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Proto-Slavic language
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Proto-Slavic is the proto-language from which Slavic languages later emerged. It was spoken before the seventh century. As with all other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstructed by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic languages as well as other Indo-European languages.
o-Slavic passed through a Proto-Balto-Slavic stage during which it developed numerous lexical, phonological and morphological isoglosses with modern-day Baltic languages, which are its closest living Indo-European relatives.
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Encyclopedia
Proto-Slavic is the proto-language from which Slavic languages later emerged. It was spoken before the seventh century. As with all other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstructed by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic languages as well as other Indo-European languages.
Origin
Proto-Slavic passed through a Proto-Balto-Slavic stage during which it developed numerous lexical, phonological and morphological isoglosses with modern-day Baltic languages, which are its closest living Indo-European relatives. A Balto-Slavic language continuum was ancestral to three discernible genetic subgroupings: Eastern Baltic, Western Baltic, and an innovative dialect that was ancestral to Proto-Slavic. Secession of Proto-Slavic speakers is estimated on archaeological and glottochronological critera to have occurred sometimes in 1500–1000 BCE.
The original homeland of the speakers of Proto-Slavic is somewhat controversial. The most ancient recognisably Slavic hydronyms (river names) are to be found in northern and western Ukraine and southern Belarus (see map). This agrees well with the fact inherited Common Slavic vocabulary does not include detailed terminology for physical surface features peculiar of the mountains or the steppe, nor any relating to the sea, to coastal features, littoral flora or fauna, or salt water fishes. On the other hand, it does include well-developed terminology for inland bodies of water (lakes, river, swamps) and kinds of forest (deciduous and coniferous), for the trees, plants, animals and birds indigenous to the temperate forest zone, and for the fish native to its waters.
Proto-Slavic "proper" is reconstructible to around 600 C.E. From typological point of view, that language was phonologically still very similar to Baltic languages. At this time, Proto-Slavic is believed to have been spoken uniformly as the onomastic evidence and glosses of Slavic words in foreign-language texts show no detectable regional differences of 5th and 6th century Slavic. Afterwards, during the so-called Common Slavic period, innovations followed, some of which have missed certain peripheral dialects (e.g. Old Novgorod dialect didn't exhibit the second palatalization of velars while all the other Slavic dialects did). Linguistic differentiation received impetus from the dispersion of the Slavic peoples over a large territory, but Common Slavic sound changes occurred for at least four or five centuries more. Subsequent migrations of Uralic and Romance speaking peoples created geographic separations between Slavic dialects. The commonly cited last Common Slavic "law" is the loss of weak yers, which occurred somewhere around the tenth or twelfth centuries C.E., and even then not completely in some Slavic dialects. Written documents of the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries demonstrate some local features. For example, the Freising monuments show a dialect which contains some phonetic and lexical elements peculiar to Slovenian dialects (e.g. rhotacism, the word krilatec).
In the second half of the ninth century, the dialect spoken north of Thessaloniki- in the hinterlands of Macedonia, became the basis for the first written Slavic language, created by the brothers Cyril and Methodius who translated portions of the Bible and other church books. The language they recorded is known as Old Church Slavonic. Old Church Slavonic is not identical to Proto-Slavic, having been recorded at least two centuries after the breakup of Proto-Slavic, and it shows features that clearly distinguish it from Proto-Slavic. However, it is still reasonably close, and the mutual intelligibility between Old Church Slavonic and other Slavic dialects of those days was proved by Cyril's and Methodius' mission to Great Moravia and Pannonia. There, their early South Slavic dialect used for the translations was clearly understandable to the local population which spoke an early West Slavic dialect.
Historical development
Proto-Slavic is part of the Satem group of Indo-European languages (along with Indo-Iranian, Albanian, and Baltic) wherein palatovelar consonants became affricate or fricative consonants pronounced closer to the front of the mouth. In Proto-Slavic, the former palatovelar stops became coronal fricatives:
Other changes shared with other languages of the Satem group are delabialization of labiovelar consonants and the ruki sound law, which had the effect in Slavic languages of shifting *s to *x (likely with *š as an intermediate stage) after a high vowel.
Another important change is the merger of aspirated consonants with voiced ones:
After this, long and short *o and *a merged: as with Baltic languages, short *o and *a merged together but long *o and *a remained distinct in Baltic while merging in Slavic. At some point, PIE *? was lost in a non-initial syllable, and the distinction between long and short diphthongs was eliminated.
Also present were the diphthongs *ei and *oi as well as liquid diphthongs *ul, *il, *ur, *ir, the latter set deriving from syllabic liquids.
Once it split off, the proto-Slavic period probably encompassed a period of stability lasting 2000 years with only several centuries of rapid change before the breakup of Slavic linguistic unity that came about due to Slavic migrations in the early sixth century. As such, the chronology of changes including the three palatalizations and ending with the change of *e to *a in certain contexts defines the Common Slavic period.
Progressive palatalization
What is likely to be the chronologically oldest palatalization is often called the "third" palatalization (hereafter called the progressive palatalization) due to confusion over the exact phonetic conditions that triggered it as well as forms such as the nominative singular *otici (from *otik-os) but vocative singular *otice (from *otik-e) which made it seem that the progressive palatalization happened after this first regressive palatalization (see below). However, incorporating and strategically ordering other diachronic changes (such as the fronting of back vowels after palatal consonants) sufficiently explains most of the discrepancies while placing this "third" palatalization before the other two.
This palatalization goes as follows:
Velar consonants become palatalized (*k, *g, *x ? *, *, *) when following a front high vowel (either long or short) and preceding a mid back vowel (either long or short) across a morpheme boundary. An *n or *r between the velar and the high vowel does not prevent this palatalization. Also, the preceding front high vowel must itself follow a consonant.
Slavic contact with Germanic tribes (such as the migrating Goths) around the second or third century is the earliest date from which the progressive palatalization could have occurred since loan words such as *kuning ? kunedzi ('king') and *pfenning ? *penedzi ('penny') show the reflex of this palatalization. After the ninth century, this palatalization was likely no longer operating since Varangians (*varying-) were known as (varegu) in Eastern Slavic branch of languages (Ukrainian and eventually Russian - without the palatalization of *g to *z) while the nominative plural: (varezi), and locative singular show that either the second regressive palatalization was still operative or that an analogy with other nouns ending in a velar consonant.
Syllabic Synharmony
After the progressive palatalization took place, a tendency arose in the Common Slavic period wherein successive segmental phonemes in a syllable assimilated articulatory features (primarily place of articulation). Another tendency, generally referred to as the "Law of Open Syllables" marks the beginning of the Common Slavic period in which an arrangement of phonemes in a syllable (from lower to higher sonority) led to final consonants being deleted, consonant clusters being simplified (either by deletion or epenthesis), diphthongs being monophthongized, nasal consonants in the syllable coda becoming the nasalization of the preceding vowel (*e and *), etc. After these changes, a CV syllable structure (that is, one of segments ordered from lower to higher sonority) arose and the syllable became a basic structural unit of the language. Thus syllables (rather than just the consonant or the vowel) were distinguished as either "soft" or "hard;" most consonants having developed palatalized allophones in soft syllables (a situation dubbed "syllable synharmony" or the "syllabeme").
Regressive palatalizations
As an extension of the system of syllable synharmony, velar consonants were palatalized to postalveolar consonants before front vowels (*i, *i, *e, *e) and *j.
- *k ? *c
- *g ? *ž (possibly via )
- *x ? *š
This was the first regressive palatalization. Subsequently, a number of vowel changes took place: *u lost its labialization (possibly , represented hereafter as , as in modern Polish) both *ou and *eu became *u, and back vowels became front vowels after palatal consonants (including *j). This was closely followed by the monophthongization of diphthongs in all environments.
- *u ? *y
- *ou ? *u
- *eu ? *u
- *o ? *e / J_
- *u ? *i / J_
- *y ? *i / J_
- *oi ? *ei / J_
- *ei ? *i
- *oi ? *e
By this point, Proto-Slavic had the following vowel system:
Proto-Slavic was still operating under the system of syllabic synharmony; because it had a new front vowel, yat (possibly an open front vowel ), the language underwent the second regressive palatalization in which velar consonants preceding *e were palatalized. As with the progressive palatalization, these became palatovelar. Soon after, palatovelar consonants from both the progressive palatalization and the second regressive palatalization became sibilants.
In noun declension, the second regressive palatalization originally figured in two important Slavic stem types: o-stems (masculine and neuter consonant-stems) and a-stems (feminine and masculine vowel-stems). This rule operated in the o-stem masculine paradigm in three places: before nominative plural and both singular and plural locative affixes.
| 'wolf' | 'horn' | 'spirit' |
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| Nominative | singular | vluku | rogu | duxu |
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| plural | vluci | rozi | dusi |
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| Locative | singular | vluce | roze | duse |
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| plural | vlucexu | rozexu | dusexu |
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Dialectal differentiation
It is at this point that dialectal variation becomes more apparent. Some dialects (such as those ancestral to Old East Slavic), allowed the second regressive palatalization to occur across an intervening *v.
- Russian: *gwojzda ? *gwezda ? zvezda ? ('star')
- Polish: *gwojzda ? *gwezda ? gwiazda ? ('star')
- Czech: *gwojzda ? *gwezda ? hvezda ? ('star')
- South Slavic languages: *gwojzda ? *gwezda ? zvezda ? ('star')
The phonetic realization of subsequent sibilants varied from dialect to dialect. According to Aleksandar Belic, the phonetic character of the palatalizations was uniform throughout Common Slavic and West Slavic languages developed *š later on by analogy. In all dialects (except for Lechitic), was deaffricated to :
The following table illustrates the differences between the different dialects as far as phonetic realization of the palatalizations.
The Proto-Slavic period ended when syllabic synharmony ended. The first trigger was the change of *e to *a after palatal consonants and *j, which then created *ca/*ka contrasts. Also, weak yers (*?/i and *?/u) were shortened and then elided (see Havlík's law), creating newly formed closed syllables, and the clusters *tl and *dl were lost in all but West Slavic, being simplified to *l or replaced by *kl and *gl respectively. By this point, Common Slavic had the following consonants.
For many Common Slavic dialects—including most of West Slavic, all but the northernmost portions of East Slavic, and some western parts of South Slavic— *g lenited from a voiced velar plosive to a voiced velar fricative ( ? ). Because this change was not universal and because it did not occur for a number of East Slavic dialects (such as Belarussian and South Russian) until after the application of Havlík's law, calls into question early projections of this change and postulates three independent instigations of lenition, dating the earliest to before 900 AD and the latest to the early thirteenth century.
Loanwords
The lexical stock of Proto-Slavic also includes a number of loanwords from the languages of various tribes and peoples that the Proto-Slavic speakers came into contact with. These include mostly Indo-European speakers, chiefly Germanic (Gothic and Old High German), speakers of Vulgar Latin or some early Romance dialects, Middle Greek and, to a much lesser extent, Iranian (mostly pertaining to religious sphere) and Celtic.
Lots of terms of Greco-Roman cultural provenience have been diffused into Slavic by Gothic mediation, and analysis has shown that Germanic borrowings into Slavic show at least 4 distinct chronological strata, and must have entered Proto-Slavic in a long period.
Of non-Indo-European languages possible connections have been made to various Turkic and Avar, but their reconstruction is very unreliable due to the scarcity of the evidence and the relatively late attestation of both Slavic and Turkic languages.
Older literature, as well as some older etymological dictionaries, often posit some alleged Iranian or Celtic source of all Slavic etymons with unclear etymologies, which in reality have very little linguistic support. Dispute on them ranges from all-inclusive to all-denial.
See also
External links
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