Talk:History of the Slavic languages

History of this page

This article originated as Proto-Slavic. On Feb 15 2013 it was renamed to History of the Slavic languages and a new Proto-Slavic article created. On Nov 3 2013 it was split, with half the text extracted into History of Proto-Slavic. As a result, some of the discussion below is more relevant to one of the other two articles. Benwing (talk) 23:06, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic people?

If there was a Proto-Slavic language, then theoretically there was also a Proto-Slavic people.

There were people speaking a set of closely related dialects that, long after the fact, could be seen to have been the precursors of the Slavic group of languages.--Wetman 08:26, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Common Slavonic?

The references I've seen speak of Early-Proto-Slavic, Proto-Slavic, and Late Proto-Slavic; after that, I would assume that individual Slavic languages began forming (>such as Old Church Slavonic, a literary example of early South eastern Slavic/proto-Bulgarian). Common Slavonic is interchangeable with Late Proto-Slavic (I'll quote Schenker's book which states this), and I suggest that the article Common Slavonic is merged into Proto-Slavic, and Late Proto-Slavic (=Common Slavonic) will soon be further detailed in this article. 007 07:10, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

This periodization of Proto-Slavic (PS) is not generally accepted. However, most scholars agree that the PS period lasted for 2,000 years or so. It is impossible that the language would not have been changing for so long. That is why reconstructed forms labelled "Proto-Slavic" are very various indeed (*supnas, *supnu, *sunu and *sъnъ ('a dream' or 'sleeping') can all be termed Proto-Slavic). There is not even the agreement when the period ended. Some give even 600 AD as the final date (after which individual languages existed), others say that OCS (ca. 850 AD) was still a literary form of the latest Proto-Slavic (of course, with strong dialectal, local features). And there do not seem to be any real basics for any periodization of PS. Specialists argue even on relative chronology of some language phenomena (inc. phonetic changes, for example some would see the sequence -as > -us > -uš > -u > -ъ, i.e. first changing and losing of -s, next vowel reduction, while others would assume -as > -us > -ъs > -ъ, i.e. first vowel reduction, then loss of final consonants). And to say nothing of the absolute chronology!

The situation is even more complicated when we took into consideration that most of the literature on the subject is not English and the authors use terms which are not strict renderings for English Proto-Slavic and Common Slavic. In fact, in Slavic languages there exists the term praslavyanski (or silmilar) where pra- means the same as great in great grandfather (= praded or similar). This term should be translated as Old Slavic then. Besides, the term protoslavyanski (=Proto-Slavic) refers - at least in some sources - to the early period of the Slavic language commonwealth (less or more, equal to Schenker's EPS). and finally, the (Russian) term obshcheslavyanski ('Common Slavic', Polish ogólnosłowiański with the same meaning) refers to features which are present in each modern Slavic language rather than to their common ancestor.

Anyway, I see no reasons for keeping two different articles, one on Proto-Slavic, the other for Common-Slavic, whatever these terms mean.

--Grzegorj 12:18, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Merge Common Slavonic

Why the suggested merge of Common Slavonic into this article? If anything, the term "Common Slavonic" is better-known, and I think that language is less theoretical than the earlier hypothesized Proto-Slavic. But what's the reason to merge them, anyway? —Michael Z. 2005-07-13 15:04 Z

They don't necessarily have to be merged (though I recommend that they are), but "Common Slavonic" (though a common term) is simply a less-precise term for Late Proto-Slavic (LPSl). And unless I'm mistaken, Common Slavonic is also unattested and hypothetical, so I don't see the difference. 007 15:07, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

So the clear distinction between the early and late is artificial, and they should be merged into one article on Proto-Slavic language? That makes sense. Does this represent a changing view in modern historical linguistics? Perhaps Common Slavonic should remain as a stub which mentions the earlier views of linguists, and refers to the Proto-Slavic article. —Michael Z. 2005-07-13 15:32 Z

There was no change in view: Common Slavonic and LPSl are the same thing, different term. It would be okay if a stub remains, and I guess we need more people to say whether they want to merge or keep a stub. 007 15:45, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

It should be merged. Common Slavonic is the last period of Proto-Slavic language. If LPSl grows as a part of article Proto-Slavic language, then it should be moved to the separate article (and I think that "Common Slavonic" is better term then LPSl). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:24, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Have two articles for basically the same thing is confusing. Whatever the difference between Proto and Common may be, between Slavic and Slavonic there is none. Very inconvenient. Merge and redirect. --IJzeren Jan 12:07, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

As I have stated above, there is even no clear equivalent of "Common Slavic" in the literature written in Slavic languages (and such an equivalent has hardly ever been used there). Only some (not very numerous) authors distinguish "classic" Proto-Slavic ("praslavyanski") from the earlier period which they call "protoslavyanski". The best thing is to merge both articles and to describe things as they were developing through centuries - rather than to introduce artificial divisions. --Grzegorj 12:31, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

The conviction which stands behind the distinction between Proto-Slavic and Common Slav(on)ic is that until the 10th century Slavs still spoke the same language. How to call that language then? It may not be called "Proto-Slavic", because it has its written form (Old Church Slavonic in the first place), and according to the linguistic naming tradition, the "Proto-" prefix is only used for languages which hasn't been written down and are reconstructed. The term "Common Slav(on)ic" is more appropriate here, because it only implies Slavs spoke one common language.

What language is the language of the Freising manuscripts? It's not Proto-Slavic, because it's written. On the other hand, it would be anachronistic to call that language Slovene. The language is very close to Old Church Slavonic, but can't be named OCS, of course. In cases like this the term "Common Slav(on)ic" seems to be useful. And it was used like this in some Wikipedia articles. So if we decide to merge the articles, we also need to check links to Common Slavonic and eliminate inconsistencies. Boraczek 11:48, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

It is an interesting question... but the problem lies only in terminology. Let's assume that we have discovered a text written in Germanic from Ceasar's time, so from the 1st century BC (impossible? why? couldn't the Romans write Germanic texts in their alphabet?). Proto-Germanic is said to be used until the 3rd century AD. And? Should we rename Proto-Germanic into something else, only because of our discovering?

There is a similar problem with Proto-Slavic. Some scholars say that OCS was the literary form of the latest Proto-Slavic. I can see nothing incorrect with this. But proto can mean just common ancestor and not reconstructed. Then Proto-Slavic would be Proto-Slavic independently whether we would accept OCS as the form of Proto-Slavic or not.

And why the language of the Freising manuscripts cannot be named OCS? Indeed, some scholars think just so. See for example W. Mańczak, Wieża Babel, Ossolineum, p. 19.

--Grzegorj 18:54, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Slavic vs. Slavonic

In the United States at least, 'Slavonic' is rarely encountered in the sense used here, referring only to the Old Church Slavonic version of the Bible, and much more rarely, as an adjective for 'Slavonia' (part of Croatia), or in musical titles, as with Dvorak's Slavonic Dances. British English uses the word more broadly, but even here, it's conforming to US usage. I suggest that 'Slavic' be used in all contexts except for the one I mentioned above.

Slavic has my preference too (but then, who am I?)... --IJzeren Jan 07:57, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I prefer Slavic, too. But, I noted that schoolar name for OCS is Old Church Slavonic. However, term "Proto-Slavic" should stay with Slavic, because I didn't hear that anyone calls it "Proto-Slavonic". --millosh (talk (sr:)) 15:05, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Slavic is more frequent also in the Internet. Especially, Common Slavonic gives only 545 hits while Common Slavic - 5150. I strongly suggest renaming the article. --Grzegorj 18:38, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I thought this was a just a British English/American English difference, that "Slavic" and "Slavonic" are the same.--D. Kapusta 18:22, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

'Slavic' people use the word Slavonian to describe themselves. English gets it wrong, but who cares, it's a different languange. Use slavic if you like... 99.236.221.124 (talk) 12:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Loanwords

I have added some information on loanwords in Slavic. See the external links and the references for the source. --Grzegorj 13:35, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Are you sure *kupiti is from Latin, and not the common Germanic word *kaupan, (itself a borrowing from Latin caupo, tho) ?

The entire section is bullshit. I wish I had seen it earlier. Some people - especially Germans prior to and at the time of Hitler had an itch to assign Germanic or any other origin to every Slavic word. They just couldn't accept that the Slavs and Balts were the last branches to remain in the PIE Urheimat after all the rest had departed, hence, they preserved the largest portion of PIE vocabulary intact. Some comments per Vasmer:

• gatati 'to divine' - purely Slavic, numerous cognates in all IE branches (e.g., Lith. godóti, Norse gáta, Latin prehendō);
• divъ 'demon' - word not recorded in Slavic languages apart from a fringe interpretation of two places in Tale of Igor's Campaign; the same root as Lat. deus/divus, Greek διος, Lith. diẽvas - no need to guess about iranian origin;

- This is incorect: дивъ is quite widely recorded, cf. Bulgarian самодива (samodiva) (also partly in Serbian, although it normally prefers самовила, samovila, which is also used in Bulgarian). 

66.65.15.134 07:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• bogъ 'God' and *svętъ 'saint, holy' - two of the most problematic words; two schools of thought: one holds these are loans, others - that these are purely Slavic derivations;
• nebo 'sky, heaven', *soxa, *čaša - bullshit; these words are purely Slavic;
• tjudjь - Slavic per Brandt, Obnorsky, Ilyinsky;
• (j)aščerъ - Slavic per everyone;
• melko - one of the most contentious issues, either Germanic or Slavic, hard to say
  • actually nothing about this word is contentious: the verb "to milk" is mlêsti, where the k has passed to an s, quite natural for a satem language family like Slavic, while the appearance of k in this word can only mean it's a borrowingFlibjib8 03:15, 23 September 2006 (UTC);
    • No, it's contentious. The passing of the k to s isn't because Slavonic is satem, but because of the second palatalisation of the velars. CRCulver 06:14, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Interesting, compare Lith melzù "I milk" and Sanskrit márs.at.i "he wipes or rubs off"; notice the passing of k to s is fairly uniform. notice as well that mlêsti is also distinguished by its typically slavic metathesis of -el- to -le-; the dual presence of a -k- and an -s- in two supposedly related words, as well as metathesis in only one word, is a sure indication that the former is a borrowing, regardless of the ultimate phonetic origin of s. Flibjib8 15:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
• istъba - not Germanic but Latin, per some scholars (cf. Romance *ехtūfа > It. stufа, Fr étuve);
  • This word is clearly borrowed, most likely through Latin or Greek, but it ultimately comes from either Germanic (OEng stofa "steam room", Ger Stube "sitting room", Dutch stoov "heated room") or from Greek (ex + Gk typhos "smoke"). The tell-tale i- prefix gives it away as a Late Latin word.Flibjib8 02:42, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
• polъ - there were no Celtic or Ugro-Finnic borrowings in Proto-Slavic, hence bullshit;

Try again. Celtic I will agree on, but most Slavic tribes were in contact with Finno-Ugric tribes for a large part of their early history. It is also highly likely, for example, Finnish for half is "puoli-". 24.57.69.157 01:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, if you read your history, you will find that Celts and Slavs were neighbors for a long time. -iopq 02:22, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• tynъ and *lēkeis - both borrowed from Germanic people, who may have borrowed them from Celts, but this is another story;
• makъ and *olkъtь - Slavic per every reference I've been able to consult;
• xyzъ/*xyzja - definitely not Turkic, the same root as English "house";
• kъnęga/*kъniga - one of the most mysterious Slavic words (three schools of thought - postulating Germanic, Armenian, or Chinese origin);
• braga - from Chuvash, according to the latest research;
• sluga - purely Slavic, Celtic origin is Shakhmatov's myth;
• proso - dark word, likely from Latin. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 11:16, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Most of these etymologies are sourced (Schenker's The Dawn of Slavic). Instead of commenting them out entirely, you must represent both sides as per NPOV. Deleting well-sourced academic content is not appreciated here, as you well know. Furthermore, using profanity (you seem to throw around the word "bull****" left and right) is not appropriate on Wikipedia. CRCulver 11:32, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Do you even have Schenker's book? Then don't claim that this is unreferenced content. It's right there in the book, which is easily obtainable from any university library. I will take this to RfC if you do not cease. CRCulver 11:34, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

There is a problem with the section: some words were added by later editors and I don't remember them in Schenker's book. I may get the book from the library myself. Also, many of these etymologies are probably disputed, and we should mention additional ideas regarding them, with citations of course. Alexander 007 19:04, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Phonology

I have added my translation from Polish Wikipedia. --Grzegorj 18:04, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

About Loanwords

My question is, why need 'kupiti' be from any language? Could this not have simply been a word which Proto-Slavic inherited from its own predecessor? Is it not possible that the other words, sluga, knige, xleb etc. may be natural formations and modernizations of earlier words than borrowed from neighbouring languages? It is already clear that some philosophical words come from Iranian languages but this nearly outstrips the entire language. It looks like Modern Polish, Russian and Serbo-Croat don't have a single word of their own... neologisms are simply corruptions of English in loanword approximation, and traditional words just seem to be borrowed Frank and his friend Herman. Did they not all develop seperately from an earlier language, PIE? Could PIE have not had words such as 'Kupiti' and it not, from where did Frank get his word? Did the Slavs not know how to make bread before Herman explained it? How then do we even know that Slavic was an IE language? I might also ask, what are Frank, Herman and Greco's modern words from these earlier formations? Celtmist 24 February 2006

• xleb is definitely a loan from Gothic because it has initial x-, which was the normal reflex of k- and k^- in Germanic but not in Slavic. If it were a native Slavonic word, it would begin with k- or s-. There is a similar explanation behind all of these words. We know Proto-Slavonic was an IE language because it has regular phonological correspondences with other IE languages, and preserves much the same nominal and verbal morphology as them. CRCulver 20:53, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Crculver. Tell me, could you just explain something to me, in simple English rather than the encyclopaedic talk... what is meant by the 'reflex' of another letter? Does it imply that any word initially starting with 'X' in a Slavic language is of a foreign source? And the other thing is, even if it this is the case, is it not possible that what was K or S could not have yielded to the gutteral continuant (however it is called)? I mean I know of one modern example: The southern reach of the Western Slavic languages tend to have an 'X'-sound where it appears the rest of the Slavic world maintains a 'Γ'/'G' (voiced), the Czech language employs this usage as standard and it also applies to neighbouring Upper Sorbian (of Germany), Slovak, and traditional Southern Polish dialects including Silesian...at least in rural areas and among the older even if the rest of the local speech in now in trawl to Standard Polski...my other observation on which you might comment is that, just as sure as there existed the Indo-European language, the Slavic branch and the Baltic branch (whether together or seperately is still unsure) broke from the branch which included Germanic at a time when it was one of only four IE languages... (I mean when Iranian and Greek were still one, and Celtic and Latin were yet to split), might this not explain certain similarities? My opinion is that it is all too easy in the 21st century to assume that a similarity means Slavic borrowed from Germanic because of the modern difference in prestige. Let's be honest, it is suggested that Old Church Slavic was used some 200 years after Proto-Slavic was last spoken, and way back then I don't think a great many languages were committed to paper. I don't know how early any Germanic dialect was attested but Slavic definitely wasn't in the 7th century. We are left to guess, but I think that the 'malako' of Russian (as a modern example) is hysterical: milk can no more be a 'new' concept than 'day' or 'night' or 'son' or 'mother'...in fact it is probably uttered by a baby as one of her first words. My thoughts would be that Russian Malako and English Milk were natural formations in a language which was predecessor to both...how do I prove this? How does anyone? - I'm also quite interested to know how Knyaz (Prince) and Kniga (book) came from Germanic and what might their modern versions be (or what could they mean) in say, Dutch or Norwegian (or any language). Slavs were not of the barbarian category and there is nothing to suggest that they could not have had such words, even if they meant something else AND were pronounced differently originally... it is known that they were led by Dukes, and so far I havn't seen proof that 'Voyvoda' has been borrowed, but if the article turns out to be true, then sure enough 'voyvodship' may too be an import. Can you shed some light Crculver? (sorry my monologue was a bit long - I have trimmed it, I assure you!) Celt 25 February 2006

If you don't know basic terminology, then you should obtain a textbook on historical linguistics before asking here. I'd also warn against making your own hypotheses ("My thoughts would be...", "I think") if you don't have any training in the field. All of these issues the you ask about are explained in the standard handbooks. See, for example, Lyle Campbell's Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (Boston: MIT Press, 2004). CRCulver 21:26, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Warn me about what? The thoughts I make are here in the discussion; you havn't seen me make an edit to the article and I have no intention of doing so. However you look at it, no encyclopaedia can be based on solid facts, you have to rely on analysis sometimes... I know roughly what the reflexive is, so how do you come to these conclusions? Celt 26 February 2006

The term "reflex", which you exhort me not to use above, has nothing to do with anything called the "reflexive", so forgive me if I say that you really need basic training in the field. I know you haven't made any negative edits to the article, but you are asking here on the discussion page very basic questions that could be immediately answered if you just got the basic textbooks. Don't take it as an insult, we all have to start with those sometimes. CRCulver 00:03, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

None taken. It was my error to write "reflex" when meaning reflexive, based on quick typing and no concentration. I've realised what it means now so I won't mention it again...right you are. Celt 28 February 2006

and THATS why kyrill and method created cyrillic. otherwise roman and german will claim everything that has a latin letter... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.220.126.173 (talk) 23:50, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Loanwords, again

I have the Schenker book next to me, and I will begin quoting it tonight and more tomorrow. I will only report what he wrote, so if someone disagrees with his statements, don't have the impression that I necessarily agree with him (I am not in the field of Slavonic linguistics or linguistics even), though this is a fine and current book in the field. For now, here is the first paragraph of section 2.66, Lexical Borrowing [note:I will use Latin script, and I do not have the font for the Cyrillic soft sign or hard sign, which I will omit]:

The lexical stock of Proto-Slavic includes a number of loan words from the languages of various tribes and nations who were neighbors of the Slavs. The earliest lexical or semantic borrowings were from the North Iranian languages of the Scythian, Sarmatian, and Alanic tribes. Many of these borrowings had religious connotations, including such terms as bog 'god', div 'demon', gatati 'to divine', raj 'paradise', svet 'holy', as well as the name of the supreme Slavic deity, Svarog. However, such non-religious terms as (j)ascer 'serpent', patriti 'to look after', radi 'for the purpose of', sobaka 'dog', topor 'axe', xata 'house', xvala 'glory' are also of Iranian origin.

---More quotes to come. Probably, Alexander Schenker is a bit dogmatic about some of these, and surely many of these derivations are disputed. The Proto-Slavic language article needs more references. Alexander 007 04:46, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The passage you cite testify to the quality of the book. Etymology of languages without early written records is necessarily temptative; peremptory tone evinces ignorance at best. Most Slavic-related linguistic or historical research I've seen in English amounts to plagiarizing old Russian sources without so much as naming them. I suppose the guy is overenthusiastic about 19th-century German authors who wished to assign an Iranian or, better still, Germanic provenance to every Slavic word. No analysis of any of the lemmas is given above. I would like to know which Slavic languages use "gaTati" in the meaning "to divine" and "div" in the meaning "demon". --Ghirla ^-трёп- 08:16, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

In Russian, gadat' is to divine and divо is wonder -Iopq 21:04, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

In Bulgarian gadaia is to divine and (samo) diva is fairy. Vladislav

Well, it is published by Yale University Press, 1995, in the Yale Language Series. It is a book of academic quality [also, it has a nice-looking dust jacket :-)]; however, it is an Introduction to Slavic Philology, as it states, and it surely has it flaws (or rather, Schenker has his flaws). Alexander 007 08:28, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

vasmer corrections

while i cannot speak for every word you contest, i can say that:

• gatati (or OCSl gadati "to guess, suppose"), is more than likely inherited rather than borrowed. constrast with Old Persian cognate xšathra "dominion". it is also worth noting that Latin prehendere is not a cognate with this word.
  • OSl gadati "to guess, suppose"; akin to Alb gjej "to find", Eng get, Gk ktaomai "to acquire, get, procure; marry", ktēma "possession", OPers xšathra "dominion", MIr gataim "I steal", Welsh cyfoeth "wealth; realm", Lith godetis "to be eager"
  • Latin prehendere "to take, seize", praeda "prey"; akin to Alb zë "to catch", Eng begin, OIr ro-geinn "to encircle, surround", Welsh genni "to delve, submerge oneself", Gk chandánein "to hold, contain"
• xata, or rather Ukrainian khata "kind of traditional house", is in fact Iranian, akin to Avestan kata "chamber", Farsi kad "house", and Ossetian xatän. This word was also borrowed into Finno-Ugric, e.g., Finn kota "dwelling, tent, hut", Estonian koda "house", Mordvin kudo "house", and into Germanic, e.g., ON kot "hut" and Old English cott "cottage" (vs. native Goth heþjo "chamber"). The native Slavic words are instead OSl kotǐcǐ "chamber", Russ kotéc "fishweir" The o-a difference is significant.
• bogǔ is hard to believe as originating from Iranian, considering Avestan baxshaiti "he has or gives a share" and Farsi bakhshîdan "to offer, share", where the -a- and the -x-/-kh-, not to mention the meaning, do not lend themselves to a borrowing.

I quite honestly don't have much faith in slavic etymology.

71.64.112.34 03:46, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

For bogǔ, see Gołąb, Zbigniew. The Origins of the Slavs: A Linguist's View (Columbus: Slavica, 1990), pp 74 & 103. Gołąb believes that it was inherited in Slavonic with the original pan-IE meaning, but then under the influence of a neighbouring Iranian population, the meaning shifted to match theirs. Since both the early Proto-Slavonic form (*bɔgɔs) and the Iranian form (Avesta bagō) were quite similar, it's easy to see how a shift in meaning in one language could occur. CRCulver 22:13, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

well, that's much more believable than a wholesale borrowing, especially considering related bogatu^ 'rich', whosse meaning is probably closer to the original meaning of bogu^. Flibjib8 15:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Cyrillic

Why is Proto-Slavic given in Cyrillic? Cyrillic descended from the Glagolitic alphabet, which itself is from the ninth century. Proto-Slavic was spoken before the seventh. That makes no sense. What alphabet was Proto-Slavic written using? PS: I am aware that no writings of it have been found, but I'm simply asking if it was written, which alphabet would it have most likely used. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 07:24, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic was not written at all. However, since it is generally reconstructed from Old Church Slavonic on one hand and e.g. Old Russian on the other, it's understandable that some might use the Cyrillic alphabet for the reconstructions as well. CRCulver 01:10, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Especially because Cyrillic was devised specifically to render unique Slavic sounds, such as SHCH and Ы, which are not conveyed adequately by other alphabets. If you attempt to render Slavic sounds in Latin alphabet, you will get... well, Polish. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 07:58, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Look at Czech orthography, neat and phonetic, it's been adopted in a modified sense by most Slavic nations that use the Latin alphabet. I see no reason Latin can't be used, as this is the English Wikipedia it will be more familiar to readers. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 05:27, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Uh, Old Church Slavonic didn't have the sound SHCH, the character later used for that in Russian is an appropriation of the original Cyrillic sign for SHT, which is hardly a unique sound. Also, Ы is a digraph of the back yer and i, which would be just as easily represented with the Latin alphabet. I don't mind Cyrillic meaning used, but one has to merely argue from tradition, I don't think your points here are convincing. CRCulver 14:49, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

But what are you going to write instead of ь, ъ and other symbols that are not in Czech orthography? These symbols exist in Cyrillic but not in Latin. -Iopq 15:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

How about International Phonetic Alphabet? 惑乱 分からん 03:06, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

IPA isn't used for reconstructed languages. CRCulver 03:24, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I see... There are no scholars using reconstructed approximations according to schwa indogermanicum, laryngeal symbols, or similar? 惑乱 分からん 12:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

While the transcriptions used in FU linguistics, IE linguistics, etc. have symbols that overlap with those of IPA, they are not IPA. The International Phonetic Alphabet is a standard described in the Association's handbook, reconstruction transcriptions are consensus-based and informal. Think about how many ways IEists write aspirated stops (with h following as a full letter or as a superscript), labiovelars (superscript w or u with inverted breve below), laryngeals (h with subscript or, as in the Encyclopedia, distinct symbols for each of the three), etc. CRCulver

I rethought about my first idea, and thought we could choose one scholarly standard that would be easy to interpret... 惑乱 分からん 15:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

That would be using the ĭ symbol for ь and the ŭ symbol for ъ, ę, ǫ for their nasal corresponding vowels and ě for yat. -iopq 13:09, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I guess that'd suffice? We'd better try to avoid Cyrillic here for the layman audience. 惑乱 分からん 23:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind using Cyrillic, but mixing the two alphabets is confusing. I looked at the list of vowels, which now ends in "ъ, y, and u", and thought that "y" was "у", which is pronounced "u". What about listing all the sounds once in Cyrillic, and once in Latin? phma 16:40, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, that's how Vasmer's etymological dictionary uses it. -iopq 02:24, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the whole phonology part on the page should be written using IPA alone. It is very confusing when someone has to learn different standards for different languages, if all one wants is to get a description of the phonology of the language. If there are some established conventions used by Slavisists, they should definitely be mentioned, but not used for the actual purpose of explaining the matter. --Midjungards 12:54, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

IPA is for phonetic transcriptions. Historical linguistics deals with phonemic transcriptions. It would be OR to use IPA here, when the actual literature already has standards for transcription. 82.181.205.224 13:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

You could use IPA for phonemic transcription as well, just without going into phonetic details. It is very confusing the way it is now. You have to learn that ǯ means /ʤ/, ǫ means /ɔ̃/, ě means /æ/, etc. just in order to get an overview of the phonetics, even if you don't wish to go into details. For example, when the phonemes of the most languages on Wikipedia are explained, it is in IPA, with additional explanation of the “standard” for the language in question (In the case of a living language, that is the corresponding letter of the alphabet). One will say that a language has a phoneme /ʃ/, regardless of the fact that Czech uses š as a standard, that German uses sch, Turkish ş and so on. Besides, IPA is a common standard for transcription, which could be expected to be understood universally. --Midjungards 18:47, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

You forget, what if the newest research indicated that ǫ was actually /õ/? Then we'd have to change the article in every place. But if we use the standard symbols we just change the phonetic value of it in one place and the reconstructions still stay accurate elsewhere. -iopq 09:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Cyrillic is used because it is the alphabet first used to write down Slavic, use of Latin came way later. You can use it if you like, so long as you explain this 99.236.221.124 (talk) 12:14, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Chronological order

If this article is supposed to detail how PIE changed into Proto-Slavic then we should have the sound changes in chronological order. The current technique of listing the sounds in arbitrary order and detailing backwards how they came from PIE is barely functional to any understanding of the way Proto-Slavic developed. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 02:31, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

It definitely does. Without the diachronical perspective, it's impossible to expand existing data or to add more, and it becomes misleading to the reader (e.g. there was no */ę/ by the time the first palatlization took place..) This article should IMHO start were Proto-Balto-Slavic left, listing the phonemic inventory of Early Proto-Slavic (after the first patalization) and possibly major changes that happened from PIE times, and list all Common Slavic changes in chronological order, finishing the phonemic inventory of Late Proto-Slavic. Major changes like palatalizations and liquid metathesis are very fertile subjects to write on, and could be also redirected to separate article for extensive discussion (when did they happen, detailed differences in reflexes in various dialects, exceptions etc.). And this is just the phonology, there is also the morphology.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

My above comment was made when the article was in a much worse state. I agree with what you've just said, though, and I trust that you have the skill to add proper detail. Be sure to cite thoroughly, though. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 15:17, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

rewrite

I just did a major rewrite to address my concern detailed above. I also changed the transcription from the "slavicist" one to what I suppose one might call an ad-hoc system combining Channon's palatals (š, ž, dz, č) with the vague "some people" transcription the short high vowels (ĭ, ŭ). This system is a bit more intuitive for the average reader and is, I imagine, slightly less confusing than having two almost identical characters denoting different sounds. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 09:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

In books, yers are almost never "transliterated", but kept in Cyrillic signs. ĭ, ŭ transliteration is based on the assumption that those were pronounced like short vowels i, u. Article should follow the established standards in the field, and not some imaginary guidelines. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 08:12, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, frowny face! How can I convince you to accept this? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:17, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Loanwords, Old High German

Why are Old High German examples given in the loanwords section? It doesn't seem probable these words were borrowed from OHG, since the Slavic words lack the High German consonant shifts, that had influenced OHG. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 09:16, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

It could be the other way around, Slavic is as old as German and there may have been crosses from Slavic to German 99.236.221.124 (talk) 12:16, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Separate article on borrowings

As I can see from the discussions here, this is very delicate topic. AFAICS, most of the borrowings listed here were taken from Schenker's book which just lists them en masse without discussion/references IIRC, and some of which are almost certainly wrong. Since the topic of borrowings into Common Slavic is so vast (there are like 300 page monographs that deal just with e.g. borrowings from Iranian into Slavic), wouldn't it be nice to have separate article on it, one that extensively discusses contacts of Proto-Slavic-speakers with Iranian, Germanic, Celtic, Turkic etc. peoples, and the semantic spheres of the borrowings into Slavic? I was thinking of starting Borrowings into Proto-Slavic, but I'm not sure that kind of article would be suitable for WP (there are no "borrowings into Proto-Germanic" or similar articles)?--Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:38, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

And also the Borrowings from Proto-Slavic into Celtic, Germanic (which there are, even if some pan-Germanists don't like to admit it ^_^) etc. So Proto-Slavic borrowings? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:46, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm hesitant about this idea. I think that we should develop it as a section in this article first, then, if it gets too large, we split it off into its own article. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:07, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Section on the loanwords is already pretty large, and pretty disproportional with respect to the rest of the article (esp. considering the fact that the borrowings are just a minor detail, and that this article should focus on PSl. language). I was thinking of writing at least 10-15k article just on the borrowings (with separate section for Germanic, Iranian, Greco-Roman, so-called-Celtic and others), listing the opinions of Slavists in the last century and status of the scholarship today. Than the section on this article can just list some main conclusions, and redirect to the main article with {{main}}.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:49, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is a possibility, but I think you should develop it here first. I personally don't think the section is too large right now (could this mean the rest of the article needs to beefen up?) and I'd hardly call it ready to become a new article with the many citation requests that section still has. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:15, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

• Comments? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:25, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

| I feel that the loanwords section should simply be about a sentence or so and then link to Proto-Slavic borrowings. I find grammar and phonology to be more important in a language's development than vocabulary, which is historically fluid.

Also, I don't get why some people get so upset about loanwords in Slavic or loanwords into German. The Proto-Slavs occupied their original Urheimat for the longest time of all the Indo-Europeans, remaining "purer" and autochtonous, so to speak. Proto-Germans were for a long time spreading out during this time and already had a large stock of words borrowed from each other or from the Celts. There was no need for the Germanic languages to absorb all these new Slavic words when the Slavs begin to travel, since the words had already been defined. The opposite may be true for the Slavs; the Germans had a good stock of words to use for these new techniques, so it seems natural that the Slavs took these words when they first become known to history after their long ancient "hiding".

Regardless, I do agree that the etymology of all these loanwords is still disputed, and the article only has a few sources (Schenker, Vasmer) who strongly represent a pro-Germanic position in terms of loanwords. Regardless, the most-used core vocabulary of Slavic ends up remaining, well, Slavic. Sort of like how the most-widely used words in English, even today, are Germanic, but on a much smaller scale (Slavic didn't borrow as many words as English has).

So much talk of loanwords, in conclusion, should be moved to their own article and more content should be focusing on the rest of the proto-language.| CormanoSanchez (talk) 00:36, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Ivan Štambuk has done a good job of writing Proto-Slavic borrowings and has already shrunk the loanwords section in this article. I don't see a problem with having a few paragraphs on it in this article the way we have it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:50, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, the LWs sections so far represents the brief account of the [[Proto-Slavic borrowings]] article, and I don't know how far would it need to be crippled, as one sentence is hardly enough to succinctly represents the conclusion of the article it links to by using {{main}}.

Borrowings are very important, but not for the fact of lexical borrowings themselves, but the manifestation of various later innovations in Proto-Slavic that acted upon them. We have no extent writings of the Slavic speech of that period, but have of of language-donors (such as Gothic, Ancient Greek or Latin), and if you look in the abovementioned article you can literally devise a dosen sound laws on the basis of Germanic borrowings alone operating in Proto-Slavic period (substitution of quantitative oppositions with qualitative ones, elimination of all closed syllables, palatalisations, accents shifts operating on Germanic borrowings [which had fixed accent on the first syllable, like Proto-Germanic did] etc.). They're as important as Slavic borrowings preserved as toponyms, LWs in much more archaic languages like Finnic or Greek, or glosses of Slavic names and words in FL sources.

Common people usually attach borrowings as a form of cultural domination and supremacy exerted by language-donor upon the receiver, corresponding it to some form of social-level domination—a view very much wrong and misleading. For example, for a long time it has been maintained that Slavs were "ruled" by some Iranian elite which would explain the alleged high amount of Iranian borrowings in Slavic. The fact is, that there is but a little provably real Iranianisms in Slavic, much of them pertaining to religious-magical sphere and not common everyday life. Lots of former Iranianisms have newer, by the modern-day standards of historical linguistics much more plausible, explanations. That is even more real for some "Celtic" or "Illyrian" words in Slavic. Words with obscure etymologies are often candidates for various imaginative explanations not because they are inherently more "valid", but because they cannot be disproven within the framework of derivational morphology of the observed language itself. An explanations with unattested language-donor etymon reached on the basis of what "is" and "isn't" a result of the "tendencies of the system" (whatever that means) is no explanation at all.

You're mistaking two markedly different terms German and Germanic. Yes, it can be said that Proto-(Balto-)Slavs are the remnant of the old Late PIE dialect continuum, being the last branch to "desintegrate". Proto-Balto-Slavic changes are in fact the changes of Late PIE itself, and what we today call "Baltic languages" are in fact last remnant of PIE itself. This is confirmed by a remarkable fact that the reconstruction of "Proto-Baltic" is extremely problematic (it. turns out to be no different in time-scale than of Proto-Balto-Slavic itself), and where Slavic languages experienced common innovations basically all the way to the 9th c., Baltic may have done so only in some dialect clusters like "West Baltic" and "East Baltic", and so you get remarkably archaic Lithuanian not attested before the 16th c., and at the same time in many respects comparably archaic to Vedic, Ancient Greek and Latin (and in few of them even more!).

Vasmer is badly outdated, and Schenker doesn't discuss LWs in his book thoroughly enough to be used as ultimate evidence—he just lists them and doesn't even cite sources, and doesn't state how disputable some of those really are, having much acceptable alternative explanations. I think that the article on PSl. borrowings is generally sufficiently objective in its perspective to modern, up-to-date scholarship, in both presenting the problem and the conclusions it reaches. All views (even wrong ones) have to be represented, if they're important (being held by notable linguists, or for simply being influential for a long time), per WP:NPOV policy. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 02:45, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

| Thank you for your explanation, which really helped me understand this a bit more. I have a hunch that the layman's interpretation of loanwords implies "domination" like you said. This issue is contentious of course and nationalists on both sides of the aisle have battled each other forever on it. Such a battle should be kept out of Wikipedia (however futile that attempt may be).

I didn't mean that vocabulary was less important or irrelevant, but that the main article should explain further on the other aspects of the language. Again, this isn't easy as so little evidence is around.| CormanoSanchez (talk) 01:05, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

about loanwords again

just noticing the discussion up above about whether certain words are loanwords from Germanic or native Slavic -- one issue that people seem to have missed entirely is the Germanic Sound Shift. Germanic-borrowed words will have it, native Slavic ones won't. For example: 'moloko' must be borrowed from Germanic because of the /k/. The PIE form looks like *melĝ- which gives e.g. Latin 'mulgere' "to milk" and Eng. "milk". A native Slavic equivalent would have a /z/ or perhaps a /g/, but not a /k/.

As for 'kupiti', the Lat. word 'caupō' means "small trader" or "innkeeper" and is listed in my Amer. Heritage Dict. of IE Roots as being a Latin-only root of unknown origin, i.e. presumably not PIE, and the root shows up nowhere else in any other IE language. There's no verb in Latin that uses this root and has the meaning of "buy"; the "buy" meaning was a Germanic innovation when 'caupō' was borrowed into early Germanic and a verb '*kaupjan' "buy" (Go. 'kaupjan', Mod. Germ. 'kaufen') was formed. 'kupiti' "buy" goes back to pre-PrSl. 'kaupītī' and has exactly the form and meaning of the Germanic word, including the preservation of the /j/ stem-forming element. All of this taken together makes it very unlikely that 'kupiti' is a native Slavic word.

Similarly 'xlep' "bread" shows the Germanic Sound Shift in it. Benwing (talk) 06:07, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

You might be right, but some sound changes occurred amongst Baltic, Slavic and Germanic languages simultaneously due to areal proximity. Therefore its presence in German doesn;t imply its origin there Hxseek (talk) 10:28, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

"For example: 'moloko' must be borrowed from Germanic because of the /k/." A lot of bullshitting... There was nothing "borrowed" from Germanic into Slavic; especially the most basic words as milk, tree, mill; if we are talking about "Indo-European" (academic artificially created)language, then words such as "milk" fall far back into the past, when the satem and kentum were relatively still related/connected languages. The claim that Slavic mleko is Latin and Germanic Ionword is OCCULT AND NATIONALISTIC SCIENCE! Besides it was scientifically proven that Baltic and Slavic languages share most archaic words, closer to Sanskrit(still closest to "Indo-European" IE language). Especially Slovenian obviously shares also Akkadian, Hittite and Sanskrit background.

Besides Slavic languages, nations, countries should not exist at all- in reality; if we view this from Mathematical perspective... It is just impossible that some unknown Neanderthal "slavs/slaves(to whom?) " appeared out from 0 and populated/reproduced almost whole of the Asia and half of the Europe as locusts from 6th century AD among Great Turks, Chinese, Germans, Italians, Hebrews and Italians. I am sure no piece of any land was "given to Slavs" - as modern "scholars" trying to "accept" this; since 19th century, instead that oldest historians looked on Slavs as Veneti(after 19th century even this theory was refused). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.198.73.124 (talk • contribs)

Slavic liquid metathesis and pleophony

A "competing" article which should be work'd in here (using {{main}} probably, it's clearly long enuff not to merge). I stuck it as a "See also" for now… --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 23:45, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Consonant clusters

Are there any consonant clusters with more than three consonants in Proto-Slavic? --84.61.151.145 (talk) 17:39, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Zvezda

"Russian: *gwojzda → *gwězda → zvězda → [zʲvʲɪˈzda] ('star')" I'm sorry, but in Russian the first [z] in the word "звезда" isn't palatalized (I mean Russian palatalization, [zʲ]), at least normally. What was the source of that transcription? It probably should be fixed, the word normally sounds as [zvʲɪˈzda]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.84.243.135 (talk) 08:07, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:IPA for Russian#Cluster palatalization. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 12:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

ě in Slovak

Please excuse me if I am confusing scope here, but is it accurate to state that ě evolved into e in Slovak in all cases. It seems if one compares the OCS terms rěka, mlěko, mĕsto, mlěti, one sees the following in Slovak: rieka, mlieko, miesto, mlieť. -- Mahabhusuku (talk • contribs)

It looks like it evolved into "ie" in Slovak from your examples. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 01:08, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In Czech and Slovak, ě can go various ways. Its development is rather unpredictable, so indeed, the statement that ě evolved into e in Slovak is inaccurate.

I'd also like to note that the statement in Ukrainian, ě merged with i is nonsense. If anything, you could say ě merged with o in closed syllables. What happened in Ukrainian, is that i merged with y (into y), while ě became i. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 09:55, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Was ŭ a rounded vowel?

I remember reading something not so long ago about the phonology of Old Church Slavonic, that said the vowel ŭ was unrounded, just as y was. The change u > ŭ would then be parallel to ū > y. I'm not sure if this is true, especially considering y went on to become i in many Slavic languages while ŭ often became o (i.e. it kept its rounding). I'm not sure if there are any cases of ŭ > i? CodeCat (talk) 14:40, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I remember reading that it was unrounded in Proto-Slavic, too. According to the article, *ŭ became *ĭ after palatal consonants. It also could have varied in rounding. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 15:45, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

The Dutch Wikipedia states that it merged with ĭ and developed into e in strong position in West Slavic and several South Slavic dialects, while in East Slavic it became o in those positions. I don't know what examples there are of that (there should be plenty) but it does show that ŭ was somewhat ambiguous as to whether it was front/unrounded or back/rounded. Presumably the fronting/unrounding happened relatively late in Proto-Slavic, since ū from other languages is still consistently borrowed as y rather than u I believe. CodeCat (talk) 15:51, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I came across some evidence for this: in OCS, when ŭ is next to j, it is lengthened to y, in the same way that ĭ lengthens to i next to j. The forms svętŭjĭ and svętyi (/svętyji/) both occur in OCS texts, alongside svętŭi and svęty. That clearly shows that ŭ and y had roughly the same manner of articulation. Presumably this was also true for Proto-Slavic. CodeCat (talk) 04:16, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

ŭ was not "usual" but tense before j. Btw, in Russian it's "sv'atój".--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:34, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

It depends on a particular dialect and period. In those dialects where strong ŭ>o it was obviously rounded as its roundness could not appear by itself. Where ŭ>e, a, ă, it lost its roundness very early.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Effects of the palatalisations on x

I'm not entirely sure what sources there are for x, aside from the RUKI sound law. But I wonder if there are any examples of both RUKI and the progressive palatalisation occuring. Such a sequence would have happened in words originally ending in -isos > -išos (RUKI) > ? (progressive palatalisation) or -isā. What is the resulting consonant in this case? Is it x, s or š, and does it palatalise the following -ŭ to -ĭ in the same way that *otĭkos > *otĭcĭ (basically, are words for which this applies "hard" stems or "soft" stems? CodeCat (talk) 15:28, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Such words surely must exist. The chart on palatalization indicates the results on /x/ for all three palatalizations, although I'm a bit skeptical of the claim that Central Slovak dialects uniquely show a distinct outcome of the second and third palatalizations for /x/. Given that the number of words involved was probably small, there may well be effects of analogy involved.

BTW some researchers do seem to claim sources for x aside from the RUKI law, although I'm not sure what they are. Initial x supposedly has "a number of sources", the most accepted of which is /ks/ (although that's still within RUKI). Benwing (talk) 00:46, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I just saw a source that argued for *sk- as the source of initial x, largely based on the apparent fact that Slavic words with initial /sk-/ are supposedly rare, although etymologies for various words were proposed. This isn't totally strange, since PIE *sḱ- produces ch- in Sanskrit and Proto-Germanic *sk- produces sc /ʃ/ in Old English. But in the Sanskrit case there are obvious etymologies for a number of ch- words while most of the x- words have no clear etymologies at all, which makes me think they are loan words. It's unfortunately the case that we have no written knowledge at all of most of the languages that preceded the IE langs in Europe in their journeys out from the Ukrainian steppes, yet clearly such langs must have existed, and probably the IE speakers absorbed lots of words from them in the several thousand years it typically took them to migrate. (Look at how many words Hungarian picked up, and from how many different sources -- in this case we can identify most of the sources because the migration occurred relatively late.) Benwing (talk) 20:07, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Splitting between developments leading up to Proto-Slavic and developments in dialects

I think it would be a good idea to maintain a conceptual split in the article between developments that occurred in Balto-Slavic or early Slavic, and which are therefore shared by all Slavic languages to the same degree, with developments that were areal and didn't affect all dialects or not all in the same way. That would help in establishing a kind of chronology within the sections of the article: first a "before" part, in which we describe how Slavic came to be, then a "now" part which is about Slavic itself and its phonology and grammar, and then an "after" part which describes what happened once Slavic began to break up. CodeCat (talk) 14:31, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 14:39, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Thirded. A clearer division of material between this article and Proto-Balto-Slavic language would also be beneficial I think. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 18:20, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree on splitting the developments between those leading up to the end of Middle Common Slavic and the later dialect-specific developments. I also think the common Balto-Slavic developments should be clearly separated onto the Proto-Balto-Slavic language page, although enough of a summary should exist on this page to provide a basic context for discussion of certain historical issues, esp. the accents.

I don't think I agree with CodeCat's layout. I rearranged things to reflect what I think is a better layout that also is more consistent with pages seen elsewhere:

• First, an "overview" section, which describes what the language was, who spoke it, and why it's important. Many language pages have a separate "external history" section describing the history of the language speakers, the attempts to standardize the language (for attested languages), etc. In this case, the external history is closely intertwined with a discussion of what the language was, in particular in discussion the various periods, so I think it makes sense to combine these two.
• Second is the phonology section. This follows the normal convention that you describe what the language actually was (phonology, morphology, syntax) before covering its historical development (either internal or external).
• If there were morphology or syntax sections, they follow here.
• Then we include the pre-history of Proto-Slavic/Common Slavic.
• Then we include the post-history. Including both in sequence makes it clearer for readers who want to understand what happened as the language passed *through* the Late Common Slavic phase.
• Finally, I put the loanwords section because it's ancillary and usually goes near the bottom in language articles. Conceivably it could go after the grammar sections, but that doesn't feel right since it's so much less a core issue, particular in a reconstructed language like Proto-Slavic. Benwing (talk) 11:24, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Syllabic sonorants in South Slavic

In Old Church Slavonic, metathesis is seen at least in the spelling. You added a source, but what does it say about this in particular? Is the metathesis just an orthographical device but not a phonetic reality in OCS? CodeCat (talk) 10:41, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

The reference is to Schenker's article on "Proto-Slavonic". He says (p. 75):

The Cĭ̄RC Cŭ̄RC sequences developed in two stages. In the Early Proto-Slavonic stage, common to all the Slavonic languages, the vowel was lost and the vocalic function was transferred to the sonant, which, depending on the quality of the vowel, was either soft, r̥' l̥' (< Cĭ̄RC), or hard, r̥ l̥ (< Cŭ̄RC). Vocalic length was replaced by rising pitch.

In Late Proto-Slavonic, vocalic sonants remained syllabic in area 1, with r̥' becoming r̥, while l̥' retained its distinctiveness in Polish, Sorbian and partly Czech, merging elsewhere with l̥. In other areas, the sonant was preceded by a homorganic vowel, leading to the sequences of the CVRC type. Such a contravention of the law of open syllables suggests that the development of the syllabic sonants outside area 1 belongs to the histories of the individual languages.

(area 1 is "South Slavonic, Czech, and Slovak")

There's also David Huntley's article on "Old Church Slavonic" (pp. 125-187), which says the following (p. 127):

... The sonorants /l/, /r/ could form syllabic nuclei. Orthographically, and in transliteration in this chapter, the syllabic sonorants are not distinguished from sequences of sonorant followed by reduced vowel. In phonemic and phonetic representation, the sequences will be shown by writing the jers, the reduced vowel letters, on the line, and the syllabic sonorants with the jer above the line.

Huntley also says (pp. 129-130):

Prehistorically there were back syllabic sonorants and front syllabic sonorants followed by a back and front vocalic glide, respectively. Although this etymological distinction will be observed in phonological representations in this study, the distinction is not observed in the orthography, so that the front and back syllabic sonorants may have merged prehistorically, as in črьvь (Zographensis), črъvь (Marianus) (Mark 9.44) 'work (NOM SG)'. From the palatal initial consonant one may reconstruct etymological /čr^ьvь/. The jer letters used to indicate syllabic sonorants are never replaced by e or o letters, whereas such younger spellings are attested for the sonorants followed by a phonemic reduced vowel, as in skrьžьštetъ (Zographensis, Marianus, Assemanianus; Mark 9.18), skrežьštetъ (Euchologium Sinaiticum 88a.10), 'gnash (3 SG PRS)'. In this example, a velar, /k/, precedes the sequence of /r/ plus front reduced vowel, whereas a velar could not precede any front segment, including a front syllabic sonorant.

Similarly, the shift of /ъ/ to /o/ is attested in prepositions immediately followed by a syllable containing a sequence /r/ plus reduced vowel in weak position, but such a shift is not attested when the syllable contains a syllabic sonorant; thus vo krъvi (Psalterium Sinaiticum 57.11) 'in blood (LOC SG)' represents the reflex of an older /vъ krъve/.

This indicates quite clearly that the OCS "metathesis" of syllabic sonorants was purely a spelling convention. The WP article says otherwise, and needs to be fixed. I don't have much time right now to edit WP articles. Perhaps you can step in for the time being? Benwing (talk) 09:37, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Another comment:

Schenker claims that the change to syllabic sonorants occurs everywhere. Various places in WP claim this might not have occurred in East Slavic due to the consistent development of or, er, ol, el. I'm not sure if this can be sourced or is simply the opinion of one or another editor. Note that Polish, Czech, etc. have similar developments in some contexts, but quite different ones (e.g. syllabic sonorants or lu) in others, and similarly, although Polish and Czech in general show parallel developments, Czech has some syllabic sonorants but Polish has none, apparently having consistently eliminated them. So it's not impossible that a change from VR sequences to syllabic R and back to VR could have occurred. It also seems odd to me that a language could have systematically eliminated every closed syllable except sequences of yer + liquid, which is what would have had to have applied after the East Slavic polnoglasie (oro, etc.) prior to the elimination of yers.

Lunt 1987 (On the Relationship of Old Church Slavonic to the Written Language of Early Rus', Horace G. Lunt, Russian Linguistics, Vol. 11, No. 2/3 (1987), pp. 133-162) has a bunch of interesting things to say. About the possible syllabic liquids (what he terms "tьrt sequences"), he says:

The high-vowel diphthongs ... very possibly remained as diphthongs in Rusian dialects; in any case the spellings generally correspond to the original sequence of elements. In canonical OCS the jer-letter is written after the r or l, and it usually is ƅ, although in Sav the convention was to write ь. These orthographies do not necessarily reflect either the usage of the Moravian Mission or of early 10th-century Preslav or Ohrid; it is highly possible that varied orthographies existed to fit different dialects (cf. Lunt 1962). From the middle of the 12th century, spellings with e/o for the "neutral" ƅ/ь occur sporadically; they are written in every possible instance in the Dobrilo Gospel of 1164." (p. 144)

Note that "neutral" here is referring to Lunt's use of the term "neutral jer" to reflect the jers theoretically occurring in tьrt sequences, because they do not follow Havlik's law for strong vs. weak jers. (Which suggests to me that they didn't exist at all, otherwise why would a special exception be made only in this case?)

Another point of reference is the appendix, listing correspondences between "MCoS", "OCS", "Old ESlav" and "Rusian (ER) standard language". The following entries are interesting (I use OES for the "Old ESlav" column, ER for the "Rusian (ER)" column):

• 6a: MCoS *tьrt :: OCS trьt/trƅt :: OES tьrt :: ER "usual tьrt, often trьt or the artificial tьrƅt"
• 6b: MCoS *tƅrt :: OCS trƅt :: OES tƅrt :: ER "usual tƅrt, often trƅt or the artificial tƅrƅt"
• 6c: MCoS *tьlt :: OCS tlьt/tlƅt :: OES tƅlt :: ER "usual tƅlt, often tlƅt, rare tƅlƅt"
• 6d: MCoS *tƅlt :: OCS tlƅt :: OES tƅlt :: ER "usual tƅlt, often tlƅt, rare tƅlƅt"

To me, this does not bear really out Lunt's assertion that these diphthongs "very possibly remained as diphthongs in Rusian dialects". The fact that there are so many variant spellings indicates to me that these were in fact syllabic sonorants, and the scribes didn't know how to represent them so they chose various possibilities.

Lunt appears to be basing his conclusions on a comparison with the following entries:

• 7a: MCoS *tert :: OCS trět :: OES teret :: ER "mostly trět or artificial tret, rare teret"
• 7b: MCoS *tort :: OCS trat :: OES torot :: ER "trat, rare torot"
• 7c: MCoS *telt :: OCS tlět :: OES tolot :: ER "tlět, rare tolot (hypercorrect tlat!)"
• 7d: MCoS *tolt :: OCS tlat :: OES tolot :: ER "tlat, rare tolot"

Here, the most common spellings are taken to be spelling conventions from OCS (even though the "correct" (apparently phonemic) spellings are rare). Hence he assumes that the common spellings like trьt are OCS-isms, while tьrt is real. But why then would such phonemic spellings be so common when the corresponding torot/etc. spellings so rare? Note also that the evident OCS-isms in 7c, 7d preserve a distinction tlět/tlat that evidently didn't actually exist, when the OCS tlьt spelling apparently never occurs, and the OCS most-common use of trƅt for etymological tьrt likewise doesn't occur. Lunt's most basic claim in his article is that the OCS-isms in 7a-d, and use of nasal vowels that don't actually exist, and other such deviations from phonemic spelling were used whenever they were "efficient" in representing ER phonology, i.e. you could always map *from* written OCS forms *to* ER phonology, whereas the etymologically correct use of yers, contra OCS, is because the OCS more or less random usage of yers was not "efficient" in this sense. Given that there was no problem accepting a spelling like tlět for the radically different /tolot/, the obvious result would be consistent use of trьt/trƅt/etc. with only the yers corrected. Instead, you don't see that -- you see lots of variation, including sequences like tьrt and tьrƅt that have no OCS equivalents. I conclude that there were syllabic sonorants for various reasons:

1. The solution of just correcting the yers was rejected in place of correcting the entire rь/rƅ sequence because the scribes saw this sequence as a digraph (because their actual pronunciation was as a syllabic sonorant).
2. Even if there was some other reason to reject the whole rь/rƅ sequence, if the pronunciation was actually a sequence ьr/ƅr, you'd expect to see the spelling tьrt/tƅrt used consistently. The fact that you see tьrt trьt tьrƅt all used commonly suggests that there was no obvious way to represent what the scribes heard, which again implies a syllabic sonorant.
3. Even if you wanted to continue arguing that what you see is a mixture of OCS-inspired trьt spellings and phonemic tьrt spellings, you have no way to explain the tьrƅt spellings. How come we never see spellings like tert tort tolt? If you could get "artificial" tьrƅt spellings (apparently by analogy with phonemic teret/torot), how come you never got artificial tert/tort spellings by analogy with supposedly phonemic tьrt/tƅrt?

In any case, you clearly can't insert these arguments directly unless you find a reliable source for them. Instead, I'd treat Lunt's assertions with a good deal of skepticism and say something like "some scholars [sourced to Schenker] assert that syllabic sonorants also occurred in East Slavic, while others [sourced to Lunt] are unsure, and suggest that the original vowel-sonorant sequences may have persisted unchanged."

Some additional Lunt comments that you might find useful in sourcing parts of the WP text:

1. He refers to "the hypothetical linguistic system of Common Slavic posited for the 700s, which is familiar from etymological dictionaries, and which I dub Middle Common Slavic (MCoS)" (p. 135), which is a good source for my assertions about Middle Common Slavic.
2. The change OCS /ǫ/ to "Early Rusian" (ER) /u/ had already occurred (p.136).
3. "The ƅ of LCoS dialects in Macedonia and Rus' was surely rounded, but for non-Macedonian OCS, as well as most of the rest of the Slavic world, it was unrounded." (p. 137)
4. "The ě of most OCS dialects (and contemporary Lechitic) was low, whereas in Rus' (and most of Slavdom) it was relatively igh." (p. 137)
5. "The jer-shift was the last innovation of Late Common Slavic, as Trubetzoy pointed out, for the structural conditions defining the "strong" or "weak" jers were identical in all dialects (possibly excepting Polabian" (p. 137)
6. "In Rus', it is not until the Dobrilo Gospel of 1164 (SvK 55) that we have consistent evidence for a completed jer-shift. It appears, then, that the process took place in Macedonia and Bulgaria during the 10h century, and spread northward to encompass the southern edge of Rus' surely by 1150 and probably at least a decade or two earlier. Apparently it reached northern Rus' in the latter part of the 12th c. In all Rusian manuscripts datable before about 1125, the letters ъ and ь are used with remarkable accuracy ... in morphemes where we posit them etymologically. Indeed, the most deviant among them are as accurate as the best of the canonical OCS mss., the Zographensis (followed closely by the Euchologium). The relatively small number of deviations from the expected etymological distribution that do occur can in large measure be ascribed to the influence of South Slavic models being copied by Rusian scribes." (p. 138)

Benwing (talk) 10:58, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

There is something you could also consider for Russian though. What if pleophony did occur? That would have resulted in ъrъ and ьrь sequences, but the first yer would have been strong while the second would have been weak. Essentially, there would be two concurrent phonological tendencies that counteracted each other: on one hand there was the desire to apply pleophony to liquid diphthongs to make the syllables open, but at the same time weak yers were being removed. I may be missing something but I think that can account for what is attested in modern Russian. Modern Russian clearly shows the original ъ vs ь distinction, which is reflected as o vs e. I can't think of any other explanation for that, unless palatalisation of the preceding consonant is the deciding factor (that is, Cьr/Cъr > Cьrь/Cъrъ > Cьr/Cъr > Cer/Cor, or Cьr/Cъr > C'r/Cr > Cer/Cor?). CodeCat (talk) 15:02, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

This is true. This seems a possibility, although it seems strange that the pleophonic spelling of *tĭrt was (according to Lunt at least) tĭrŭt not tĭrĭt, and the tĭrt spellings from before the loss of weak yers would be hard or impossible to explain. As for the conditioning factor of o vs. e, if they were syllabic consonants it would have been palatalization of the consonant itself.

I just found a reference that discusses this problem explicitly:

http://books.google.com/books?id=G2bsJdYrwD4C&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=syllabic+liquids+proto-slavic&source=bl&ots=dz8cq57pht&sig=-yYdLBYKSQ54Qu9cXJ3Y2VAFqOs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_z4CUYi5DsPO2wXUiIHYCQ&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=syllabic%20liquids%20proto-slavic&f=false

This is on page 38, which normally isn't visible in Google Preview, but seems to be visible using this search. In case you can't see it, it says basically there are two views, one (e.g. Schenker 1993) that the development of syllabic liquids was the first sound change involving liquid diphthongs and occurred everywhere, and another (e.g. Carlton 1990) that this was the last such sound change and didn't occur at all in certain areas (which seems to depend on the author among people making this claim, c.f. http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art262e.pdf from Kortlandt, implying that Kortlandt believes syllabic liquids developed throughout West Slavic as well as South Slavic, while Schaarschmidt 1997 evidently believes it operated only in South Slavic, Czech and parts of Slovak, i.e. only where you actually see them in modern languages). The argument against the late-development idea is to explain why the elimination of closed syllables failed only here. The argument against the early-development idea is (a) that it requires a see-saw development, i.e. development then later elimination, and (b) that it requires the development of syllabic palatal liquids, which (I'm filling in here) are cross-linguistically rare. The authors of this book seem to believe the early-development idea. Benwing (talk) 08:26, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Does Old East Slavic actually display pleophony for high vowels? From what I've seen, the most usual outcome is actually the "original" situation with no pleophony or metathesis, like in цьркы (modern церковь) next to OCS црькы which does have metathesis (at least in written form). CodeCat (talk) 14:06, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, look up in the text I wrote above. Entries 6a through 6d are quoted from Lunt. The column labeled OES (Old East Slavic) is Lunt's reconstructed "normalized Old East Slavic" and should probably have stars next to it, but it doesn't in Lunt, and purely represents Lunt's views. The last column labeled ER (Early Rusian) is what actually appears in the text.

Keep in mind that if speakers of OES had syllabic resonants, they would probably perceive them as separate phonemes, and would conclude (erroneously, most likely) that OCS was lacking these sounds, because the writing system has no letters for them. As a result, they would probably try to approximate the sounds with whatever letters they had, and the observed outcomes tŭrt, tŭrŭt and maybe trŭt (for /trt/) are plausible outcomes of this process. Benwing (talk) 22:21, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Split?

There is a lot of information about the historical development of Slavic, which is very good and detailed. However, there are probably so many details that if we were to discuss them all at length in this article, it would become too long and complicated and there wouldn't be enough space left to discuss the properties Proto-Slavic itself, such as its phonology and grammar. So I think a split would be a good idea, where the technical details on the historical development are moved to a separate article, so that this one can focus more on Proto-Slavic synchronically. CodeCat (talk) 15:49, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, not a bad idea. I looked at Romance languages, Germanic languages, Proto-Germanic, and Vulgar Latin. My thoughts:

1. We definitely need a good synchronic description of Proto-Slavic, because this is one of the worst-explained issues in most of the sources. In fact, we need at least a synchronic phonological description of at least two stages, an Early Common Slavic stage and a Middle/Late one. The Middle/Late stage is probably the most important because this is the stage in which the protoforms are usually quoted. It seems clear that the Early stage should have vowels ă, ā, ĕ, ē, ĭ, ī, ŭ, ū, ai, ei, au, eu and the Late stage should have a, o, e, ě, ĭ/ь, i, ŭ/ъ, y, etc. But it's unclear exactly what should go in the two stages, in particular as regards the palatalizations and yodizations -- perhaps the Early stage should precede all of them and the Late stage should follow all? This avoids the difficulties in chronology. Differing outcomes of the 2nd regr. palatalization could be handled either by listing separate East/West forms or using cover symbols like *vĭś-, *ǵvězda; I lean somewhat towards the former. I'm not sure whether it's necessary to list a separate Early stage grammar -- if so, it should be just in the form of summary tables.
2. A significant part of the text in this article should be moved to Slavic languages, particularly the post-Common-Slavic developments.
3. Parts of the text definitely need to be trimmed down. Big chunks are either redundant or over-wordy. I'm definitely one of the offenders here.
4. Some of the nasty details should go into their own pages. There should definitely be a page Slavic accent or Slavic accentuation or Slavic prosody to cover the accent-related details together, because (a) they're so complex, (b) you really need to discuss all stages together to be able to understand what the hell is going on, (c) most readers won't care because only rudimentary knowledge is needed to understand the rest of the phonology. If the grammar section gets big enough, it might make sense to split it into Proto-Slavic grammar.

This should probably handle everything. Big pages aren't necessarily bad if there are a whole lot of topics to cover and they're covered w/o excessive detail, and also I really don't much like too much splitting, because it's very hard to avoid duplication and "bit rot". The sub-pages rarely are well-maintained and tend to accumulate unnecessary detritus. A paradigm example is Germanic strong verb, which has unnecessary duplication (the "General developments" section), unnecessary detail (lists of every strong verb in all Germanic languages at various stages, where they came from, where they went to, etc.), original research (attempts to impose the seven-class system on modern English), badly formatted tables, etc. etc. Once a subpage exists, there's almost an irresistible impulse to fill it up with stuff, which often then becomes hard to delete. Benwing (talk) 01:56, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

If we use the "before" stage as first stage, we basically end up with a dialect of Proto-Balto-Slavic don't we? Perhaps we should refer to that article concerning the "starting point" and treat only the end point in this article.

This is true, but that page doesn't have a synchronic description either.

I don't think being wordy is a bad thing as long as it gives a good explanation of things. I like to read about details and explanations, and it certainly seems preferable to a long list of changes like the one at Proto-Germanic. The issue is more whether there is too much information to fit into a single article, not whether there is too much information in general. Duplication is a problem, but this is definitely not unique to this case; it probably exists anywhere there is a {{main}} template.

Well, what I really hate is when someone "splits" a page by simply pulling a huge section (like the grammar section) out and dumps it in another page. This destroys the unity of the main page, and the reality is that few people bother to read sub-pages. That's why they stop being maintained and start rotting. A large page is not generally problematic as long as it's well designed -- organized in the "pyramid structure" of newspaper and magazine articles, with an abstract followed by a summary of all the main points, followed by the same points in more detail. The problem with wordiness is that it's often just cruft, either verbiage that doesn't add useful info or needless details. Some details don't need mentioning at all -- that's why I took out some of the "Foo thinks X for this reason, but Bar disagrees for that reason, and Baz suggested Y instead for some other reason" stuff in the progressive palatalization. People who want this much detail can go read the sources themselves.

I'm not sure whether a detailed explanation of the dialectal changes belongs on the Slavic languages page. It seems more like an overview page and probably attracts a lot of non-technical readers, probably more than this one does. Maybe a dedicated article like History of the Slavic languages or perhaps more qualified Phonological history of the Slavic languages is a better idea, which could include both the pre-Slavic and post-Slavic developments in detail. On the other hand, there are also History of the Czech language, History of the Macedonian language, History of Polish, History of the Russian language and History of the Slovak language. Only the Polish article seems to deal with phonetic detail to the same extent that this one does, the rest seem more concerned with literary and political history. CodeCat (talk) 02:23, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

History of the Slavic languages is not a bad idea -- in fact, it's probably a better place to put much of this info than Proto-Slavic. Non-linguists are often unfamiliar with the "Proto-X" terminology, which is a less obvious place to put historical linguistic changes than "History of X". The literary and political history you refer to is the "external history" of a language, while the sound and grammar changes are the "internal history", and there are tons of "History of X" articles that cover internal history. Benwing (talk) 03:00, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Phonological history of the Slavic languages would have enough overlap with Swadesh list of Slavic languages that only a single article would be needed. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 02:50, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

IMO there's no need for Phonological history of the Slavic languages until/unless History of the Slavic languages gets too big, and very few languages have such a page. Benwing (talk) 03:00, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

BTW Swadesh list of Slavic languages is a prototypical example of a badly named page -- I had no idea until now that it even existed. Benwing (talk) 03:02, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Just renamed the page to History of the Slavic languages. Benwing (talk) 03:05, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

You might want to post in the talk page a more thorough justification for the rename. It stemmed from a discussion involving a proposal for mass deletion of the dozens of Swadesh lists that used to exist at Wikipedia but have now been moved to Wiktionary. People said that Swadesh lists (or articles about them) weren't encyclopedic. They can be, but that article isn't very well developed past the list. There's also an ongoing discussion regarding the deletion of two other Swadesh list pages that could do with some input. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 03:17, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll post about that. But I think that it's reasonable to argue that Swadesh lists as such aren't encyclopedic. It may be different if you include etymological reflexes or cognates rather than just the word that happens to be most-used in each language. Also, your intro text for creating this list basically asks to expand it into a "History of the Slavic languages" page so I'm surprised you have any objections. Benwing (talk) 06:31, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I created the page and put a bit of work into it, but it hasn't really taken off much beyond the list, so I'm pretty neutral. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 14:27, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

movement/renaming suggestions

I suggest that we move the "Origin", "Historical Development" and "Dialectal Differentiation" sections from Proto-Slavic to History of the Slavic languages and either copying or moving the "Notation" section. Maybe also moving "Loanwords".

There are two ways to do this:

1. Just move/copy the stuff.
2. Given the fact that significantly more than 50% of the text of Proto-Slavic would be moving, move History of the Slavic languages out of the way, rename "Proto-Slavic" to "History of the Slavic languages" and then create a new "Proto-Slavic" article containing the intro, phonology and grammar sections. Finally move the text and list from the old "History of the Slavic languages" page to the new one.

Comments?

Benwing (talk) 22:22, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the Origin section should be moved, because it is less technical and it also explains the division of the historical stages of Slavic. CodeCat (talk) 00:45, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

someone please edit

Section 6.7 "monophthongization and other changes":

• There's a footnote that is showing up in the middle of the text, rather than down in a (currently nonexistent) "Notes" section.
• Stuff on nasalization should probably be split into its own section. I don't know how to present the sound changes in a less nasty-looking way. Maybe in a footnote? (These examples all come from Derksen 2008)

Section 6? There's a footnote concerning nasalization that cites Schenker claiming that iN gets denasalized. Schenker does indeed say that but he's wrong and should not be cited. He's confused because denasalization of iN/uN does occur in endings. Lots of counterexamples in roots. See text, also another is CS *mę̀ti "compress, crumple, scutch" < BS *minˀ-, cf. Lith. mìnti "trample, scutch". (What the hell does "scutch" mean anyway? Hmm, evidently "Dress (fibrous material, esp. retted flax) by beating it." Who knew?) Benwing (talk) 09:43, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

BTW "bast: Fibrous material from the phloem of a plant, used as fiber in matting, cord, etc." Go look up scutching and see how many other obscure words you can find: ret, shive, tow (not the familiar meaning), noil, rolag, roving, sliver (rhymes with "diver"), etc. etc. Benwing (talk) 09:52, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

planning to move text

Hello. Planning on moving most of the text here over the History of the Slavic languages, as previously discussed here and there. Any objections? If not, I'll probably proceed in 4 days or so. Benwing (talk) 11:19, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't object. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 14:23, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Benwing, per your post in my talk page, you'd like to move this page to History of the Slavic languages since most of the content will be moved there anyway and you'd like the edit history and relevent talk page discussion preserved. Do I understand correctly that there would still be a Proto-Slavic article, being re-created with the remainder of the content after this proposed move? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:58, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

That's right. My feeling is that Proto-Slavic should discuss Proto-Slavic itself, including its phonology and grammar at the various stages (Proto-Slavic proper, Middle Common Slavic, Late Common Slavic), as well as a summary of the stages themselves. The remainder should probably go into History of the Slavic languages. I think the sound changes leading up to Late Common Slavic should probably be moved there as well, but it could be argued that they belong in Proto-Slavic. Most of the origin section should also go there, since it's a pretty standard description of the "external history" of the Slavic languages. The idea is that someone who wants to learn about the history of the Slavic languages is more likely to look for History of the Slavic languages than Proto-Slavic -- plenty of interested people won't be very familiar with the concept of a proto-language. Benwing (talk) 13:54, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Move request

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved.

---

Proto-Slavic → History of the Slavic languages – Per the above discussions. This is with the intention of splitting this article into two: Proto-Slavic and History of the Slavic languages, the latter of which is currently a redirect to Slavic vocabulary. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 15:09, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

• Agree (obviously, since I'm the one who suggested this). Benwing (talk) 00:33, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support, go for it. filelakeshoe (talk) 13:25, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Slovenian tone

This is copied from User:CodeCat's talk page. It's a summary of the development of Slovenian tone from Late Common Slavic (LCS) tone.

The following is based on J.M.S. Priestley's article on Slovenian in "The Slavonic Languages" (ed. Comrie et al.), listing the Slovenian-specific accent changes, with the first and last ones added by me. All except #1 are assumed to follow the LCS tonal changes, which turn an original three accent system (short = short falling, acute = long rising, circumflex = long falling) into a four-accent system: viz. the shortening of the original acute, the retraction of the neoacute (which generates new long and short rising accents), and the lengthening of short falling into long falling (circumflex) in initial syllables before a final yer:

1. The "neo-circumflex", where original acute vowels change into long circumflex in non-final syllables in certain morphological circumstances (e.g. before an internal weak yer, before long vowels in the stem, etc.). This occurred very early in Slovenian and Kajkavian, and is supposedly one of the main sources of evidence for long vowels in the syllable after the stress, since these get shortened early on in LCS. (OTOH, I thought length was supposed to be concomitant with quality early on. Possibly this refers specifically to final syllables, which had some unusual changes and developed phonemic length early on; and/or there were various other early accent/quantity changes in these sylables.)
2. "Short falling vowels became long (falling)." (This means that original short vowels merged with original and secondary circumflex.)
3. "Stress shifted from long falling non-final syllables one syllable to the right, producing new long falling syllables." (This is the so-called "progressive shift" -- original short and circumflex vowels move to the right, remaining as long circumflex.)
4. "Stress shifted from short final syllables one syllable to the left onto preceding long vowels, producing new long rising vowels." (This seems like another neoacute-type retraction. Note that final syllables due to progressive shift will never be retracted but they're long. Note also that all final syllables become short during Late CS, although in Kortlandt's theory certain of them later lengthen and trigger a neoacute retraction. So it's unclear exactly which stressed short final syllables are being referred to -- all those that were not due to the progressive shift, or perhaps in slightly more limited circumstances?)
5. "Old neoacute and all short rising vowels in non-final syllables were lengthened". (This is actually listed in the Proto-Slavic section on accent -- the acute is relengthened in initial syllables of multisyllabic words, although this step here is slightly more general.)
6. "Short rising vowels in final syllables become short falling".
7. (only in some areas, including standard Slovene) "stress shifted from short final syllables one syllable to the left onto preceding short e o, producing new long rising low-mid vowels"
8. (only in some areas, not usually in standard Slovene but sometimes as optional forms) "stress shifted from short final syllables one syllable to the left onto preceding short ǝ, producing new stressed shwa"
9. All unstressed non-final syllables were shortened.

These changes are somewhat confusing, but if you work them through you can see that in all non-final syllables, stressed vowels become long. Combined with the last change, we get the actual Slovene prosodic system, where length and stress always co-occur except in words with final stress, which can have either short or long stressed syllables.

See also the following for the neocircumflex: [1]

Benwing (talk) 12:15, 4 February 2013 (UTC) Benwing (talk) 14:17, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Here are illustrations of these changes:

Acute maintained short in monosyllables, lengthened in non-final syllables

• *čàsŭ m. o (a) "time": Chak. čȁs (gen. čȁsa), Sln. čàs (gen. čása)
• *kùpŭ m. o (a) "heap, mound": Chak. kȕp, Sln. kùp (gen. kúpa)
• *kľùka f. ā (a) "hook": Scr. kljȕka, Sln. kljúka
• *làpa f. ā (a) "paw": SCr. lȁpa "paw" vs. Sln. lápa "snout, mouth"
• *kolě̀no n. o (a) "knee": Chak. kolȉno/kolȅno, Sln. kolẹ́nọ
• *làskati v. "flatter": SCr. lȁskati (1sg. lȁskam) vs. Sln. láskati (1sg. láskam)

Neoacute maintained long in monosyllables

• *kľũčĭ m. jo (b) "key": Chak. kľũč, Sln. kljúč
• *kǫ̃tŭ m. o (b) "corner": Chak. kút, Sln. kǫ́t
• *devętŭ num. o "ninth": Chak. devẽtī, Sln. devę́ti

Neoacute maintained short in monosyllables

• *kõšĭ m. jo (b) "basket": Chak. kȍš, Sln. kòš

Neo-circumflex (acute -> circumflex in certain cases in non-final syllables, e.g. when a long vowel follows)

• *làjati v. (a) "bark": SCr. lȁjati (1sg. lȁjēm) vs. Sln. lâjati (1sg. lâjam)
• *làziti v. (a) "crawl, creep": SCr. lȁziti vs. Sln. láziti (1sg. lâzim)

Circumflex maintained in monosyllables

• *kâlŭ m. o (c) "dirt": SCr. kâl "dirt, mud, puddle", Sln. kâł "mud in a puddle, dregs, puddle"
• *kôlsŭ m. o (c) "ear, spike": Chak. klâs, Sln. klâs

Original short vowel lengthened to circumflex in monosyllables

Progressive shift from circumflex to the right

• *bôgŭ m. o (c) "god" (< *bȍgŭ): Chak. bôg (gen. bȍga), Sln. bộg (gen. bogâ)
• *bôlgo n. o (c): Chak. blâgo "cattle", Sln. blagộ "good, goods, cattle"
• *dêrvo n. o (c) "tree, wood": Chak. drîvo, Sln. drẹvộ
• *kȍkošĭ f. i (c) "hen": Chak. kȍkōš, Sln. kokộš (short falling lengthened, then progressive shift to right)
• *kȍlo n. s "wheel": SCr. kȍlo, Sln. kolộ (same as prev.)
• *dȅsętĭ num. i (c) "ten": SCr. dȅsēt, Chak. dȅset, Sln. desę̂t

Leftward shift from short onto long syllables

• *kāzàti v. "show": Chak. kāzȁti (2sg. kãžeš) "say, tell, show", Sln. kázati (1sg. kážem -- neoacute remains lengthened)
• *klęčàti v. (c) "kneel": Chak. kľečȁti (2sg. kľečĩš), Sln. klę́čati (1sg. klečím -- neoacute remains)
• *kūrìti v. (b) "smoke": Chak. kūrȉt (1sg. kũrin), Sln. kúriti (1sg. kúrim -- neoacute remains)
• *lě̄xà f. ā (b) "strip of land, bed": Chak. lⁱehȁ, Sln. lẹ́ha
• *lě̂nŭ adj. o (c) "lazy, slow": Chak. lîn (fem. līnȁ), Sln. lện (circumflex remains) (fem. lẹ́na)

Leftward shift from short onto short low-mid syllables, lengthening

• *čelò n. o (b) "forehead": Chak. čelȍ, Sln. čélọ

These all correspond to one of the first 7 steps listed above. (Step 8 isn't standard.) The Proto-Slavic forms are from Derksen, except that I've added the neoacute where I know it should go. (All cases of long rising accents in Derksen are neoacute, as are all short rising accents on short syllables, since the original acute fell only on long syllables.) Note also that Derksen indicates the lengthening of the original short into circumflex in monosyllables, which he considers pan-Slavic, just as we do.

The basic conclusion is that Slovenian agrees with Chakavian in monosyllables but lengthens all non-final syllables, and in the process might convert original short rising to falling (the neo-circumflex) and/or move the accent leftwards or rightwards. Note also that some Slovenian dialects preserve nasality (and occasionally add nasality where it wasn't originally), and this is indicated in Derksen's forms whenever available.

Benwing (talk) 01:09, 5 February 2013 (UTC) Benwing (talk) 14:17, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Paradigms with accents

Also from User:CodeCat's talk page.

Here's the masculine o stems, accent class c, from Arno Verweij, "Quantity Patterns of Substantives in Czech and Slovak":

	Singular	Plural
N	vôzŭ	vȍzi
G	vȍza	vòzŭ = võzŭ
D	vȍzu	vozòmŭ = vozõmŭ
A	vôzŭ	vȍzy
I	vȍzŭmĭ	vozý
L	vȍzẹ	vozẹ́xŭ = vozẹ̃xŭ

I'm filling in the neoacutes here based on the following:

• short rising on a short syllable must be neoacute, because an original acute can only go on a long syllable
• long rising on a long syllable must be neoacute, because acutes were shortened. The case of vozý is weird; no neoacute retraction possible. Final syllables sometimes get lengthened or (usually) shortened in unexpected ways.

BTW, the indication ẹ apparently indicates e₂, i.e. former PSl *ai. Also, what looks like a dot above a letter can be assumed to be short rising. Two dots are short falling, even when they seem to merge, as in vȍzŭmĭ (this can't be #vôzŭmĭ because (a) compensatory lengthening like this occurs only in monosyllables; (b) the circumflex is usually clearly drawn as such).

Benwing (talk) 09:57, 8 February 2013 (UTC) Benwing (talk) 14:21, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm noticing there isn't actually much about this paradigm that is mobile. The singular forms are all accented on the same syllable. Also, would this paradigm differ if, say, the root vowel were long (diphthong, nasal or original long vowel) or disyllabic? Presumably there wouldn't be a short falling accent then. So I imagine that paradigm C isn't just a single paradigm, but has different "expressions" so to say, depending on the root/stem structure. CodeCat (talk) 14:49, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

With a long root, the paradigm is even simpler, as the accent is consistently circumflex instead of circumflex and short. Here's a long-root masculine jo stem, accent class c:

	Singular	Plural
N	mǫ̂žĭ	mǫ̂ži
G	mǫ̂ža	mǫ́žĭ = mǫ̃žŭ
D	mǫ̂žu	mǫžémŭ = vozẽmŭ
A	mǫ̂žĭ	mǫ̂žẹ
I	mǫ̂žĭmĭ	mǫží
L	mǫ̂ži	mǫžíxŭ = vozĩxŭ

Note that I misread the printed accents when there was a neoacute in a short syllable. In North Slavic, such syllables were lengthened under neoacute if they were /e/ or /o/, and this is reflected here.

Here's a feminine short-root ā stem, accent class c:

	Singular	Plural
N	nogà	nȍgy
G	nogý	nógŭ = nõgŭ
D	nȍdźẹ	nogàmŭ
A	nȍgǫ	nȍgy
I	nogojǫ́	nogàmi
L	nodźẹ̀	nogàxŭ

Notice that there's significantly more accent mobility here. Apparently the o-stems once looked much like this, and the loss of much of the mobility in o-stems was due to Kortlandt's unnamed law A6 (step 4.4), which states "The stress was retracted from final open syllables of disyllabic word forms unless the preceding syllable was closed by an obstruent." "Open syllable" in this case seems to mean "ends with a vowel, or possibly PIE -d (which was already lost), or a glide, but not a fricative, nasal or laryngeal." The ā stems had a laryngeal in the stem, which prevented some of the retraction.

There's a separate law called "Hirt's law that is supposed to account for the middle-stressed forms in the ā stems (DIL plural). These once were end-stressed, as in the o-stems, but the stress was retracted onto a syllable ending in a laryngeal.

With a disyllabic root, I do think things get somewhat more complicated, depending on whether there was a laryngeal in the first or second syllable or both. Benwing (talk) 22:15, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Did vowel fronting occur before nasalisation or after?

I added some information about vowel alternations, but I realise now that a few of those alternations aren't actually found anywhere, such as the ǫ ~ ę alternation. So that begs the question, did vowel fronting occur before or after, and to what degree did it affect nasal vowels? CodeCat (talk) 02:00, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Kortlandt says this:

6.1. (B6) Umlaut. The back vowels a, ā, oN, u, ū, uN had fronted variants ä, ǟ, öN, ü, ǖ, üN after a preceding j. Now e and ē merged with ä and ǟ, respectively. The merger was posterior to stage 5.12 because it presupposes the delabialization. The nasal vowels eN and öN remained distinct, cf. OCS. znajǫ ‘I know’, where the rounding was preserved. The other rounded front vowels also remained phonetically conditioned variants of the corresponding back vowels, e.g. jüga ‘yoke’.

This indicates that fronting followed nasalization and didn't affect nasal vowels. (Note, stage 5.12 is "Delabialization of o, ō to a, ā".) According to him, fronting of the high vowels (or at least, merging with the corresponding front vowels) occurred later:

7.8. (B12) Delabialization of u, ū, uN, ü, ǖ, üN. This development yielded y, ȳ, yN, i, ī, iN, e.g. wyʔdraʔ ‘otter’, lyNʔka ‘bast’, iga ‘yoke’, 2 sg. imp. nesī ‘carry’, acc.pl. arbyN ‘slaves’, kaņņiN ‘horses’. As a result of the delabialization, the prothetic w before y, ȳ received the status of a phoneme. The new iN from üN did not merge with earlier iN, which had apparently merged with eN at this stage, e.g. xwāleN ‘praising’. The delabialization was posterior to the rise of prothetic w (7.1) because the latter could hardly develop before unrounded y, ȳ.

This business about "the new iN" vs. "the earlier iN" is evidently to account for irregularities in certain endings. The separation of the fronting of high and low vowels seems largely there to account for the word *jь̂go "yoke", rather than #jь̂zo, i.e. Kortlandt groups the progressive palatalization with the second regressive palatalization, which occurs between 6.1 and 7.8, and he doesn't want the progressive palatalization to be triggered in this word.

Benwing (talk) 23:49, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

That may be more technical details than is useful in this article, unless we are planning to cite Kortlandt's whole paper... I think for now it is enough that there is definite evidence that nasal vowels weren't affected by fronting, so that we know that the sections need to be reordered somewhat. CodeCat (talk) 23:54, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting you cite any of these details, just providing info for you. I think it's enough just to say that vowels were fronted after palatal consonants (which arose either from /j/ or from the progressive palatalization), but that nasal vowels weren't affected. Benwing (talk) 00:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but it pressupposes that nasal vowels already existed, but the article discusses them in the opposite order. Currently, nasalisation is grouped with general loss of diphthongs; should that entire section be moved so that it precedes the vowel fronting section? We also have to consider that original *kē became *ča, but original *kai became *cě, so the loss of diphthongs occurred after the first palatalization. So if we presuppose that loss of diphthongs preceded fronting, then that means that *ě might have been fronted to *i in some circumstances but backed to *a in others, which is rather strange. CodeCat (talk) 01:09, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

There's no reason that nasalization and loss of diphthongs need to happen at the same time. Loss of liquid diphthongs didn't happen at the same time, after all. As for *ě getting fronted to *i or backed to *a, these are two entirely different processes occurring at different times. The backing to *a is very late and is not even reflected in the oldest OCS documents. The fronting to *i was much earlier -- in fact, it occurred before monophthongization. In reality, *ai was fronted to *ei, which later evolved to *ī. Hence the order was clearly nasalization, then fronting, then monophthongization. You should read Kortlandt's paper -- it explains all this clearly (at first, ignore the accent-related changes to make your life easier). It's here: [2] Benwing (talk) 00:36, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I just realised that there is one example of a nasal vowel with fronting: the y ~ ę alternation (from earlier ūn). How does that fit in? CodeCat (talk) 15:11, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

This is Kortlandt's step 7.8. See above. Benwing (talk) 00:36, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

The third nasal vowel

If there is a third nasal vowel ę̇, the outcomes it has in the various dialects should probably be listed in the section on nasal vowels, along with the table that's already there. The article itself says that it often merged with ě, but I'm not sure whether it did in Russian (which has -ja in its place). CodeCat (talk) 04:09, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I think in reality it *always* merges with ě in North Slavic and with ę in South Slavic. So says Schenker. Which examples can you point to where Russian has -ja? Benwing (talk) 00:10, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

The example "horse" which is given. Russian has konja in the accusative. CodeCat (talk) 00:22, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

konja is accusative singular. This comes from the genitive singular, where -ja is expected. The nasal vowel ę̇ occurs in the acc. pl. of this declension (masculine -jo declension). The Russian plural konjej is again from the genitive, not the expected outcome of ę̇. Actually, I think all outcomes of ę̇ in Russian have been analogically replaced, either due to acc/gen. merging or remodeling the soft form based on the hard form. You'd have to look at Old Russian. Benwing (talk) 03:41, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sorry. I was getting masculine accusative plural confused with feminine genitive singular... I am still trying to remember which ending is which in the Slavic languages, because different nouns may have the same ending but in different functions. (like a-stem nominative -a = o-stem genitive -a, while in many languages o-stem dative -u = a-stem accusative -u... it can get confusing like that!) CodeCat (talk) 04:22, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to the IE languages! Same problem in Latin, Gothic, Old English, Sanskrit, etc. etc. It gets steadily worse as the language develops over time, but it's there even in Greek and Sanskrit. For me, it's probably the biggest thing that's made Latin in particular so damn difficult -- the word order in Latin is so free, and there are so few function words, that you often can't tell whether a particular word is a noun, verb or adjective (or even a preposition or adverb, often enough) until you parse the word properly, and the fact that so many endings overlap in complex ways among noun, verb and adjective classes, and so many stems can serve multiple functions, makes this just a bitch. On top of this, length marks are routinely omitted, which adds a bunch more ambiguity. Horace's poetry is infamous, cf.:

... me tabula sacer

votiva paries indicat uvida

suspendisse potenti

vestimenta maris deo.

which renders word-for-word as something like

... me tablet sacred

votive wall indicates wet

to-have-hung powerful

clothes of-sea god.

but which actually means

"... The sacred wall with its votive tablet indicates that I have hung (my) wet clothes for the powerful god of the sea."

where:

• [sacer paries] is a constituent and [tabula votiva] is another despite the fact that each is discontinuous, and these two are intermixed, and that one has adj-noun order and the other noun-adj order;
• [me suspendisse] is another constituent despite having several other words and parts of various other constituents separating the words, and in fact it's the object of [indicat] despite surrounding it;
• similarly, [uvida vestimenta] and [potenti deo] are widely-separated discontinuous constituents.

You can sort this all out (with a lot of work!) if you figure out which case, gender and number each word is in, since adjectives must agree with their nouns:

• [sacer paries] "sacred wall" is masc. sg. nom.;
• [tabula votiva] "votive tablet" is fem. sg., ambiguously either nominative or ablative but it must be ablative because there's already another nominative constituent;
• dependent infinitives like [suspendisse] "to-have-hung" must have a corresponding subject in the accusative case ([me] "me");
• [uvida vestimenta] "wet clothes" is neut. nom/acc. pl., in this case it must be accusative because [suspendisse] "to-have-hung" requires an accusative object, and it wouldn't be [me] make much sense for the clothes to hang me rather than the other way around;
• [potenti deo] is masc. dat. sg.;
• etc.

Ambiguity is everywhere:

• The -a in [uvida] "wet" and [votiva] "votive" is ambiguously nom sg fem, abl sg fem, or nom/acc pl neut, and you have to work out which is which;
• [paries] means "wall" here but can also mean "you will give birth", and easily confused with [pares] (either "you appear" or "you may prepare" or "equal" (nom/acc masc/fem pl.), [parias] ("you may give birth", also looks like the fem. pl. acc. of a non-existent but possible noun "#paria"), [pareas] ("you may appear", also looks like the fem. pl. acc. of a non-existent but possible noun "#parea"), etc.
• [maris] means "of (the) sea" but can also mean "of (the) male", and the ending [-is] (gen. sg. of cons.-stem nouns) is confusable with [-is] (2nd. sg. pres. indic. of -ere verbs), [-is] (2nd. sg. perf. indic.), [-īs] (2nd. sg. pres. indic. of -īre verbs, given that long marks aren't normally written), [-īs] (acc. pl. of i-stem nouns), [-ris] (2nd. sg. pres. indic. passive), etc.

Benwing (talk) 20:49, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

"tenth horse"

If this is in the accusative plural case, like the form of "horse" seems to imply, then surely the adjective should also be in that case? So it would be *desęty koňę̇ in Proto-Slavic. CodeCat (talk) 04:20, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

If you wish (I was intending these to be separate words, not a phrase, but go ahead and change it). Benwing (talk) 20:51, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

"tenth horse" doesn't quite work

The sound in question occurs in the accusative plural, not singular. You'd probably want a jā-stem noun, which has the same sound in the genitive singular. Maybe zmija "snake" or zemlja "land" or duša "soul". Or just use "tenth" by itself in the appropriate case. Benwing (talk) 01:22, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi! The word for 'tenth' used here actually means 1/10 and not the ordinal number (either that or it's not in the Accusative). The correct form for the ordinal tenth (plural, accusative) is десятых. Goderich (talk) 06:51, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Some comments on the article

• The bulk of the article doesn't deal at all with the history of Slavic languages, but the history of Proto-Slavic (internal, and from PIE and PBSl. perspective). From an article titled History of the Slavic languages I'd primarily expect Proto-Slavic as a starting point, with developments to modern Slavic languages in phonology, grammar, lexicon, syntax and so on being summarized. I doubt that the article could be renamed to something appropriate considering the vastness of topics it covers, so the offending content should be extracted to other (perhaps new) articles, leaving the space for further editing because the article is already way too huge.
• Periodization of Proto-Slavic differs from one author to another, every sentence involving years must be sourced otherwise it's OR. I'd suggest refraining from terms such as MCS and PSl. (which is ambiguous) altogether and simply listing reconstructions in chains when describing accent shifts and sound changes. If necessary, simply use Early PSl. *x > .. > .. > .. > (L)CS *y everywhere.
• Everything from Kortlandt comes with a big question mark, because things such as "Van Wijk's law" are not generally accepted. A more balanced approach is needed with theories of other (Balto-)Slavists as well.
• Wiktionary uses different notation for Proto-Slavic segments, so wikilinking there could be problematic and/or introduce confusion. Perhaps they should harmonize? Is there a particular reason why there are no links to enwikt at all? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 00:41, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
  • I've been wanting to add a section about the grammatical developments from Proto-Slavic onwards. Things like the development of the aspect distinction, animacy, the loss of certain cases in some Slavic languages, the loss of the aorist and so on. CodeCat (talk) 02:16, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

    The article is already > 100K and there is not much place for further additions.. However, if the first part of the article were to be moved to e.g. History of Proto-Slavic, there'd plenty of space left. This article would start from Late Proto-Slavic and continue to modern languages. Then, if it grows too big we'd extract pieces to History of Slavic declension and so on. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 03:43, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

    • See my comments in Proto-Slavic about where terms like MCS come from. I think it's important to specify the periodization in one way or another because otherwise it's simply far too confusing to figure out the very long history of Common Slavic. I'm not attached to particular terms like "Middle Common Slavic" and this doesn't mean that unperiodized chained reconstructions are bad but we need to be careful not to make an already highly technical subject accessible only to Slavic experts. I agree about sourcing the years better. Likewise your comments about Kortlandt. I put this article together after a great deal of trying to puzzle through the sources, which often disagree with each other, and there may well be errors. The non-Kortlandt sources are even less accessible than Kortlandt, since he's the only one (AFAIK) that actually gives a list of sound changes in approximate order so that I could actually work through specific examples when I didn't understand something. Feel free to update things to include a more balanced approach.
    • As for lack of enwikt links, it's simply for want of time to put them in.
    • Splitting into History of Proto-Slavic or whatever is not necessarily a bad idea. I wanted to keep the pre-history of Proto-Slavic together with the stuff describing the later breakup of the Slavic languages because the two topics are so closely intertwined and because it's hard to figure out where to draw the line given the long history of Common Slavic. However, I could see a split at section 5 "Dialectal differentiation". The accentual changes are hard to handle this way, though; the entire topic from PBS to present needs to be discussed together. Benwing (talk) 01:26, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
      • The accent could go in a separate Balto-Slavic accent article, which could discuss the whole subject in full detail without having to make concessions because other topics also need covering. CodeCat (talk) 01:51, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

        I started Proto-Slavic accent but it's unfinished since some other articles that it depends on need to be expanded a bit first (I prefer the bottom-up approach). Article on Balto-Slavic accent would only deal with developments from PIE to the stage immediately before the Proto-Balto-Slavic split. Later developments in Slavic and Baltic are completely unrelated to each other. Similarly, article on Serbo-Croatian accent would use Proto-Slavic accent as a starting point and explain how the modern system evolved. Each of these topic is sufficiently complex to merit their own articles. One big problem with Proto-Balto-Slavic accent is that every author has their own theory, and there is very little that all agree upon, so for it to be written in a NPOV manner basically it would have to be written as a survey of various theories. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 02:26, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for creating that article! It looks very good. At some point you should probably extract the text on Slavic accent from here and History of Proto-Slavic, move it to that article, and integrate it, leaving summaries of some sort in place of the extracted text. You seem to understand this area a lot more than I do so you're the logical person to do it. The text I wrote and User:CodeCat contributed to is based on English sources (esp. Kortlandt, whose theories I realize aren't always well-accepted); unfortunately I can't read Croatian. Benwing (talk) 23:10, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Article has been split

I split out the History of Proto-Slavic. Most of the introduction moved to that article; what's here is a condensed version. This was a fairly slash-and-burn type of approach; feel free to edit. Benwing (talk) 22:56, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Great! Now there is space to deal with morphological developments as well, on both articles. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:04, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

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Serbo-Croatian does not exist anymore

The whole article writes about the Serbo-Croatian language as one entity. This language existed only temporary, when Croatian and Serbian were brought under one roof. It wrongly writes about "modern Serbo-Croatian". Something like modern Serbo-Croatian does not exist. The wrongs in this article in regards to Serbo-Croatian go so far that one of the references, namely Matasović, Ranko (2008), Poredbenopovijesna gramatika hrvatskoga jezika, Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, ISBN 978-953-150-840-7, a book that writes about the Croatian language in Croatian, is said to be written in Sebo-Croatian instead of Croatian. See language of the book here: https://glottolog.org/resource/reference/id/87739 The book is written in Croatian. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Umno22 (talk • contribs) 11:23, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

A text in the Old East Slavic looks strongly archaic for a modern East Slav. A text in the Old Belarusian looks archaic for a modern Belarusian. These languages arguably “do not exist anymore”. Is a random text in 20th-century Serbo-Croatian archaic for a modern Serb or Croat or Bosniak or Monte-Crna-how-are-they-called? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:35, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

See Serbo-Croatian#Present sociolinguistic situation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:22, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Sara Sarah

Sara Sarah Amso. So s oananjps. Nzosnsown son nz Amin mehboob

S ok n. 

Sara Amin n Amin. Am s in. So. Sm ok. Amin s ok. So. .SK. Amos. S ok. SK. 51.9.19.70 (talk) 12:17, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi

Hi hello 2A00:23C8:7206:6901:2026:251B:A73F:D4EF (talk) 17:07, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

South Slavic not functioning as a unit

"For most comparative purposes, however, South Slavic does not function as a unit. Bulgarian and Macedonian, while quite similar to each other, are radically different from the other South Slavic languages in phonology and grammar. The phonology of Bulgarian and Macedonian is similar to East Slavic rather than their nearest Slavic neighbor Serbo-Croatian^{[citation needed]} (suggesting an early East–West divide across the whole Slavic territory, before the incursion of Hungarian and Romanian speakers). In grammar, Bulgarian and Macedonian have developed distinctly from all other Slavic languages, eliminating nearly all case distinctions (strongly preserved elsewhere), but preserving and even strengthening the older Indo-European^{[citation needed]} aspectual system consisting of synthetic aorist and imperfect tenses (largely eliminated elsewhere in favor of the new Slavic aspectual system)."

The problem with this unsourced section is that it conflates contrastive and historical-comparative analysis: most of the observations about the differences between Bulgarian-Madedonian and Serbo-Croatian-Slovene apply to the modern languages, but not to the time of the alleged (and undated) 'early East–West divide across the whole Slavic territory, before the incursion of Hungarian and Romanian speakers'. None of the indisputably ancient, Common Slavic sound changes splits all the Slavic languages along this line. The loss of case and, most likely, the development of the article in Bulgarian-Madedonian happened much later, and likewise the loss of the imperfect in other Slavic. The quantitative and accentual distinctions don't seem likely to have disappeared in all of East and South-East Slavic, since they influence the accentuation of the article in Bulgarian, and it hadn't developed before the split. The vowel reductions are also late and very different in East Slavic and South-East Slavic. Eastern Bulgarian reduction and (conservative) palatalisation are fairly different from the East Slavic ones and also shared much more with Russian than with the closest neighbour, Ukrainian.

79.100.144.23 (talk) 00:11, 6 August 2022 (UTC)