Table Of ContentPreface
This volume is a collection of selected papers dealing with compara-
tive and historical problems of Slavic linguistics. Their arrangement re-
flects, on the one hand, the shifting interests of Slavic linguistic scholar-
ship as it evolved over the last three decades, and, on the other hand, the
various phases and facets of my work. Thus the first seven articles deal
primarily with phonological questions, articles 9 to 19 with questions of
inflectional and derivational morphology, articles 20 to 26 with Slavic
morphophonemics (in particular with Slavic accentology), and the last
three articles with Slavic lexicology. Interspersed are articles that strad-
dle the domains of phonology and morphophonemics (8) and of mor-
phophonemics and derivation (28 and 29). The division of subjects is
not, however, strict, since the formal and semantic aspects of language
are inextricably linked; the mutual relation of form and function consti-
tutes, in fact, one of the basic and recurrent themes of this volume.
It will be noted that although some articles deal with individual Slav-
ic languages or dialects, a typological or general linguistic outlook in-
forms the overall formulation of the issues.
The title I have chosen for the present collection deliberately alludes
to the book by Nicolas van Wijk, Les langue slaves. De l'unité à la plura-
lité written in 1937 and reprinted in Mouton's Janua linguarum series in
1956. The lucid and compact monograph by the Dutch Slavist in some
ways marked a new approach to "comparative Slavic grammar" by de-
voting one of its five chapters to the "parallelism and divergence in the
evolution of the Slavic languages." The chapter in question discusses
some phonetic parallelisms in the history of the Slavic languages (e. g.,
the fate of the nasals in Polish and Bulgarian, the change of g to A in the
central Slavic languages), but stops short of any broader conclusions
concerning the possibility and limits of linguistic convergence. The au-
thor remains, in effect, within the traditional historical framework, as
when he believes that the sources of Slavic linguistic convergence are to
be sought in the common linguistic patrimony of the Slavs ("the germs
of future history", he writes, "were already contained in Common Slav-
ic") and in their presumed "sentiment" of communality. The true focus
of the book remains thus the breakdown of Common Slavic and the for-
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Vili Slavic Languages
mation of the diverse Slavic languages, a focus which is indicated by the
very title of the book.
A new orientation in Slavic comparative and historical grammar
emerged with the rise of contemporary linguistics and its new awareness
that languages do not evolve in a totally fortuitous way, or, as Baudouin
de Courtenay put it, that "there is a limit on linguistic change." The lat-
ter idea was for Baudouin a corollary of the more fundamental notion
that languages preserve stability throughout and despite historical
change (i. e., the presence of statics within diachrony) and that variation
is implicit in any synchronic state (i. e., the presence of dynamics within
synchrony). Baudouin himself developed these concepts in a pathbreak-
ing study {Zarys historiijçzyka polskiego, 1922) which showed that some
of the basic, or as we would now say, unmarked elements of Polish
phonology remained invariant throughout the history of the language,
whereas its more complex or marked elements were subject to continu-
ous variation and change. Change itself was not, moreover, completely
contingent, for it moved, as it were, along a limited number of alterna-
tive paths.
These pioneering ideas of Baudouin were taken up and advanced by
the linguists of Prague who gave them a theoretical underpinning by for-
mulating the interrelated concepts of markedness, neutralization and of
the hierarchical organization of all levels of language. The question of
linguistic invariance and variation became thereby grounded in the gen-
eral theory of language, and historical linguistics found itself in a close
alliance with linguistic typology, that rapidly developing branch of lin-
guistics that served as the testing ground for predictive and explanatory
statements about the structure and historical development of language.
These pivotal ideas, which were elaborated by the linguists of Prague
(above all in the field of phonology where they were first formulated by
Roman Jakobson), have served as a point of departure for a number of
the present studies whose major purpose is the elucidation of the con-
vergent and divergent phenomena in the structure of the contemporary
Slavic languages. The remarkable similarity of these languages is, of
course, highly conducive to this kind of inquiry.
Although the basic orientation of the book is typological, it is clear
that such an approach carries throughout historical implications, just as
the more explicit historical studies have a direct bearing on Slavic typo-
logy.
A considerable part of the volume is devoted to questions of Slavic
morphology whose typological and historical aspects have been far less
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Preface IX
explored than those of phonology. The concepts of oppositions, hier-
archy and neutralization have also here revealed their explanatory pow-
er. But particularly rewarding seems to me the study of the interplay of
diverse grammatical categories, which I have examined on the basis of
such fundamental Slavic categories as gender, number and case, as well
as in the study of word-formation.
At the same time it has appeared that some of the generalizations of
early structuralism were premature and oversimplified. Thus it can no
longer be maintained that phonemic quantity and stress, or large vocalic
and consonantal systems are incompatible, just as the notion of marked-
ness has proved to require a more flexible and dynamic interpretation.
And, as I have shown in several of my papers, the all-pervasive phenom-
enon of neutralization is frequently complemented by the introduction
of supplementary, "compensatory" discriminations which balance the
asymmetry of linguistic oppositions.
My work on morphophonemics, which makes up a considerable part
of this book, has likewise profited from the insights of linguists (in the
first place of Jakobson) who have overcome the piecemeal treatment of
morphophonemic alternations (as it was still practiced by Trubetzkoy
and American descriptivists) by introducing the concept of base forms
and of rules which predict the occurrence of the morphological alter-
nants. Such an approach has significantly simplified the description of
the formal processes of a language and has been most helpful to me in
the analysis of Slavic accentuation, which had proven to be far more
simple and systematic than was originally thought. The recent emphasis
on simplicity for its own sake seems to me, however, a barren and otiose
enterprise. A meaningful analysis of the morphophonemic processes of
a language demands that they be treated with reference to their func-
tions as well as in their mutual relations. As I have further argued (e. g.,
in the article on the Slavic vocative and the Russian numerals), one must
avoid the tendency to absolutize the basic forms as "deep" and immut-
able entities, for in this case, too, language shows its capacity for coexist-
ing patterns and innovations.
A special place in the book is accorded to selected though central
problems of Slavic accentology, for this is clearly the least advanced and
hitherto controversial branch of Slavic linguistics. While some of the
present papers have appeared in another collection, now out of print
{Studies in Slavic Morphophonemics and Accentology, Ann Arbor, 1979),
I have here expanded their range and taken a more explicit critical
stance with respect to some recent theories on Slavic accentuation. What
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χ Slavic Languages
seems to me most questionable about these theories is that (in following
Kurytowicz) they have too easily discarded some of the true insights of
"classical" Slavic accentology (e.g., the discovery of a correlation be-
tween the distribution of stress and the inherited Common Slavic
quantity of vowels), while they perpetuate its traditional preoccupation
with problems of reconstruction. But in the words of the mathematician
H. Weyl (quoted on p. 269 of this volume), "explanation of a phenome-
non is to be sought not in its origin, but in its immanent laws. Knowl-
edge must be far advanced before one may hope to understand... their
genesis. For want of this knowledge the speculations on pedigrees ...
are mostly premature." It would seem that linguists brought up on the
lessons of modern structuralism are hardly in need of such a reminder.
And, indeed, many speculations about the prehistoric origin of certain
accentual forms would lose ground if greater attention were paid to the
immanent, structural relations of Slavic morphology (as I have shown in
the analysis of the Russian numerals and the Slavic adverbs). Equally
strained seems to me the attempt to press the origin of the Slavic accents
into a Lithuanian mold, the more that the latter is itself in need of an
adequate historical explanation. Another shortcoming of some recent
accentological works is their superficial, and even inaccurate coverage
of the contemporary Slavic facts (as shown in the article on the athemat-
ic nominal stems), though these facts help clarify some of the historical
and synchronic accentual relations. Progress in the field will no doubt
be made when Slavic accentology abandons its one-sided "archeologi-
cal" approach and when the geographically scattered and heteroge-
neous historical facts are welded into a cohesive theory with a true com-
parative and historical dimension.
This book is offered in the belief that problems of convergence and
divergence will continue to retain their appeal to the Slavic scholar and
to students of language and linguistic typology.
It is my pleasant duty to thank my graduate students, Ljerka Debus
and Jack Schreiber for their technical help in the preparation of the
book, and the Department of Linguistics at Yale for a subvention to-
wards its publication.
Edward Stankiewicz
July, 1986
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Abbreviations of Journals
AL Acta linguistica, Copenhagen.
AmerContr American Contributions to the ... International Con-
gress of Slav(ic)ists.
ANSSR Akademija Nauk SSSR.
ArchNéerPhonExp Archives néerlandais de phonétique expérimentale,
The Hague.
Arch VerglPhon Archiv för vergleichende Phonetik=Zeitschrift für Pho-
netik und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin.
ASlPh Archiv für slavische Philologie, Vienna-Berlin.
ASNSL Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Lite-
raturen, Braunschweig.
BAN Balgarska akademija na naukite, Sofia.
BdlgDial Balgarska dialektologija, Sofia.
BslgEz Baigarski ezik. Organ na Instituía za balgarski ezik pri
Balgarskata Akademija na Naukite, Sofia.
BJF Biblioteka Juznoslovenskog filologa, Belgrade.
BPTJ Biuletyn Polskiego Towarzystwa Jezykoznawczego,
Cracow.
BSLP Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris, Paris.
CFS Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, Geneva.
Charisteria Mathesio Charisteria Guilelmo Mathesio quinquagenario a
discipulis et Circuii linguistici Pragensis sodalibus obla-
ta, Prague, 1932.
CJKZ Casopis za slovenski jezik, knjizevnost in zgodovino,
Ljubljana.
CslVlastivëda Ceskoslovenskà Vlastivéda, Prague.
Die Sprache Die Sprache. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, Vien-
na.
FFC Folklore Fellows Communications, Helsinki.
FolSlav Folia Slavica, Columbus, Ohio.
Germsl Germanoslavica, Prague.
GlasSAN Glas Srpske Akademije Nauka, Belgrade (Formerly
Srpska Kraljevska Akademija).
GodFFNS Godisnjak Filozofskogfakulteta u Novom Sadu.
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XII Slavic Languages
GodSU Godisnik na Sofijskija universitet, Istorikofilologièeski
fakultet, Sofia.
Grada NDBiH Grada. Nauòno drustvo NR Bosne i Hercegovine,
Sarajevo.
HDZb Hrvatski dijalektoloski zbornik, Zagreb.
IJaz Institut jazykoznanija AN SSSR.
IJSLP International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics,
The Hague.
IORJaS Izvestija otdelenija russkogo jazyka i slovesnosti Aka-
demii Nauk, St. Petersburg - Leningrad.
IRJa Institut russkogo jazyka, Moscow.
IJAL International Journal of American Linguistics, Bloom-
ington, Indiana.
Izvestija ANSSSR Izvestija Akademii Nauk SSSR, Leningrad.
IzvIBE Izvestija na Instituía za balgarski ezik, Sofia.
IzvSSF Izvestija na Seminara po slavjanskata filologija pri Uni-
verziteta ν Sofija, Sofia.
JF Juznoslovenskifilolog, Belgrade.
JoumAmerFolk Journal of American Folklore, Philadelphia.
JPol Jezyk Polski, Cracow.
JSp Jezikoslovni spisi, Ljubljana.
KSISl Kratkie soobscenija Instituía slavjanovedenija Akade-
mii Nauk SSSR, Moscow.
Language Language. Journal of the Linguistic Society of America,
Baltimore.
LGU Leningradskij Gosudarstvennyj Universitet imeni A.
Zdanova, Leningrad.
LS Linguistica Slovaca, Bratislava.
LudSlow Lud Slowianski. Pismo poswiecone dialektologii i etno-
grafi Slowian, Cracow.
LjetopisJAZU Ljetopis Jugoslavenske Akademije Znanosti i Umjet-
nosti, Zagreb.
MatSovesc Materialy i Sovescenija, Voronez.
MIRD Materialy i issledovanija po russkoj dialektologii, Mos-
cow.
MJ Makedonskijazik, Skoplje.
Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Weten-
MKAW
schappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Series A, Amsterdam.
Ill Medunarodni Kongres Slavista. Izdanje izvrsnog
MKSL-III
odbora, Belgrade, 1939.
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Abbreviations of Journals XIII
Movoznavstvo Movoznavstvo. Naukovi zapysky, Kiev.
MP Makedonskipregled, Sofia.
MPCG Monografiepolskich cech gwarowych, Cracow.
MPKJ Materiafy iprace Komisji Jezykowej Akademii Umiejet-
nosci w Krakowie, Cracow.
MPPAU Materiafy iprace Polskiej Akademii Umiejetnosci, Cra-
cow.
Nasjezik Nas jezik, Belgrade.
NaukZapXark U Naukovi zapysky Xar'kivs'koho universytetu, Kharkov.
Neophilologus Neophilologus. Driemaandelijks tijdschrift voor de we-
tenschappelijk beoefening van levende vreemde talen en
van hun letterkunde, Groningen.
NZapCerkasPI Naucnye zapiski Cerkasskogo pedagogiceskogo institu-
ía, Cerkassy.
PFil Prace filologiczne, Warszaw.
Proceedings of the 1st International Congress of Pho-
PICPhonS I netic Sciences, Amsterdam, 1932.
Prace Komisji Jezykowej, Polska Akademia Umiejet-
PK J, PAU nosci w Krakowie, Cracow.
Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, New
PMLA York.
Priloziproucavanjujezika, Novi Sad.
PPJ Prace Polskiej Akademii Umiejetnosci, Cracow.
PracePAU Rad Jugoslavenske Akademije Znanosti i Umjetnosti,
RadJAZU Zagreb.
RESI Revue des études slaves, Paris.
RFV Russkijfilologiceskij vestnik, Warsaw.
RhMPhil Rheinisches Museum fur Philologie, Frankfurt am
Main.
RodNapr Rodopski Napredak, Sofia.
RozprPAU Rozprawy Polskiej Akademii Umiejetnosci, Cracow.
RWF Rozprawy Akademii Umiejetnosci. Wydziat filolo-
giczny, Cracow.
Sbor... Balan Sbornik ν cest na akad. Aleksandar Teodorov-Balan, po
slucaj devetdeset ipetata mu godisnina, Sofia, 1955.
SborBAN Sbornik na Bslgarskata Akademija na Naukite, Sofia.
SborMAE Sbornik Muzeja Antropologa i Ètnografìi.
SborNU Sbornik za narodni umotvorenija, nauka i kniznina,
Sofia.
SborORJaS Sbornik Otdelenija russkogo jazyka i slovesnosti, St. Pe-
tersburg - Leningrad.
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XIV Slavic Languages
Sbor Praci I SSlov Sbornik praci I Sjezdu slovanskych filologú ν Praze,
Prague, 1929.
Schriften BKLA Schriften der Balkankommission. Linguistische Abtei-
lung. I. Südslavische Dialektstudien. KAW, Vienna.
SDZb Srpski dijalektoloski zbomik, Belgrade.
SFen Studia Fennica, Helsinki.
SFPSl Studia ζfilologiipolskiej i slowianskiej, Warsaw.
SiizKAW Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wis-
senschaften, Vienna.
SitzÖstAW Sitzungsberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse,
Vienna.
SKA Srpska Kraljevska Akademija, later Srpska Akademija
Nauka.
SlavFîl Slavjanskaja filologija, Sbornik statej, Moscow, 1958.
Slavia Slavia. Casopispro slovanskou filologii, Prague.
SlavJaz Slavjanskoejazykoznanie, Moscow.
SlavRev Slavisticna Revija, Ljubljana.
SIJ Slovenskijezik, Ljubljana.
Stat'i i materialy po bolgarskoj dialektologii SSSR,
SMBD Moscow.
Slavia occidentalis, Poznan.
SO Sprawozdania Polskiej Akademii Umiejetnosci, War-
saw.
SprPAU Slovenská ree, Bratislava.
Studies in Slavic Morphophonemics and Accentology,
SR Ann Arbor, 1979.
Studies ...
Symbolae... Kurylowicz Symbolae linguisticae in honorem Georgii Ku-
rytowicz, Adam Heinz et al. (eds.), Wroclaw, 1965.
Symbolae ... Rozwadowski Symbolae Grammaticae in honorem Ioan-
nis Rozwadowski, 1-2 Cracow, 1927-1928.
TCLP Travaux de Cercle linguistique de Prague, Prague.
TNYAS Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences,
New York.
TrakSbor Trakijski sbornik, Sofia.
Trudove BD Trudove po belgarska dialektologija, Sofia.
Trudy IJa Trudy Instituía jazykoznanija AN SSSR, Moscow.
Trudy VoronezU Thidy Voronezskogo universiteta, Voronez.
UcenZapInstSlav Ucenye zapiski Instituía Slavjanovedenija Akademii
Nauk SSSR, Moscow - Leningrad.
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Abbreviations of Journals XV
UcenZapKazan ' U Ucenye zapiski Kazanskogo universiteta, Kazan'.
UcenZapKalinGPI Ucenye zapiski Kaliningradskogo gosudarstvenno-
go pedagogiceskogo instituía, Kaliningrad.
UcenZapKisinevU Ucenye zapiski Kisinevskogo universiteta, Kishinev.
UcenZapLGPI Ucenye zapiski Leningradskogo pedagogiceskogo insti-
tuía imeni Gercena, Leningrad.
UcenZapMosGPI Ucenye zapiski Moskovskogo gosudarsfvennogo ped-
agogiceskogo insíiíuía imeni Lenina, Moscow.
UcenZapSverdlPI Ucenye zapiski Sverdlovskogo pedagogiceskogo insti-
tuía, Sverdlov.
VesinikMGU Vesinik Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiíeía,
Serija filologija, zurnalistika, Moscow.
VJa Voprosy jazykoznanija, Moscow.
VRJa Voprosy russkogo jazykoznanija, Lvov.
Word Word. Journal of the Linguistic Circle of New York,
New York.
WSl Die Welt der Slaven. Vierteljahrschrift fur Slavistik,
Wiesbaden.
ZborFilLing Zbornik Matice srpske za filologiju i lingvistiku, Novi
Sad.
ZborlnsiNauka Zbornik Insíiíuía hisíorijskih nauka u Zadru, Zadar.
ZfSl Zeitschriftfur Slavistik, Berlin.
ZslPh Zeitschrift fur slavische Philologie, Leipzig - Heidel-
berg.
ZMNP íurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosvescenija, St. Pe-
tersburg.
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