Re: Daci

--- In cybalist@..., "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:

...
I

>>can't see it in Dalmatian either, despite its genetic proximity to
>>Romanian. The early Slavic languages of the Balkans don't show this
>>innovation; it appeared about the 12th century and took some time
>>to be fully implemented, as Bulgarian and Macedonian shifted
>>typologically from inflected to analytic. As there are examples of
>>postfixed articles in Russian dialects, it's possible that the
>>construction had existed in embryonic form already in Common
>>Slavic, but its use was very limited until contact with Balkan
>>Romance and/or early Albanian boosted its frequency.

> The point I was trying to make, some sentences back, is that such
> constructions may "hide" in the language. You ask native speakers
> of the language: ...
> Now to the application: Obviously the late appearance in the Balkan
> languages of suffixed articles can't be used as an argument that it
> wasn't used in the spoken language. Imagine the experiment that all
> we knew of 21st century Russian was a collection of various laws.
> Would we conclude from them that Russian had a suffixed article -
> ot, -ta, -to? Not very likely, I'd say.

there is an earlier, pre-XII c. evidence of postfixed articles
in Bulgarian, but it is in the toponymy and personal names
and not in Church Slavonic texts.

- One saint, Ivan Rilski (876-946 AD) was born in the village
of Skrin-o near Sofia and the form 'Skrin-o' (from 'skrin',
'dresser, chest of drawers', masc.) fits nicely with the local
Shopean dialect (it is 'skrin-a/skrin-@...' in modern Bulgarian);

- in 1017 AD one of the last officers of tsar Samuil, Ivac,
retreated before the victorius Byzantine emperor Basil II in a
mountain refuge, written in Greek as Vroh-ot ('the peak',
from 'vr@...', masc.);

- a monastery register from ~1070 AD has the personal names
Velik-on ('the great (one)', from 'velik', adj., masc.) and
Lahanar-a ('the gardener', from the Greek 'lahan', cabbage,
vegetables);

- an important Black sea port in northern Bulgaria was called
Konop-a (from 'konop', hemp, masc.). The name was registered
in 920 AD;
etc.

If we look for feminine endings, there is the place name 'Verega-va'
(from 'veriga', a chain, a mountain chain), a part of the Balkan
m-s where the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus II was ambushed by
khan Krum. The source is the chronicle of Theophanes, ~ 830 AD.

The last group probably also includes Pliska/Pl@..., the early
Bulgar capital (VII-IX c.), and other town names.


Regards,
Vassil Karloukovski