fixed stress was formed, assigned to a certain syllable of a word or bar group. The penultimate syllable is stressed in the Polish standard language and most of its dialects, in the Czech North Moravian and East Slovak dialects, in the southwestern dialects of the southern Kashubian dialect, and also in the Lemko dialect. The first syllable is stressed in the Czech and Slovak literary languages ​​and most of their dialects, in the Lusatian languages, in the South Kashubian dialect, and also in some Goral dialects of the Lesser Polish dialect. In Macedonian, the stress is also fixed - it falls no further than the third syllable from the end of the word (accent group). In Slovene and Serbo-Croatian, the stress is polytonic, multi-local, the tonic characteristics and the distribution of stress in word forms are different in dialects. In the Central Kashubian dialect, the stress is different, but is assigned to a certain morpheme.

Writing

Slavic languages ​​received their first literary processing in the 60s. ninth 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. At its core, the new literary language had a South Macedonian (Thessalonica) dialect, but in Great Moravia it acquired 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 most ancient date back to the 10th century: the Dobrudzhan inscription of 943, the inscription of Tsar Samuil of 993, the Varosha inscription of 996 and others. Starting from the XI century. more Slavic monuments have been preserved.

Modern Slavic languages ​​use alphabets based on Cyrillic and Latin. The Glagolitic alphabet is used in Catholic worship in Montenegro and in several coastal areas in Croatia. In Bosnia, for some time, the Arabic alphabet was also used in parallel with the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.

Literary languages

In the era of feudalism, Slavic literary languages, as a rule, did not have strict norms. Sometimes the functions of the literary language were performed by foreign languages ​​(in Rus' - the Old Slavonic language, in the Czech Republic and Poland - the Latin language).

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.

Czech Republic in the 18th century literary language, which reached in the XIV-XVI centuries. great perfection, almost disappeared. cities were dominated by the German language. the period of national revival in the Czech Republic artificially revived the language of the 16th century, which at that time was already far from the national language. History of the Czech literary language of the 19th-20th centuries. reflects the interaction of the old book language and colloquial. The Slovak literary language had a different history, it developed on the basis of the vernacular. Serbia until the 19th century dominated by the Church Slavonic language. 18th century began the process of rapprochement of this language with the people. As a result of the reform carried out by Vuk Karadzic in the middle of the 19th century, a new literary language was created. The Macedonian literary language was finally formed in the middle of the 20th century.

In addition to the "big" Slavic languages, there are a number of small Slavic literary languages ​​(microlanguages), which usually function along with national literary languages ​​and serve either relatively small ethnic groups or even individual literary genres.

see also

  • Swadesh lists for Slavic languages ​​at Wiktionary.

Notes

  1. Balto-Slavonic Natural Language Processing 2009
  2. http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/worldlang.htm
  3. Languages ​​Spoken by More Than 10 Million People (Languages ​​spoken by more than 10 million people) according to the Encarta encyclopedia. Archived from the original on October 31, 2009.
  4. Omniglot
  5. 1 2 Sometimes separated into a separate language
  6. see Meillet's law.
  7. Fasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language. - 1st ed. - T. 1-4. - M., 1964-1973.
  8. Suprun A. E., Skorvid S. S. Slavic languages. - p. 15. (Retrieved March 26, 2014)
  9. Suprun A. E., Skorvid S. S. Slavic languages. - p. 10. (Retrieved March 26, 2014)
  10. Lifanov K. V. Dialectology of the Slovak language: Textbook. - M.: Infra-M, 2012. - S. 34. - ISBN 978-5-16-005518-3.
  11. Suprun A. E., Skorvid S. S. Slavic languages. - p. 16. (Retrieved March 26, 2014)
  12. Suprun A. E., Skorvid S. S. Slavic languages. - S. 14-15. (Retrieved March 26, 2014)

Literature

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  • Bernstein S. B. Essay on comparative grammar of Slavic languages. Alternations. nominal bases. M., 1974.
  • Birnbaum H. Proto-Slavic language. Achievements and problems of its reconstruction, trans. from English, M., 1987.
  • Boshkovich R. Fundamentals of Comparative Grammar of Slavonic Languages. Phonetics and word formation. M., 1984.
  • Gilferding A.F. Common Slavonic alphabet with the application of examples of Slavic dialects. - St. Petersburg: Type. Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1871.
  • Kuznetsov P. S. Essays on the morphology of the Proto-Slavic language. M., 1961.
  • Meie A. Common Slavic language, trans. from French, Moscow, 1951.
  • Nachtigal R. Slavic languages, trans. from Slovenia., M., 1963.
  • National revival and formation of Slavic literary languages. M., 1978.
  • Entry to the historically historical development of the words of the Yan language. For red. O. S. Melnichuk. Kiev, 1966.
  • Vaillant A. Grammaire comparee des langues slaves, t. 1-5. Lyon - P., 1950-77.
  • Russell D. Gray & Quentin D. Atkinson. Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin. Nature, 426: 435-439 (November 27, 2003).