Bilyana Mihaylova

Les objets du dégoût

Objects of Disgust

Abstract: The article examines the origin of words denoting disgust in the Indo-European languages. The task of this study is to find regular and predictable semantic changes which are reproduced and which intersect in the Indo-European languages. The semantic changes are analyzed on the basis of the relation ‘A’ > ‘disgust’, A being the source meaning. The etymological analysis of the words designating disgust reveals that the semantic evolution is mostly due to metonymic developments. Four main groups of semantic development have been established: 1. mixing with other emotions (15 roots); 2. physical sensations related to disgust, such as being satiated or being sick (4 roots); 3. physical actions: reactions to disgust that allow us to avoid or expel the object of disgust like turning away, pushing, fighting against, fleeing, vomiting or spitting (14 roots); 4. triggers of disgust, such as bitter taste, dirt, defecation, bad smell (8 roots). It is interesting to note that the results obtained by the etymological analysis correspond very precisely to the psychological description of disgust. This is the second part of a more extensive study whose first part has already been published in this journal.

Keywords: disgust; basic emotions; Indo-European etymology; semantic change; semantic typology

Citation:
Bilyana Mihaylova. Les objets du dégoût. Linguistique balkanique, LXII (2023), 1, 3-14. ISSN 0324-1653

Anna Choleva-Dimitrova

Ancient Toponyms and Kin Names from the Western Outlands

Abstract: When we refer here to the Western Outlands, we mean areas now or formerly inhabited by ethnic Bulgarians but no longer within the borders of Bulgaria. After the Treaty of Neuilly in 1919, most settlements in the former Tsaribrod district remained outside of Bulgaria. The subject of the present study will be toponyms (place and water names) or microtoponyms from 34 settlements located in neighboring Serbia, formerly comprising the administrative region of Tsaribrod, which also included Pirot, and distributed today among various Serbian districts. The majority of the place names are taken from written sources. Conclusions are drawn based on an onomastic study of 3000 microtoponyms and 545 kin names from the region of Tsaribrod and Pirot. Some of the most important generalizations will be presented here: there are remnants of an ancient name strata, and the linguistic features of the toponyms are characteristic of a much earlier, archaic stage of the development of our language, which testifies to their antiquity. The study of the origin and meaning of the microtoponyms and kin names from these regions of Tsaribrod and Pirot that were studied led me to the conclusion that the toponyms follow the characteristics of the modern Bulgarian onomastic systems (toponymic and anthroponymic). Most of the microtoponyms presented here have at their base preserved vocabulary or anthroponyms for which there are exact parallels in Bulgarian toponymy, both in the neighboring regions to the east as well as in more distant places with an ancient Bulgarian population. The data from toponyms confirm the unity of the Bulgarian language in the past and today.

Keywords: toponyms; microtoponyms; anthroponyms; onymic system; kin names; Tsaribrod

Citation:
Anna Choleva-Dimitrova. Ancient Toponyms and Kin Names from the Western Outlands. Linguistique balkanique, LXII (2023), 1, 15-31. ISSN 0324-1653

Hristo Saldzhiev

Caucasian and Semitic Influences in the Early Medieval Bulgarian “Runic Inscriptions”

Abstract: The present article is focused on the similarities existing between some of the characters of the Caucasian Albanian script and some of the graphemes of the so called “runic inscriptions” from the 10th century Bulgarian rock monasteries from Murfatlar and Krepcha. The similarities in question do not only concern the shape of some of the “runic graphemes”. Obvious parallels between the designations of the Caucasian Albanian characters and the “ordinal numerals” from the Proto-Bulgarian calendar are discussed, too. After analyzing these similarities and making a critical discussion on the different attempts at etymologizations of “the ordinal numerals” of the calendar on the ground of the Turkic -r/-l languages, I conclude that the numerals reflect designations of letters from an unknown writing system created for some of the clan languages of the Proto-Bulgarians and partly or entirely based on Caucasian and Semitic written traditions.

Keywords: Early medieval Bulgarian inscriptions; Semitic and Caucasian influences

Citation:
Hristo Saldzhiev. Caucasian and Semitic Influences in the Early Medieval Bulgarian “Runic Inscriptions”. Linguistique balkanique, LXII (2023), 1, 32-49. ISSN 0324-1653

Benita Stavre

British and American Visitors’ Approaches (1921-1939) to the Origin and Function of the Albanian Language

Abstract: During the early decades of the twentieth century, foreign visitors to Albania noticed a lot of particular aspects of life that they found unique and worth publishing. They shared impressions, perceptions, research outcomes, emotional reactions, and facts about the way the Albanians managed their lives from 1921 to 1939. In the writings that constitute the literary corpus of this paper, the reader perceives an objective insight into the political, economic, social, historic, and ethnographic Albanian context while reading texts, diaries, newspaper articles, political reports, and research outcomes of the British and American authors who got to know the Albanian reality of this period. The relation between language and culture becomes especially significant when the mentalities of people encountering each other in a place are so different that respective linguistic means do not satisfy the linguistic gap that derives from the lack of awareness of the social phenomena they reflect. Such was the case when the British and American writers first needed to understand the Albanian social context and then convey it as closely as possible to a more international reader. However, since this reader had very little or no knowledge at all about Albanian life of the early twentieth century, there were also limited linguistic resources to express in English the treasure troves of Albanian social life hidden beneath the bjeshkë.* Most of the time, the writers seem aware of the fact that translating the word or defining it in the context would vanish most of its original meaning, so they chose to keep the Albanian word. One often finds such a word (in italics or boldface) in the middle of a page entirely written in English. They also chose to alter the phonological features of a word in order to create close pronunciation features between Albanian and English. They also sometimes chose to preserve the Albanian spelling of the word, but adapt its morphologic and syntactic features to integrate it into the English sentence structure. Such linguistic adaptions are as varied as the nature of Albanian words, their meaning, and social significance. The article aims to display the wide range of such linguistic reflections of Albanian life in the texts written in the English language, through phonological, spelling, grammatical, and semantic adaptions. It provides examples from authentic texts in English, classifies them according to the nature of the linguistic alterations, and explains the intertwining phenomena to reflect social particularities through language and culture.

Keywords: linguistic adaptions; Albanian language origin; literate translation; sociolinguistics; cross-cultural communication

Citation:
Benita Stavre. British and American Visitors’ Approaches (1921-1939) to the Origin and Function of the Albanian Language. Linguistique balkanique, LXII (2023), 1, 50-65. ISSN 0324-1653

Corinna Leschber

Die Ambiguität etymologischer Lösungen am Beispiel von rumän. reg. berdă

The Ambiguity of Etymological Solutions: The Romanian Regional Term bérdă

Abstract: The Romanian regional term bérdă (de uscătúri) means “a load of wood, a pile of wood”. It is without doubt a word of Indo-European (IE) origin. But is it a Slavic relic word or a loan from a modern Slavic language? The suggestion that it is a loan word from German, Germanic via Slavic in particular, has been rejected. Could its specific semantics possibly have been influenced by a relic word transmitted via a locally attested and now extinct IE language such as Dacian? It is attested only once with the above-mentioned meaning as a word forming a relic island at the inquiry point No. 157 of the linguistic survey displayed on map No. 592 of the Romanian Linguistic Atlas (ALR) II New Series. Usually, its solely regionally attested meanings are “slope of a gorge, slope of a hill, abyss, chasm, cliff”, which seem close to some of the Slavic meanings of a possible etymon. Using the example of this above-mentioned term, we show the difficulties encountered in trying to establish the exact source for that word, which would go beyond a mere Proto-Indo-European root etymology. A solution such as the latter would prevent us from learning about the specific loan history of the Romanian regional term bérdă.

Keywords: Romanian language; Balkan linguistics; etymology; historical linguistics

Citation:
Corinna Leschber. Die Ambiguität etymologischer Lösungen am Beispiel von rumän. reg. berdă. Linguistique balkanique, LXII (2023), 1, 66-75. ISSN 0324-1653

Hana Radoniqi

The Place of Stress Within the Word in the Albanian Language

Abstract: The syllable models representing the prosodic layer as a series of moras provide a model mirroring the role of the weight in determination of the stress, counting the phonologic positions, and making a distinction between light (monomoraic) and heavy (bimoraic) syllables. Practically, the distinctive value of the stress will include the quantitative calculated reports for each word with the letter A of the Dictionary (“Fjalor i shqipes së sotme” (2002)), especially for the position of the stress and its changes determined by the distinction of lexical and grammatical categories. The fundamental contribution of the generative metrical stress theory is its formal treatment because of the relation between the syllables. Some syllables are metrically strong, reflected in the stress-attracting, while the others are metrically weak and thus reject the stress. Thus, Albanian is sensitive to metrical quantity or syllables quantity.

Keywords: stress; antepenultimate syllable; penultimate syllable; final syllable; mora; metrical phonology

Citation:
Hana Radoniqi. The Place of Stress Within the Word in the Albanian Language. Linguistique balkanique, LXII (2023), 1, 76-89. ISSN 0324-1653

Ana Kocheva

A New Contribution to the Discussion of Issues of Bulgarian Colloquial Speech

Review: Radoslav Tsonev (2022). Colloquial Bulgarian Syntax. Blagoevgrad: Neofit Rilski University Publishing, 226 pp. ISBN: 978-954-00-0313-9

Citation:
Ana Kocheva. A New Contribution to the Discussion of Issues of Bulgarian Colloquial Speech. Linguistique balkanique, LXII (2023), 1, 90-92. ISSN 0324-1653

Simeon Stefanov

Annual International Scientific Conference of The Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin Institute for Bulgarian Language at The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, 15-16 May 2023

Citation:
Simeon Stefanov. Annual International Scientific Conference of The Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin Institute for Bulgarian Language at The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, 15-16 May 2023. Linguistique balkanique, LXII (2023), 1, 93-95. ISSN 0324-1653