Studia serdicensia humanitatis
The present volume contains revised versions of selected papers from the general sessions of {ICHL} 9. The 34 papers cover topics from the full range of contemporary historical linguistic scholarship. The papers address issues of language change in a large variety of languages and language families, both Indo-European and non-Indo-European: students of Germanic linguistics will likely find the volume to be of particular interest, as more than a dozen contributions deal with developments in Afrikaans, Dutch, English, German and Icelandic. The volume includes an index of names and languages.
The nature of the relationship between Entity and Space is discussed along the parameters: (a) Internal / External Space and (b) Essentiality / Contingency of the „Entity / PART / : Space / WHOLE/“ relationship. It is argued that the value of these parameters determines some of the major differences between English and Bulgarian in the choice of an existential sentence (the there construction and the impersonal има) or of a personal construction (with have and the personal имам, respectively). Unlike English, the Bulgarian existential има construction is not the choice in the case of Internal Space and/or a more essential part : whole relationship, owing to the specificity of the verb, itself the result of a shift towards impersonality.
The article examines the lexical potential of Bulgarian to denote adversative relations of the corrective type, in comparison with German. The peculiar function of syntactic negation in the first conjunct in ами and a adversative constructions is shown, and their meaning is further defined.
The article takes into consideration the two main methods that can be used in contrastive analysis of word-formation in related languages: from form to meaning and from meaning to form. The choice is determined by the purpose of the description and also by the degree of typological relatedness between the compared language systems. With Slavic languages, for example, the description starting from the means of word-formation and analysing their function gives wide opportunities for a more detailed analysis and a thorough description of the multifunctioning of the formants; for determining the similarities and differences in the means of wordformation. The second method from meaning to form is more universal; it aims mainly at revealing the semantics of the derivatives, and is thus applicable to the investigation of more than two languages. This method starts from definite semantic categories and searches for their realization. The basic unit in this method is the word-formation category. It can be used as tertium comparationis, for it unifies derivatives with identical word-formative meaning. The method allows the simultaneous analysis of all compared languages. It may facilitate a more thorough and precise classification of the derivative units by specifying the general and the specific national features of the related language systems.
n experimental study has been performed to confirm the idea that whenever a language needs to designate things in a row or express some value of a measurable property (e. g. size) it proves quite rich in synonyms at the ends of the spectrum while it is dramatically poor in the middle. Words denoting shapes of the human body in 10 languages are analyzed. The universal two-dimensional space of human figures (as people judge them) is defined along the scales THIN-FAT and PLEASANT-UNPLEASANT. Experimental data clearly support the assumption. There are quite a few words in each language for the figures at the ends of the scales and there is not a single word to designate a figure with mid-scale values.
The article explores the functional and semantic characteristics of the Portuguese nominal operator as related to the category of definiteness. The invariant semantic component is examined within the framework of the quantum semantic component of (+universal). The three functions of the operator are demonstrated empirically, namely, as a marker of universal distributive and group quantification and as a unit performing ‘strictly’ quantitative functions for a specific semantic class of nouns. The Bulgarian functional translation equivalents of the Portuguese operator are shown in a contrastive perspective with differences and similarities in form and content stressed upon.
The article sets out to identify certain mechanisms of structural change in the syntactic configuration of the object noun phrase in predicates with the meaning of ‘to look like’, ‘be similar to’ in the Slavic languages. In that the author has sought to establish the relation between the syntactic changes in the noun phrase and the semantic changes in the specific predicative lexemes, with an emphasis on etymology. The role of predicates meaning movement, as well as of the syntax of the object noun phrases in the syntactic system under discussion is also touched upon; attention is focused on its state at an earlier stage in the development of Bulgarian. The South and East Slavic origin of the object construction in Modern Bulgarian and the absence of an explicit influence of the language context in the Balkans upon the above predicates are shown. Brief mention is made of an Indo-European retrospective view on the constructions and of regional typological and genetic parallels and mutual influences among remotely related languages.
The article is an attempt at a contrastive description of audiovisual texts, created as a result of emotional behaviour during conversations among representatives of different languages and cultures. The description follows the model of musical analysis with the main purpose of identifying the principles of the building up of the audiovisual texture of discourse using the descriptive model of the musical score. In the course of the comparative analysis various instances of regular equivalences among emotionally tinged texts (mostly Russian and Bulgarian) were identified.
The article focuses on a number of forms with identical content in the Bulgarian literary standard known as conclusive. Semantically, they are an actualisation of action from the point of view of the speaker, i. e. the speaker specifies past action through deduction and assumption
The article works out a classificatory paradigm to cover regularly occurring semantic processes on the basis of metaphor and metonymy. It draws on empirical material from the Bulgarian and the Russian lexicons.
The paper seeks to describe and analyse two basic frame constructions: the nominal (exocentric) and the verbal (endocentric). They are being characterised through the frame components, through the syntactic features of the nuclear element, as well as through the integrative link between these two constituents. Frame constructions, being a linguistic phenomenon pertaining to typically colloquial speech, are found across languages, namely in Russian, Czech and Polish. They are a central syntactic construction. The need to refer to non-standard linguistic phenomena has lead to the introduction of a number of new terms.
The article sets out to examine the concept of condition fulfillability in a contrastive BulgarianGerman perspective, the two conditional sentence types in German (hypothetical and potential), as well as the semantic component of ‘fulfillability’ in combination with other semantic components. On the lexical level, introducing conjunctions are focussed upon, together with a semantic and stylistic differentiation among them. The formal structure of the complex fulfilled condition sentence determines the position of the subordinate clause. The twofold syntactic function of certain sentences of this type is commented upon.
The article is а study of Bulgarian sentences of the type: It is power which provokes revolution, which do not have an exact equivalent in Russian. The specificity of these constructions is explained through a number of factors: inversion, emphasis, the identifying function of the definite article, the complex derivative etymology and the coincidence of the theme (what the listener is familiar with) with the rheme.
An attempt is made to reconsider the traditional view of objects and adverbials expressed by nouns and prepositions in Bulgarian and to prove on a contrastive basis on Bulgarian and German data that the suggested approach creates opportunities for their precise delineation.
The article examines certain aspects of the semantic structure of prefixed verbs. Derivation is here viewed as an element of the set of dependencies within the model of generative grammar rather than being related only to the syntactic component of language. The semantic structure of the verbal type under discussion is also viewed in a contrastive perspective: the author focuses on lexical units from Bulgarian and German. Certain conclusions are reached as to the typicality of modifications resulting from prefixation in two remotely related languages.
The article sets out to examine the derivative semantic links of semantically equivalent (to different degrees) Russian and Bulgarian lexical units, both within the meanings of one word and between different words.
Der Autor geht von seiner eigenen Feststellung aus, dass die viersprachige Schweiz das Bild einer erstaunlich friedlichen Koexistenz zwischen den verschiedenen Ethnien bietet. Grund dafür sei die gesellschaftlich weiterhin bestehende Anerkennung und kommunikatorische Umsetzung des Territorialitätsprinzips. Der soziale Frieden könnte jedoch gefährdet werden, wenn die Internalisierung dieses Prinzips zu einem stärkeren Neben- als Miteinander der Sprachgruppen führt und der Blick für die spezifische Befindlichkeit und die Bedürfnisse des anderen verloren geht.
Based on data from more than fifty languages, the author of this paper has reached the conclusion that expressions of the type „when Hell freezes over“ form a language universal. The mechanism of this universal is shown. Expressions with this meaning from all present-day Balkan languages are further examined. The article advances several hypotheses concerning the diffusion and the possible interrelation of these expressions. The final idea of the paper is that Balkan linguistics is in no danger of running out of data for further investigation.
The author offers an etymological interpretation of a number of first and family names of Gypsy origin. He points out that there are certain cases of homonymy among the Gypsy language and languages in the Balkans which hinder unambiguous etymological definition of names in Bulgarian anthroponymy.
The semantic evolution of words is an indispensable part of their historical development. It is determined both by intralinguistic and extralinguistic factors. In the course of migration, a borrowing can be incorporated within the language of adjacent or remote language communities taking on a modified meaning within the same semantic field. This very divergence in meaning, or heterosemy, across language systems is a constant source of misunderstanding. The article examines the semantic deviation of a number of words common to the Balkan languages.The need to explicitly point out cases of partial or complete heterosemy when learning a foreign language, as a means to avoid interference-induced errors in translation and communication is stressed upon. In addition, the article takes the view that when providing the etymology of borrowings it is appropriate to specify the lexical prototype in the source or intermediary language and to trace the semasiological changes undergone.
The author expands and provides argumentation for data on the penetration of Slavic elements in Turkish. Her conclusions are based on studies of the dialects and the family names of settlers from the Slavic countries (mainly Bulgaria) in Turkey.
This article examines the nature of language correction as based on the language contact between standard Old Bulgarian and Old Russian. Language correction is viewed as a consequence of interlanguage contact in cases of bilingualism. Language correction is further considered as an expressive means formed gradually as the borrowed language system adapts to the local dialect, and a dynamic system which undergoes partial transformation under the influence of the local dialect and its inherent tendencies of development. The above changes result in a certain differentiation of correction from the source language system. The local type of language correction however retains an unchanged core and a base, as well as the principles which differentiate it from the local dialect.
Български
English