DAR KARTĄ APIE LIE. SPALVÀ: KIRTIS IR ETIMOLOGIJA

Author(s): Birutė Kabašinskaitė,Gert Klingenschmitt / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 7/2013

Lie. spalva, la. spalva 'plunksna; kailis; šerių spalva', la. spilva 'tvenkinių augalas, švylys, pūkas ir kt.' neabejotinai yra ide. *(s)pelh- 'skelti, skirti' vediniai. Alternatyvūs aiškinimai, pvz., semantiškai patrauklesnis siejimas su ide. pel- 'padengti', atmestini dėl to, kad pirminė šaknis turėtų baigtis laringalu. Laringalą liudija la. spalva [priegaidė tvirtagalė]. Jo kirčiavimas senesnis nei lie. spalva (4). Tai paremia ir kiti panašūs atvejai. Bl. *spal semantinė raida tokia: 'nudirta oda, kailis' < 'oda' < 'odą dengiantys plaukai' < 'plaukas, šerys, plunksna, vėliau - 'žvėries šerių spalva' ir 'spalva'. Lie. spalva abstrakti reikšmė galėjo būti ir dirbtinai suteikta Jono Jablonskio.

Pietro Umberto Dini. ALILETOESCVR: lingvistica baltica delle origini: Teorie e contesti linquistici nel Cinquecento

Author(s): Aušra Baniulytė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 5/2011

Vytautas Kardelis. Šiaurės rytų aukštaičiai vilniškiai: ribos ir diferenciacijos

Author(s): Jolita Urbanavičienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 5/2011

Zum abgegangenen Ortsnamen †Beikheim (Altlkr. Staffelstein)

Author(s): Harald Bichlmeier / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2020

Beikheim is the name of a vanished settlement in Upper Franconia (North East Ba¬varia). The article compares a (traditional) Slavic etymology with two German(ic) ones proposed recently in a 2015 Ph.D. thesis by J. Andraschke (published in 2016) and evaluates them. Although the Slavic one has the disadvantage of a somewhat unusual substitutional process CSlav. *y → OHG ī (instead of more common CSlav. *y → OHG ū, ǖ), it can be shown that the Slavic etymology is clearly to be favoured over the two German(ic) ones: †Beikheim goes back to a place-name CSlav. *Bykovъ, -a, -o [*gordъ, *vьsь, *město], most probably feminine CSlav. *Bykova [*vьsь] ‘Byk’s [village]’.

Il francese in Valle d’Aosta (Italia) nel XIX e XX secolo: un caso di linguistic suicide?

Author(s): Gianmario Raimondi / Language(s): Italian Issue: 2 (32)/2020

The contribution opens with an overview about the position of French in the repertory of Valle d’Aosta, a small bilingual region of Italy, where, despite of its historical grounding as heritage language, this language appears nowadays in a very critical situation, in particular at the level of spoken use. Against this background stands the focus of the contribution, that is to discuss the process of language shift occurred in Valle d’Aosta between the 19th and the 20th centuries. This process led to the substitution of French with Italian as “roofing language” and it tends to be regarded as a typical case of “language murder”, in literature but namely in the regional inner perspective, that identifies its starting point in the national unification of Italy (1861).A re-reading of some evidences, both from historical sources and sociolinguistic more recent inquiries, permits although to shed new light on this process, on both plans of the role played in it by sectors of the local speech community and of the parallel construction of an internal identitary story-telling that assumes the Valle d’Aosta community’s integral francophonie of the past as an unquestionable matter of fact.The discussion of a series of issues (i.e. the correct interpretation of the instances of written French in Valle d’Aosta since the Middle Ages; the consideration of the results of the sociolinguistic survey conducted by the Fondation Chanoux in 2001, with particular regard to the spoken use of languages in the generation born at the end of 19th century; the historiographical testimony, for the same century, about the early presence of Italian within the region) thus lead to depict on one side the historical linguistic repertory of Valle d’Aosta as a typical situation of “diglossia” and, on the other, the process of penetration of Italian as a gradual and long-lasting phenomenon, which begins several decades before 1861.On this bases, new considerations about the active role of Valle d’Aosta 19th century speech community in the above mentioned process of language shift are finally proposed, which may lead to consider it rather an instance of “linguistic suicide” (Denison 1977) than an actual “language murder”.

La langue est (avant tout) notre milieu de vie

Author(s): Pierre Frath / Language(s): French Issue: 2 (32)/2020

Most linguistic theories consider language essentially as a means of communication between ontological individuals. Society is nothing but a voluntary social grouping which happened at some point in the history of our species. Language is then considered a communication tool which helps us encode concepts for the benefit of other individuals and linguistics concentrates on the processes which allow this feat in the speakers’ brains. Intercomprehension is quite often explained in terms of genetic endowment. For example, Chomsky’s universal grammar explains syntax and semantic primes explain the construction of meaning. The hypothetical even metaphysical aspect of this point of view is quite often overlooked and language becomes a “code” which can be described in terms of logic and mathematics. And as thought precedes formulation, linguistic form and meaning are ontologically separated and this leads to the deeply ingrained mind/body dualism which lurches in the background of most theories. In this text, we aim to show that language is one of the three environments (« milieus ») in which we live, the two others being society and nature, both humanised by and through language and constantly altered by human activity. Three dimensions can be distinguished in language. The first and foremost is anthropological. People speak to create links between themselves and language is then the locus of small talk, human relations, education, politics, ethics, values, gossip, etc. Language is also used for collective work and action when it makes use of its referential dimension: many words refer to elements of our experience and language is then the locus of work, the economy and collective action. Finally, language is also the locus of personal thought, creativity and individualisation. Yet this cognitive dimension of language can only develop when the anthropological and referential dimensions have been acquired: it is not cause but consequence.Linguistic communities tend to fall back on themselves in what can be termed “ubuntus”, a Bantu word which names a community speaking a language within a culture. Becoming locked up inside ubuntus can be effectively avoided by language learning because languages open doors to others and allow for the offsetting of one’s own ubuntu. Multilingualism conditions knowledge and tolerance of the other.

Klucz do języka polskiego Jeremiasza Rotera – pierwsza gramatyka języka polskiego na Śląsku

Author(s): Anna Just / Language(s): Polish Issue: 10/2014

O gramatică de la 1918

Author(s): Rodica Mărioara Nagy / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2020

The article brings to the attention of today's specialists a bilingual (Russian-Romanian) grammar, almost unknown and rarely quoted, which is notable for the inner drive that generated it – the author's moral duty to his Bessarabian brethren, lacking access to learning Romanian in school, and which, without being a work of erudition, may be a point of interest for further investigation.

Eterogenitatea formantului cum în limba română veche

Author(s): Alice Magdalena Bodoc / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1 (33)/2021

Taking as a starting point some of my previous researches (Preda Bodoc 2015 and Preda Bodoc, Ardeleanu Gomoescu 2016), the present paper represents a small contribution to the current diachronic research by analyzing all the complex sentences in which cum was involved either as a simple connector, or as an element of a compound. So, based on a corpus of Old Romanian texts, covering the period 1500-1640, the primary objective of the article is to bring evidence for the multifunctional status of the simple sentence connective cum ‘that/as’ (used as a complementizer, a relative, a relative-interrogative, or as a subordinator), and also for the heterogeneity of the structures constructed with this element (complex complementizers: cum că ‘that’, cum să ‘so that’, and prepositional structures: de cum ‘about how’, pe cum/precum ‘that/as’, pănă în atîta cum ‘so that’ etc.). Most of these complex connectors have been replaced or disappeared from the Present-day Romanian, and this is why we need to go back in time, and to follow the grammaticalization process of these adverbs (cum and oricum), as they become complementizers, subordinators, and, finally, expletives or discourse markers. Some of the formal observations have been confronted and confirmed by the quantitative analyses of the corpus. In the end, I believe that, by clarifying the use and the evolution of this element, it’s frequency and variability, the present study may provide valuable insights into the proper characterization of the inventory of sentence connectors, but also into the historical development of the Romanian language.

Funcția „imperială” a limbii române

Author(s): Petre Guran / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1 (33)/2021

Associated with the historiographical debate around the “Romanian imperial idea”, the introduction of Romanian simultaneously as state and Church language in the two Romanian Principalities plays the role of a political proclamation, which affirms for both Moldavia and Wallachia the vocation to incarnate a res publica romana or a Roman political idea. In the 17th century’s context, marked by political and ecclesiastical entities competing for European supremacy and particularly for the domination of South-Eastern Europe in the confrontation with the Ottoman Empire, Basil Lupu of Moldavia and Matthew Basarab of Wallachia chose to express their aspiration to sovereignty over their territory, or even simultaneously over the two Principalities, by creating a new official language: “Romanian, which means Latin” (by the words of the Miron Costin). To this purpose they started in the 4th and 5th decades of the 17th c. a thorough program of translations and printings of legal and religious literature. The effort to create a new cultural language was renewed in the 8th and 9th decades of the same century by Șerban Cantacuzino, Constantine Brâncoveanu and Gheorghe Duca. The conjunction of legal and religious literature corresponds to the definition of a diarchy of princely and ecclesiastical power prescribed by the Byzantine Nomocanon (Syntagma of Matthew Blastares). The prince governs the body of society by law; the high priest is in charge of its soul. Thus, both state and Church were deeply engaged in this project and when the successors of Basil Lupu abandoned for a short period the project, the metropolitan Dosoftei carried it on. The entire effort of linguistic promotion was started by a small number of connected individuals, of which half were not native Romanians. Ultimately, Romanian became a state-building factor, which allowed the formation of the largest Nation-state in South-Eastern Europe.

Paralelismos somáticos y aplicación a E/LE

Author(s): Marius Rădoi / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 1 (33)/2021

The aim of this paper is to analyze the verbal phrases generated by the lexeme ”eye” in Spanish and Romanian. The contrastive study of phraseological units (at morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic level) that we carry out will provide us with the necessary tools in order to select the relevant and useful set expressions for developing a database whose recipients are Romanian learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language (levels A1-B2). We focus on the degree of equivalences, the argument structure, the communicative functions and on other points of intersection. Unlike the guidelines set by the curricular documents (The Common European Framework of References for Languages and Cervantes Institute Curricular Plan), we strongly believe that the introduction of the idiomatic component from the initial levels is possible and necessary, since phraseological competence represents a relevant component within the global communicative competence. Our objective is to demonstrate that this theory is even more relevant in the case of related languages, which also share a cultural idiosyncrasy.

К ВОПРОСУ О ПРОИСХОЖДЕНИИ ПРАСЛАВ. *KOVYLЪ / *KOVYLЬ ‘STIPA PENNATA’

Author(s): Marta Bjeletić / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2020

Contemporary etymological research is largely aimed at rethinking hitherto offered etymological solutions, especially for words that do not have a generally accepted interpretation. One of those words is PSl *kovylъ / *kovylь ‘feather-grass, Stipa pennata’, whose continuants are attested mainly in Eastern and Southern Slavic languages: Ru. kovyľ, kovyl, Ukr. koviľ, kovila, Bel. kavyľ, Bulg. kovil, koil, kofil, Mac. kovil, kofil, SCr. kovilje, Sln. kovilje. The etymological literature has drawn attention to the potential connection of PSl *kovylъ / *kovylь with the verb *kovyľati (sę) ‘to swing, wobble, stagger’, even though this verb does not have a unanimously accepted interpretation either. This paper departs from the assumption that the phytonym and verb under consideration have a common origin, and that the prefix *ko- is distinguished in both forms. The verb is related to PSl *vьlati, vьlajǫ ‘to swing, swing on waves’, related to PSl *vьlna ‘wave’, *valiti (sę) ‘to roll’, and ultimately boils down to the IE root *ṷelH- ‘to roll’. As among the continuants and derivatives of the PSl verb *vьlati there is a variation of the reduced vowels (-ь- : -ъ-) at the root (cf. OCS vъlajati sę ‘to oscillate (about waves)’, etc.), forms with the vocalism -ъ- could serve as a basis for the occurrence of the secondary ablaut *vъl- / *vyl-. Thus, from the unconfirmed prefixed form *ko-vъlati sę (a form without the prefix *vъlati sę is reconstructed!), an intense / iterative *kovyl(j)ati sę could be created in the same meaning. The variance of -ati / -jati can be explained from the original *kovylati, koviljǫ (sę), with the subsequent spread of the palatal ľ from the present tense stem to the infinitive stem. This also explains the variation of the palatal and non-palatal l at the end of the stem of the deverbal noun *kovylъ / *kovylь.

PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN ‘EAT’ AND ‘MOUTH’

Author(s): Orsat Ligorio / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

PIE *h1oʔ-s- (= *h1oh1-s-) ‘mouth’ is derived from PIE *h1ed- ‘to eat’, as an s-stem o-grade postverbal, assuming that *dC yields *ʔC (= *h1C), which is a well-known phenomenon of the Glottalic Theory.

Die Rolle des Herausgebers der Zeitschrift Kmetijske in rokodelske novice bei der Entwicklung einer einheitlichen slowenischen Schriftsprache

Author(s): Marko Jesenšek / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2020

J. Bleiweis’ newspaper Kmetijske in rokodelske novice (Agricultural and Artisanal News), also known simply as Novice (News), played a key role in the creation of a unified Standard Slovenian language by bringing together all Slovenian writers and providing readers with a means to learn about writing and encouraged the reading of Slovenian texts. The newspaper built on the sense of Slovenian affiliation and the idea of the United Slovenia by reinforcing the unified Standard Slovenian language and unified Slovenian writing called slovenica, rejecting the Illyrian movement and Pan-Slavicism, later somewhat less convincingly with the adoption of new forms that Bleiweis initially established as a defiance against “our pure” and “comprehensible” Slovenian language. Bleiweis’ efforts to establish the use of the Slovenian language in schools and public life made it possible for the Slovenian language to achieve four-part perfection regarding its functional varieties, i.e. expanding from its basic practical and communicative “home environment” to the public sphere, where it functioned easily in journalism, took on the fully-fledged role of a specialist language in the translation of Državni zakonik (the official collection of national rules and regulations) and that of an artistic language also used in Prešeren’s poems published in Novice. As a result of Bleiweis’ Novice, schools, newspapers, and books in Slovenia were able to gain public acclaim. Despite the editor maintaining that Novice was an “educational journal for a simple people”, it was in fact also a political newspaper that suited intellectuals; it was at the heart of the Slovenian national revival and, as such, opened a public discussion about all the important issues of Slovenism, particularly regarding language, culture, politics, and literature.

К этимологии праслав. *grędelь ‘оглобля плуга’

Author(s): Tatyana Vladimirovna Shalaeva,Darja Jurʹevna Vashchenko / Language(s): Russian Issue: 74/2019

The paper deals with the etymology of Proto-Slavic *grędelь/*grędělь ‘plow-beam’ and gives new evidence for its Proto-Germanic origin – from *grindila- ‘beam, plow-beam’. This thesis is based on Y. Khelimsky’s reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic word as *grędilь which includes the regular realization of Proto-Slavic *i in Hung. [ё] in loanwords from the Slavic languages, cf. Hung. gёrёndёly ‘plow-beam’. The Slavic lexical and word-formation data provide additional arguments for the presented etymology.

Súvisí slk. kántriť s poľ. dial. kętrzyć, kętrać?

Author(s): Ľubor Králik / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 74/2019

Slovak kántriť ‘kill, exterminate; ravage, devastate, destroy; cause spiritual suffering’ (first attested in A. Bernolák) has no convincing etymology. V. Machek and F.Sławski compared this word to Polish dial. kętrać ‘do something in an indecent, immoral way’, kętrzyć ‘commit adultery’ (perhaps related to Kashubian kątor ‘toad’; from German kunter, kunder ‘monster’?). – In the author’s opinion, kántriť is a denominative of Slovak kántry plt, older kántor sg ‘(in the Roman Catholic church) three days at the beginning of the seasons ordered as days of fast, prayers and repentance, Ember days’ (attested since the 17th century) < Latin quattuor (tempora) ‘four seasons’. Originally, kántriť was probably an intransitive verb (*‘observe the Ember fast’) from which the reflexive kántriť sa was derived (literally ‘«ember» oneself = to afflict, torture, destroy oneself [with {Ember} fasting, i.e. with hunger]’); finally, its transitive correlate kántriť‘destroy, kill, ravage (somebody/something), etc.’ also came into existence. Therefore, as a word created in Slovak, kántriť should be separated etymologically from the above-mentioned Polish lexemes; at the same time, the assumption that Polish dial. skantrzyć‘kill, strangle’ was borrowed from Slovak perf. s-kántriť (F. Sławski) may be validated.

O pochodzeniu nazwy Nieborów

Author(s): Hanna Popowska-Taborska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 74/2019

The base of the name Nieborów, a village near Łowicz, lies in the Slavic personal name *Niebor-, consisting of the negation non- and the Proto-Slavic stem *bor- (*boriti ‘defend, fi ght, prohibit’). Such personal names with negatives are no longer present in Iranian, Germanic, and Balto-Slavic anthroponymy and are probably a remnant of the Indo-European anthroponomical system. There are many *Niebor- occurences in Polish local names and in old Polish personal names. It referred to the so-called magical names aiming at protecting their owner or confusing the enemy, but equally well, the term could have been a name for a clumsy man unable to fight

Koncepcje etymologiczne polskich nazw kobiety zamężnej

Author(s): Ewa Siatkowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 74/2019

Words denoting married women (Latin: mulier uxor) are among the oldest. My research of these names is informed by two types of material: the Bible – as contrasted with the Quran – and the Indo-European derivatives of the gen- root. Those two lines of examination bring similar results: the Latin mulier is ‘the one who increases mankind’, ‘the co-parent’. This meaning made it into Polish the very same way all other Christian lexical items did, i.e. from German via Czech. The meaning in question is expressed by two names: the older żona and the more recent małżonka. The older name is related to the Latin genetrix, ‘the one who gives birth’; the more recent to German Mahlweib – ‘the married woman’.

Wyrazy polskie w "Variae exhortationes et formulae ordinis Fratrum Minorum de Observatia" Bartłomieja z Bydgoszczy

Author(s): Maria Trawińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 74/2019

The article discusses the 16th-century Latin manuscript by Bartholomeus of Bydgoszcz, which was a handy notebook containing various exhortations and convent forms. In a very different way, he noted in it almost two hundred Polish words. The ambiguous Latin words were juxtaposed with ambiguous Polish equivalents, and the closeness of some records appears next to entries loosely related. Many entries on the margins are difficult to combine with the main text. For this reason, we cannot determine the meaning for all the words. The presence of the Polish language, mostly in the form of loose expressions and individual words, testifies to the fact that in the relationship of interest to us, the Polish language is more alongside the Latin text than in the text.

Sprachgeschichte und Sprachkontakte in den Forschungen von István Nyomárkay

Author(s): István Vig / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2020

Academic István Nyomárkay (1937–2020) left a great legacy of his oeuvre, consisting of more than 280 publications. For size limits, this study presents only a few of the most important domains of Professor Nyomárkay’s research, based on some of his books. In the field of language contacts, his first monograph (1984) examines the integration of international loanwords into the morphological structure of the Croato-Serbian / Serbo-Croatian literary language. These international loanwords, eventually, are of Latin origin. Many of them are not Latin loanwords but they got adopted into the Croato-Serbian literary language by the mediation of the German, Italian, and French languages. This book was the first major synthesis in this field at that time. The next monograph (1989) examines the formation of the new words in the vocabulary related to Croatian civilization in the second half of the 19th century. Due to political and cultural reasons, the new expressions were created mainly on Hungarian patterns. Some of them are calques, other ones are new word formations inspired by Hungarian. The book published in 2002 pertaining to language-culture research investigates the influence of a German grammar published in Vienna in 1779 onto the grammars of Slovenian, Slovak, Croatian, and Hungarian. The authors took over many elements of the German grammar and adapted them to their own language each, with some modifications of several of its statements. From among the lexicographical works of Nyomárkay’s, the historical dictionary of the literary language of the Croatians in Burgenland is an outstanding piece (1996). It contains 4,864 entries, which were taken from 64 resources. Apart from the fact that the dictionary is a work of salient importance from language historical point of view, it also offers considerable help in reading old texts. The last monograph of the author on the history of the Serbian and Croatian languages (2007) pertains to the domain of language history. This is the first summary of the history of the aforementioned languages written in Hungarian. It is a piece of scholarly work in an easy to read style, addressing linguists and university students in Hungary. It is very important to point out that each of the books considered above is based on the analysis of numerous sources.