What languages are included in the Slavic group. Slavic languages

The languages of the Slavic group, which is part of Indo-European family, common in Europe and Asia (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia; to a lesser extent - Germany, Austria, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan ).
carriers Slavic languages also live in the countries of America, Africa, Australia. The total number of speakers is approximately 400 million people (including 290 million who speak a Slavic language as their mother tongue).
Slavic languages, according to the degree of their proximity to each other, form subgroups: East Slavic(Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian), South Slavic(Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian) and West Slavic(Czech, Slovak, Polish with Kashubian, Upper and Lower Sorbian). At the end of the XVII - beginning of the XVIII centuries. the Polish language disappeared.
Next to the national literary languages, there are regional literary languages - microlanguages: Rusyn (Serbia, Croatia); Gradishian-Croatian (Austria); Moliso-Croatian (Italy); Prekmursko-Slovenian (Slovenia, Hungary, Austria); Chakavian (Croatia); Kajkavian (Croatia); Batatian-Bulgarian (Romania, Serbia); Kashubian (Poland); Lyashsky (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland); Eastern Slovak (Slovakia); Carpatho-Ruthenian (USA); Rezyansky (Italy). Place bets on sport events not only interesting, but also profitable with our portal

Of the Indo-European languages, the Slavic languages are the closest to the Baltic ones, which served as the basis for the hypothesis of the Balto-Slavic parent language.
There are many assumptions about the territory in which the separation of the Slavic language continuum occurred. On the basis of one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavic), the Proto-Slavic language was later formed, which became the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages.
Proto-Slavic long time developed as a single dialect, in which dialect variants arose later. The process of transition of the Proto-Slavic language and its dialects into independent languages was long and complex; it ended in the second half of the 1st millennium AD, during the formation of states in the of Eastern Europe and expansion of territories occupied by Slavic tribes.
The history of the Proto-Slavic language is divided into periods: 1) the most ancient - before the establishment of close Balto-Slavic language contact; 2) the period of the Balto-Slavic community; 3) the period of dialect fragmentation and the beginning of the formation of independent Slavic languages.
Features of the Proto-Slavic language:
in phonetics - new system vowels and sonants; distinction between long, short and extra-short vowels; the presence of syllable-forming smooth; the presence of voiced and deaf consonants, hard, soft and semi-soft, soft hissing and affricates; distribution in the ablaut of the reduction stage; entry into the satem group by reflecting (rather inconsistently) Indo-European palatalized *k" and *g"; loss of syllabic sonants; loss of closed syllables; softening consonants before iot; the process of first palatalization and the occurrence of many alternations; the action subsequently of the second and third palatalization of the posterior palate and the emergence of a new series of alternations; the emergence of nasal vowels; movement of a syllable section; polytonic different-place stress; the loss of super-short vowels ъ and ь when certain languages appeared;
in morphology- formation of many new suffixes; loss of dual number; the emergence of pronominal adjectives; distinguishing between the stems of the infinitive and the present tense;
in vocabulary- the preservation of a significant part of the Indo-European vocabulary and the loss of many old words at the same time; many borrowings from the Baltic languages, at a new stage from a variety of languages.
Literary processing of the Slavic languages began in the 860s. (creation of Slavic alphabets, translation by the brothers Cyril and Methodius from Greek into Slavonic liturgical texts).
See also the encyclopedic reference on the Slavic languages and the half-finished site on the Slavic languages.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Mark Gutsko developed an artificial Pan-Slavic language

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.

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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: -)
  - Slovenian (ISO 639-1: sl; ISO 639-3: slv)

Origin

Slavic languages within 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 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 on the territory of South-Eastern and 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.

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 tribal social order. 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 the 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 Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Bulgarian, as well as in the Torlak dialect and the northern dialect of the Kashubian language (the mobile stress was also in the extinct Polabian language). 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. IX century. The creators of Slavic writing were the brothers Cyril (Konstantin the Philosopher) and Methodius. They translated liturgical texts from Greek into Slavic 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. In this language (usually called the Old Slavonic language) the richest original and translated literature was created in Moravia, Pannonia, Bulgaria, in Rus', in 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 Varosh inscription of 996 and others. Starting from c. more Slavic monuments have been preserved.

Literary languages

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.

History of study

Gray and Atkinson

Atkinson and Gray performed a statistical analysis of cognates of 103 living and dead Indo-European languages (out of about 150 known), using a lexical-statistical database (created from the lists by Swadesh Isidore Dayen) and additional information.

Millions of random "language trees" were generated by the Monte Carlo method, without taking into account their historical and linguistic plausibility. It was assumed that, although the rate of evolution on the branches of the tree of languages can vary and be distributed randomly, but this spread cannot be too large. For example, if we forget everything that is known about the history of peoples and languages, then the option that raises the Armenian and Icelandic languages to a recent common ancestor would turn out to be extremely implausible - simply because the pace of their evolution would have to be taken too high compared to other branches of the tree .

Data obtained by Gray and Atkinson using Bayesian analysis and published in the journal Science in 2012 strongly indicate the age

INSTITUTE OF SLAVIC STUDIES OF THE USSR ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Kapitolina Ivanovna Khodova

LANGUAGE RELATIONSHIP

SLAVIC PEOPLES

(BY THE MATERIAL OF THE DICTIONARY)

MOSCOW-1960

CONDITIONAL ABBREVIATIONS IN LANGUAGE NAMES

Albanian - Albanian porridge. - Kashubian

English - English Latin. - latin

Anglo-Saxon. - Anglo-Saxon Latvian. - Latvian

Armenians. - Armenian lit. - Lithuanian

Belarusian - Belarusian German - German

Bulgarian - Bulgarian Lower Luzh. - Lower Lusatian

upper puddle - Upper Lusatian Novopers. -New Persian

Goth. - Gothic floor. - Polish

Greek - Greek Serbohorv. - Serbo-Croatian

dates - Danish Slovak. - Slovak

ancient upper. - Old High German Slovene. - Slovene

ancient irl. - Old Irish Old Slaver. - Old Church Slavonic

Old Prussian. - Old Prussian Ukrainian - Ukrainian

Old Russian - Old Russian Russian. -Russian

Czech - Czech.

Slavic peoples inhabiting the vast expanses of Eastern and Central Europe, Balkan Peninsula, Siberia, Central Asia, Far East speak languages that have pronounced similarities in the field of sound composition, grammatical structure and vocabulary. The similarity of the Slavic languages is the most important manifestation of their mutual relationship.

Slavic languages belong to the family of Indo-European languages. In addition to the Slavic, Indian (Old Indian: Vedic and Sanskrit, Middle Indian: Pali, Prakrit, New Indian: Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, etc.), Iranian (Old Persian, Avestan, Middle Persian, New Persian, and also Afghan, Tajik, Ossetian, etc.), Germanic (ancient: Gothic, High German, Low German, Anglo-Saxon; modern: German, Dutch, English, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, etc.), Romanesque (dead Latin and living: French, Italian, Spanish , Romanian, Portuguese, etc.), Celtic languages represented by Irish, Cymric and Breton, Greek (with Ancient Greek and Middle Greek), Armenian, Albanian, Baltic languages and some others.

Of the languages of the Indo-European family, the closest to the Slavic languages are the Baltic ones: modern Lithuanian and Latvian and the extinct Old Prussian.

The Indo-European family of languages was formed through the development of language groups and individual languages, rooted in the common Indo-European language-base (the common Indo-European proto-language). The separation of the Slavic language group from the common Indo-European base language occurred long before our era.

Within the Slavic language group, several groups of languages are distinguished. The most accepted is the division of Slavic languages into 3 groups: East Slavic, South Slavic and West Slavic. The East Slavic group includes Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages; to South Slavic - Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian; to West Slavic - Czech, Slovak, Upper Lusatian, Lower Lusatian, Polish and Kashubian. The vanished Polabian language also belonged to the West Slavic group, the speakers of which, the Polabian Slavs, occupied the territory between the rivers Elbe (in Slavic - Laba), the Oder and the Baltic Sea.

The South Slavic language group includes the Old Slavonic literary language, which has come down in written monuments since the end of the 10th century. He captured the ancient Macedonian-Bulgarian dialect and the features of some Slavic languages that were in the 9th century. in the early stages of its independent history.

The division of the Slavic languages into three groups is based on the differences in some of the sound processes that took place in these languages in ancient time, and on the generality of some tendencies of their development in a later period.

In addition to facts of a purely linguistic nature, the geographic principle also has a certain significance in dividing the Slavic languages into three groups: the languages of each of the three groups are common in adjacent territories.

Each group of Slavic languages is close to other main Slavic language groups in different ways. East Slavic languages are, in some respects, closer to South Slavic than to West Slavic. This affinity lies mainly in certain sound phenomena that developed even before the appearance of writing (that is, before the 9th century) both in the south and in the east of the Slavic world, but unknown in the west. However, there are also such phenomena that bring the East Slavic languages closer to the West Slavic ones and jointly distinguish the Eastern and Western languages from the southern ones. So, the languages of the Eastern Slavs, which form a compact group with common features, have different points of contact with the South Slavic and West Slavic languages.

The features of similarity, so noticeable in the sound composition, grammatical forms and vocabulary of the Slavic languages, could not be due to their independent, isolated appearance in each of the languages.

The means of expressing language are not related to concepts by nature; between sounds, forms and their meaning there are no necessary, pre-established eternal correspondences.

The initial connection between the sound of linguistic units and their meanings is a conditional connection.

Therefore, the coincidence of several linguistic units taken from different languages, characterized by the sameness or proximity of their meanings, is an important indication of the common origin of these units.

The existence of many similar features in languages is an indication of the relationship of these languages, that is, that they are the result of several different ways of developing the same language that was in use before. In other words, the fact of the similarity of the Slavic languages can be considered as an indication of the existence in the past of a single common source language, from which groups of Slavic languages and individual languages developed in complex and diverse ways.

The material of the Slavic languages provides ample opportunities for reconstructing the stages of their history and makes it possible to trace their development from a single source. If, exploring the past of the Slavic languages, we delve more and more into antiquity, it will become obvious that what ancient era, the greater the similarity between individual languages, the closer they are to each other in terms of sound composition, grammar and vocabulary. This leads to the idea of the existence of such a state of languages in which they had a common sound composition, a common grammatical system, a common vocabulary and, therefore, constituted a common group of related languages or one common language, from which separate languages subsequently developed. Such a common language cannot be restored in all its details, but many of its features have been restored, and the reality of the existence of this language is now beyond doubt. The source language of the Slavic languages, theoretically restored for scientific purposes by means of comparative historical linguistics, is called the common Slavic base language or Proto-Slavic language.

The existence of a base language among the Slavs, in turn, implies the existence in antiquity of a single tribe or group of tribes that gave rise to the Slavic peoples and nations of a later time.

The questions of the origin of the Slavs and their ancient history contain many difficulties, and far from everything in this area has yet been finally resolved.

The first reliable references to the Slavs belong to ancient writers and date back to the 1st and 2nd centuries of our era. From more ancient eras of the life of the Slavs, no other evidence has come down, except for archaeological finds discovered during excavations of ancient settlements and burials, which reveal some features of the material culture of early historical Slavic settlements (for example, the type of pottery, the type of buildings, household tools, jewelry, the way the dead were buried etc.).

Based on the study of archaeological data, it has been established that the most ancient Slavic tribes developed on the territory of Eastern Europe during the millennia preceding the beginning of our era.

According to the majority of Soviet, Polish and Czechoslovak scientists, the origins of Slavic history should be sought at the end of the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, when in the vast spaces between the Dnieper, Carpathians, Oder and south coast Baltic Sea settled agricultural and pastoral tribes, united by the common features of their material culture. Later, at the end of the II millennium and in the I millennium BC. e., on the same territory inhabited by agricultural tribes, which are considered the early Slavic tribes. These tribes were in close contact with the Thracian, Illyrian, Finno-Ugric, Scythian and other neighboring tribes, some of which were subsequently assimilated by the Slavs. The result of this process was the formation at the turn of our era of the main groups of early Slavic tribes that occupied the Vistula basin, the Dnieper region and the Northern Carpathian region. The authors of the beginning of our era knew the tribe of Wends in these places. Later, in the 6th century, the existence of two large Slavic associations was noted here - the Slavs and the Antes.

The language of the ancient Slavic tribes that formed in the vast expanses of Eastern Europe was very stable for a long time (until the era of the collapse of Slavic unity), which resulted in the long-term unchanged preservation of a number of linguistic facts. Probably, the mutual contact between the tribes was so close that the dialectal differences did not stand out too sharply.

However, this language should not be imagined as some absolutely immovable unity. Related dialects, somewhat different from each other, existed in it. They were in interaction with the languages of the nearest foreign neighbors. It has been established that some borrowings from neighboring languages penetrated into the Common Slavic language, which later became part of all or many Slavic languages, for example, from the Germanic languages (Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian prince, Bulgarian prince, Serbo-Chorvian knez "prince", " ruler of the region", Slovene knez, Czech knez "prince", "priest", Slovak knaz, Pol. ksiaze "prince", upper and lower service knez "lord", "pater"; Russian hut, Bolg. hut "dugout", "hut", "hut", Serbo-Chorvian hut "room", "cellar", Slovenian isba "room", Czech izba "room", "hut", Polish izba "hut", " room", Upper Lux jspa, spa, Lower Lux spa, Kash jizba (in the same meanings), from Iranian languages (for example, Russian ax, Belorussian, tapor, Slovenian topor, Czech topor "axe", Upper Lux. toporo, Slovak topor, pol., topor) 1. The wide distribution of identical foreign borrowings throughout the space of Slavic languages is sometimes considered as an indication of the duration of the era of ancient Slavic unity2.

When establishing a linguistic relationship special attention is given to the grammatical structure of languages and their sound system. The most reliable criterion for the relative proximity of the compared languages is the proximity of the grammatical structure, since of all aspects of the language, the grammatical structure is the most stable and is characterized by an extremely gradual and slow pace of development.

An important manifestation of kinship is also the similarity in the vocabulary of languages, expressed in the similarity of the ancient roots of words and other word-forming elements or whole words, provided that the grammatical structure of the languages from which these language units are extracted gives the right to consider these languages as related. The material closeness of roots, grammatical formatives and whole words complements and reinforces the evidence of linguistic kinship.

This paper examines some phenomena in the field of vocabulary, indicating the proximity between the Slavic languages in our time and their origin from a single source. A number of examples have been selected from the many thousands of lexical composition of the Slavic languages, illustrating the main ways and processes of development of the ancient Slavic vocabulary and showing the emergence of new vocabulary features in languages, the complexity of family ties between individual languages in the field of vocabulary.

To determine the ways of vocabulary development, it is extremely important to establish the nature and boundaries of the original, Proto-Slavic vocabulary as a starting point in the history of many words.

The ancient dictionary, of course, cannot be restored in its entirety. The development of languages from a single source need not be understood in a straightforward and simplistic way. In the process of the historical development of a language from epoch to epoch, the words included in it change greatly; the very composition of the dictionary is updated: it includes more and more new units, while others gradually disappear. In the vocabulary of each individual language from the group of related languages, there is a lot of changed and new, and at the same time, much is missing from what was in the base language. At the same time, the facts of the language, lost without a trace, cannot be restored, since the restoration is done on the basis of those traces that remained in the languages from the ancient era.

Different areas of the language develop unevenly. As for the dictionary, this area is characterized by features of particular mobility and variability. “Life contributes to the change of vocabulary by increasing the number of causes acting on words. Social relations, specialty, tools of labor change the vocabulary, banish old words or change their meanings, require the creation of new words. The activity of consciousness constantly receives new impulses to work on the vocabulary. In short, there is not a single area where the causes of changes in phenomena would be more complex, numerous and diverse,” wrote the French linguist J. Vandries3.

The lexical side of the language is very susceptible to foreign borrowings and extremely permeable to them. Therefore, when we encounter words in several languages that are similar both in sound composition and in meaning, we must first of all resolve the question of whether this is the result of borrowing one language from another.

Concerning the question of the possibility of restoring the oldest Indo-European vocabulary, the French linguist A. Meillet noted: “Vocabulary is the most unstable in the language. Words can disappear for a variety of reasons and be replaced by new ones. The original vocabulary may include new words that outnumber the old ones. Yes, in English language elements of Latin and French, not inferior to him in volume. It even happens that all vocabulary belongs to a different group than grammar; this is how things stand in the language of the Armenian Gypsies: the grammar and phonetics in their language are entirely Armenian, and the vocabulary is completely Gypsy“4.

Meillet's remark about the difficulty of restoring the general vocabulary of the Indo-European languages can to a certain extent be applied to the Slavic languages as well.

Along with the disintegration of the common Slavic base language into separate languages, several words were formed from the same word, connected with each other by a common origin, existing simultaneously, but within different language systems. But one cannot think that all lexical phenomena, coinciding in several or in all Slavic languages, developed from a single language, attributable to the period of the initial community. Slavic languages throughout their history interacted with the languages of neighboring peoples, being influenced by them. After the emergence of writing, the vocabulary features of the Church Slavonic language, isolated Slavic languages of neighboring groups, many foreign words, and international vocabulary penetrated into them through the literary languages.

However, despite all the outside influences, the oldest vocabulary of the Slavic languages has been preserved in a significant amount - incomparably more than the Indo-European vocabulary found in modern Indo-European languages. The Slavic dictionary has not experienced major changes during the period of its existence. Along with the entry of a certain number of easily assimilated foreign words and the loss of a number of ancient words in the Slavic languages, the ancient lexical fund was preserved, revised and enriched.

It is very important to understand how the original Slavic vocabulary can be separated from earlier and later dictionary borrowings.

The high prevalence of the word in related languages cannot yet serve as an indication of its originality and non-borrowed character (compare the borrowings of the common Slavic period cited above, which are widely represented in modern Slavic languages).

by the most general requirement to separate native words from borrowed ones is the search for genetically identical (or etymologically identical) linguistic units in several languages, that is, units that go back to the same unit and are the result of its different development in individual languages.

Genetic identity does not imply a complete qualitative match. These units must be similar in sound terms, and the sound similarity must be based on regular regular sound correspondences observed not only in this example, but in a whole group of linguistic phenomena.

Such linguistic units can be, first of all, individual morphemes, i.e. roots, suffixes, prefixes, endings, and then morpheme compounds - whole words.

For example, the Russian word gunpowder, Ukrainian gunpowder “dust”, “gunpowder”, Belarusian pores “gunpowder”, Bulgarian dust “dust”, “powder”, “ash”, Serbo-Croatian dust “dust”, “gunpowder”, “powder”, Slovene prah “dust”, “gunpowder”, Czech prach “dust”, “fluff”, “gunpowder”, Slovak prach “dust”, “gunpowder”, Polish proch “gunpowder”, “dust”, “dust”, Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian proch “mote”, “dust”, “dust”, “gunpowder”, Kashubian proh “ash”, “dust”, “gunpowder” can be considered genetically identical and primordially Slavic words, since all these words are connected by threads going to each of them (directly or through intermediate stages) from their Proto-Slavic source - the word *porch, restored on the basis of modern Slavic words developed from it.

The change in the original *porch in individual languages is strictly subject to the well-known law of sound correspondences, covering large group Slavic words. According to this law, East Slavic combinations of oro between consonants correspond to South Slavic, as well as Czech and Slovak combinations of ra and northwestern - Polish, Lusatian and Kashubian - combinations of ro (the Belarusian combination of ora in the word pores is a consequence of the akanya of the Belarusian language, reflected in its orthography). This correspondence is a consequence of the different development of the ancient long syllable or in the middle of a word between consonants in different local conditions.

An important requirement for the original words of this group of languages is also the commonality of the morphological articulation of words or the presence of common moments in their morphological articulation.

The word gunpowder, which in terms of word-formation is currently a root with a zero ending, historically was a combination of morphemes dating back to the period of the common Indo-European language-base. At the same time, the root of the word gunpowder coincides not only with the roots of genetically identical Slavic words, but also with the roots of the words of the Indo-European languages that are close to them. Thus, common moments are found in the morphological articulation of the word not only in Slavic, but also in Indo-European soil, which clearly indicates the primordial nature of this word and the fact that the proximity of the corresponding words in related languages is not a consequence of borrowing.

Morphemes and words are meaningful units of a language. The semantic (semantic) correspondences of units having the same origin (genetically identical) presented in related languages should be as accurate as sound correspondences.

The boundaries between languages, the separate use of related languages, make the vocabulary of each of them devoid of direct and living relations with the vocabulary of other languages.

Under these conditions, the original ancient words in related languages often acquire different semantic development. The differences that arise between them are formed by the gradual accumulation of a new quality and the gradual death of the old quality in the process of transferring the language from generation to generation. Changes in the initial values sometimes reach great depths.

In such cases, it may be necessary to explain the correlations of values that take place in modern languages, and to prove their development from a single ancient meaning through semantic transitions, the probability of which cannot be in doubt.

Russian gunpowder and Bulgarian dust are characterized not only by a sound similarity based on the phonetic features of the Russian and Bulgarian languages, but also by a semantic connection, the existence of which becomes an indisputable fact as soon as we turn to the history of these words.

There are common points in the semantics of Russian and Bulgarian words even now: the meanings “gunpowder” and “powder”, “dust” are united by the idea of loose bodies or individual small particles of a solid substance, but in ancient times the Bulgarian and Russian meanings completely coincided: Old Russian gunpowder meant "dust" (cf. in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign": Behold, Stribozh vnutsi, vyut ... cover the pigs of the field). Later, with the advent of gunpowder, in the Russian language there was a narrowing of the semantics of the word gunpowder, specialization of its meaning and the loss of the original meaning of “dust”, “powder” (in Ukrainian, Slovenian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Lusatian and Kashubian languages, the old and the new meaning of this word).

The connection between the meanings of the words of the group under consideration finally convinces us that we are dealing with facts that developed in different ways from the same source, i.e., genetically identical. Thus, along with the principle of phonetic and structural explainability, it is necessary to keep in mind the principle of semantic explainability of relationships between compared units.

Guided by these basic requirements, it is possible with sufficient certainty to distinguish words, the commonality of which to these languages is based on the relationship of these languages, from words common to them of another origin (loanwords).

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Plan:

1 Classification
2 Origin
3 History of development
4 Phonetics
5 Writing
6 Literary languages

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.

1. Classification

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 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 population of these territories, standing at different stages of cultural development. All this was reflected in the history of the Slavic languages.

3. History of development

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 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 the tribal social system dominated. 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.

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

Balto-Slavonic Natural Language Processing 2009 - w3.erss.univ-tlse2.fr/index.jsp?perso=kupsc&subURL=bsnlp/m/CFP.html
http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/worldlang.htm - www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/worldlang.htm
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.
Omniglot - www.omniglot.com/writing/macedonian.htm
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 considered by some as a separate language
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.
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What languages ​​are included in the Slavic group. Slavic languages