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The paper discusses the thematic scope of a university course on the history of Balkan literatures and is based on the author’s personal experience at Marie Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin during the years 2012–2018. The creation of such a course poses a number of theoretical and methodological problems that relate to the adequate existence of this academic field and of Balkan Studies in general: the chronological boundaries and periodization of Balkan literatures, the selection of main and secondary authors and phenomena during the course, the historical and the synchronous method in researching separate literary traditions. Special attention is drawn to potentially Bulgaria-related topics and their functionality in the context of a synoptic approach to Balkan literatures. The author’s general conclusion is that a national literary canon cannot be mechanically regarded as an integral part of the general history of the Peninsula’s traditions. In terms of the common processes and the comparative perspective of a literary history comprising of several different linguo-cultural traditions, the author suggests that a national canon should not only be reduced in order to be integrated into a foreseeable academic course, but the most important thing is to emphasize the phenomena that retain their unique features among other traditions. Although the national literary canons in the Balkans are heavily dependent on the periods of the National Revival in the 19th c. and modern writing in the 20th c., they include many significant aspects that are not strictly connected to the stereotyped ideas of patriotism, collective struggles or Europeization and thus deserve more attention.
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The Bulgarian language situation has been changing a lot for the recent years, because the process of massive emigration of the working population continues and the number of newly born children abroad increases. Thus the Bulgarian language gradually melts in the world globalization. This tendency leads to the destruction of our nation, its unique origin and dignity. In this paper we comment on the Bulgarian language of the emigrants, as a subject to the influence of assimilation. The algorithm of the deformation which the surrounding foreign language causes to the Bulgarian language in the emigration communities is investigated by means of a contrastive analysis between Europe and outside Europe based on the mixed language of the Bulgarian communities in two significant cities - Vienna and Sydney. The algorithm of genealogical alienation among the Bulgarian emigrants starts with the initial state on the day of leaving the native country, it passes through a finite number of well-defined subsequent states on the route from the centre of Europe to south of the Equator and finishes with the final state of self-acceptance, a fully completed process of alienation from the Bulgarian. What the present paper recommends to Bulgarian linguitics is the selection of an appropriate (opposing) algorithmic model which would describe fully and correctly the studied process of forgetting the native Bulgarian.
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In the region of Prizren, South Kosovo, there are still dialects that in their basic peculiarities are connected with the Bulgarian language continuum. The history of the region makes it evident that, in terms of the organization of the economic and cultural life, it was connected with the extreme northwestern Bulgarian dialects. The Bulgarian dialects in the region of Prizren are spread in the Gora area, in the directly connected Jupa area as well as in other settlements such as Rahovets, Dzhakovitsa district. Their phonetic system reveals features that are typical of the extreme northwestern Bulgarian dialects such as the reflex of the back nasal vowel u: zup, put as well as some traits typical of the Bulgarian dialects – pronunciation like słdovi, kъdè, etc. Other characteristically Bulgarian peculiarities are that the dialect has developed an analytical system of grammatical change of nouns and adjectives, the use of the post positive definite article, the absence of infinitive in the verbal system, etc. It is remarkable that these features have survived to this day, despite the teaching of the Serbian literary language. After the Kososvo declaration of independence, Bosnian language training has been introduced because of the neighborhood with the Republic of Bosnia. TV emissions of the Macedonian regional norm are also broadcast. Bulgarian is taught only in summer courses for prospective students. Creating conditions for the systematic study of the Bulgarian language would help to preserve local dialects and national traditions.
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The topic of Austrian language studies is quite new in Bulgarian and German linguistics. It is connected with the last emigrant wave of Bulgarians in the German-speaking area (especially in Austria) following the changes that took place in the 1990s when the Bulgarian community there grew rapidly. Studies on the language of the Bulgarian emigrants in Austria lay the foundations for shaping a new area in confrontational (Bulgarian-German) linguistics. It offers vast possibilities for further work. What is of particular interest is the "mixed language" of the Bulgarian emigrants. The first generation of our compatriots are the subject of the research, although comparative language information about both the second and the third generation is also available. In Austria, a new type of European community (with electronic signature) is being created. Thanks to the Internet, it crosses the borders and connects compatriots who have been separated by the territories between them. As the study shows, the mixed Bulgarian (Austrian) German language in Austria is a clear fact that has its specific problems and areas of study. The lexical features prevail, but in its grammatical system, which is the pillar of the language, it remains Bulgarian. The methodological provisions applied to the systematization and analysis of the material can also be used in the study of other mixed languages emerging in the contemporary interconnected world.
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The famous Dutch linguist and philologist Nicolaas van Wijk (1880-1941) is considered to be the founding father of Slavic studies in the Netherlands. He studied in Amsterdam, Leipzig and Moscow. As a professor of Baltic and Slavic languages and comparative linguistics at the University of Leiden, he extensively published on questions related to the historical grammar of the Indo-European languages, on Russian literature and culture. He became an internationally acclaimed authority, whose fame abroad can be compared only to that of the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga. Undoubtedly one of his most admired scholarly accomplishments is the first volume of his monumental Geschichte der altkirchenslavischen Sprache. Phonetics and morphology (Berlin, 1927). The second volume, dealing with syntax and lexicology, unfortunately got lost during the Second World War. Less influential, apparently because they were published in Dutch, are his observations on South Slavic dialectology, in particular on the transitional dialects between Bulgarian and Serbian. Nicolaas Van Wijk repeatedly visited Bulgaria, where he had many friends among the most outstanding Bulgarian scholars. He wrote a long and vivid account of his first four-day stay in Sofia in July 1914, in which he expresses his sincere appreciation for the Bulgarian people and his cultural achievements at a very fateful moment of its existence.
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The aim of the paper is to present why the Polish students at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University (UMSC, Lublin) choose to study Bulgarian. The research also includes an investigation of the advantages of learning a “small” Slavic language like Bulgarian and an analysis of the usual problems which the students encounter in the learning process. Thirteen students studying Bulgarian within the framework of the BA programme of Balkan Studies at UMCS participated in the research. They filled out a survey list with questions concerning their motivation and their opinion about the advantages of learning Bulgarian as well as the most difficult topics in Bulgarian grammar and lexicon. The results show that the motivation is usually a pragmatic one. However, most of the students have some emotional motives, too. As Bulgarian is both a Slavic and a Balkan language, it sounds familiar and exotic at the same time. Most of the students think that the lexical level is the easiest linguistic level to be learnt. Moreover, the majority of them report that the most difficult features of Bulgarian are the use of the definite article and the complicated verbal system. The so-called “false friends” are also problematic. Although the Bulgarian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet, most of the students do not think that writing in Bulgarian is difficult.
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The paper tracks the nature of the spelling reforms carried out in the middle of the twentieth century in the neighboring countries of the present-day Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia. The author shows the linguistic nature of each of these reforms and explains why he believes that they both synchronously pursue the political goal of the political leaderships of the two Communist countries. Their aim is to replace the Bulgarian national consciousness of the population living in the geographical areas of Vardar Macedonia and Pirin Macedonia with Macedonian consciousness in pursuance of the decision of the Communist International from 1934. The purpose of the spelling reform in the Republic of Macedonia is to remove the phoneme and the grapheme „ъ“. The Bulgarian graphic system used in the geographic area of Macedonia is planned to be replaced with a Serbian graphic system. Thus, the connection between the Western Bulgarian and the Eastern Bulgarian dialects is cut off, resulting in the disunion of the above mentioned groups. Тhis is done in order to satisfy the ambitions and the behind-the-scenes arrangements of the Communist leaders of the Bulgarian Workers' Party (Communists), the Macedonian Communist Party and the Yugoslav Communist Party during the Second World War оn the so-called Macedonian question. Part of the Macedonian question is the abandonment of the Bulgarian Workers' Party (Communists) from the historical truth about the Bulgarian nationality of the Bulgarians from the three parts of the geographic area of Macedonia - Vardar, Aegean and Pirin Macedonia - and the replacement of their Bulgarian national consciousness with Macedonian.
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The paper deals with the actual presence of contemporary Bulgarian literature abroad. Part of it was written and published first abroad in Bulgarian or in other languages, another part of it was created in Bulgaria and then translated and publishes elsewhere. In both cases several questions arise – they are connected with the integration of these authors and their texts in the non-Bulgarian environment (Sibylle Lewitscharoff, Kapka Kassabova, Rouja Lazarova, Miroslav Penkov et al.); the returning of some of them (Atanas Slavov, Germinal Civikov, Zachary Karabashliev) and the motives if this returning. Another knot of problems is associated with the motivation of the foreign translators and publishers and the criteria of their choices. Another important problem is the reception of the Bulgarian text abroad (Georgi Gospodinov), etc and the way this reception is presented in Bulgaria. Another topic is the ambitions of the writers when publishing in foreign language, the dilemma between the two options – to follow the stereotypes of the public (and so to auto-exoticization or even to self-colonize their culture) their writings, or to clash with them, presenting the viewpoint of the Bulgarian at home, therefore even to clash with such Western stereotypes. The paper is seeking answers to some of these questions.
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The article examines the opportunities that Bulgarian language learning provides for overcoming its own subject-based limitations and institutional restrictions. Further opportunities lay in the development of the so called generic communicative competences. In order for these goals to be fulfilled, the article discusses 1) the national Bulgarian language curricula with emphasis on the Bulgarian language as a first, second and foreign language; 2) the diversification of the context, in which the Bulgarian language is learned – both inside and outside Bulgaria; 3) the opportunities for creating interdisciplinary connections between the school subjects Bulgarian and English (examples from the curriculum from the 6th grade are critically commented); 4) some aspects of two key competences – communication in one’s mother tongue and communication in a foreign language as described in the European Framework of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning; 5) the necessity of a wider initial training of students in pedagogical departments. Based on the observation and analysis, the article builds a frame of knowledge, skills and attitudes that form the general communicative competence into a transversal, flexible, dynamic construct. Also commented are the applicability of this frame in real learning context, as well as the contribution of the Bulgarian language as a school subject to improving the language acquisition skills of pupils.
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The motivation of this study is based on the controversial interpretation of the dependent clauses related to an adjective and on the lack (in some cases) of any description for some types of these clauses. The study aims at revelling: a) the semantic nature of the dependencies between the head adjective and the dependent clauses (complements, adjuncts, specifiers); and (b) the grammatical and functional characteristics of dependent clauses related to a head adjective. We show that the predicative adjectives (in a predicative position and in a small clause position) take complement and adjunct clauses, while the attributive adjectives (in a position of modifiers to a noun) take attributive causes. The attributive adjectives regularly combines with a head noun, which in some cases might be omitted if it is recoverable by the context. These structures are called syntactic nominalisation and the relative clauses related with the empty head are free relatives. We conclude with a typology of clauses related to a head adjective in Bulgarian, which takes into account the semantic relations between the head adjective and its dependent clauses, but also pays an attention to the grammatical and functional characteristics of the clauses. The presented typological classes are also related with the traditional classification.
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The paper presents the results of an experimental study on the evaluations of the reliability of utterances, which consist of different evidential forms in Bulgarian. The total number of respondents is 171, aged 20 – 25. All of them are Arts and Humanities students who participated in the experiment before studying the evidential forms at university level. The structure of the experiment bears similarities to the one conducted by St. Fitneva (Fitneva 2001), however, the theoretical principles applied in the two studies are different, which leads to a sharp distinction in both the experimental materials used and the results of the gathered data. The empirical data of the study presented here evidences that the respondents’ evaluations of speech utterances reliability correspond closely to the semantic nature of the evidential forms. One of the most important results of the experiment is that there is no subordinate relationship between the conclusive and the renarrative forms in the Bulgarian language. Given that the paper also advocates that the empirical data is absolutely in line with the theoretical view that any hierarchy between the two features, ‘subjectivity’ and ‘renarration’, can hardly be seen: any existing difference in the frequency of the conclusive and the renarrative forms could easily be examined. The results of the experiment also show that there is a similar distance of reliability between the three indirect evidential forms.
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The current study is devoted to the Bulgarian ethnic-specific phraseologisms formed by the root turk-. The focus is upon the investigation of the linguistic means used to express the mental picture a nation can have about another one. The topos is the Bulgarian part of the Balkan language scene, while the chronos of the current study encompasses the first two decades of the XXI century. Among the sources of language material excerption are the traditional monolingual dictionaries, phraseological dictionaries, the press, and the actual internet-forum communication. The corpus includes 96 ethno-specific phraseologisms, grouped in 18 semantic fields, which allow us to reconstruct an aspect of the Bulgarian language scene. The Bulgarian linguistic environment is characterized by its dynamism and adequate reflection of the changes that are brought about regionally and globally, which is aided by the role of the mass media. Historically, ethnophraseologisms are primarily connected with the linguistically expressed realia from the time of the Ottoman Empire and the administrative division and the government characteristics of that period. They are limited in number and are usually found in texts regarding our past. The intensive economic, transport, tourist and cultural contacts, the development and the boom of Oriental cuisine not only update and breathe new life to almost forgotten expressions, but also introduce a number of new ethnophraseologisms, which change the lexicological landscape of contemporary Bulgarian and new ways of expressivity and connotation are brought to the fore.
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This paper explores the extent to which Serbian tertiary-level EFL students avoid using English non-finite nominal clauses. It is comprised of a theoretical part, which describes and classifies English and Serbian nominal finite and non-finite clauses with the purpose of contrasting them as regards their syntactic functions of subject and complements, and an empirical part, which presents the results of the empirical research conducted. The method used is contrastive analysis together with description and classification. The contrasting model obtained in this way leads to the conclusion that English and Serbian nominal clauses differ in the number of the specific syntactic functions they perform as well as in the variety of forms. These results were tested in the empirical research conducted with tertiary-level Serbian students of English who translated the Serbian nominal finite clauses from the questionnaire into English, divided in two groups: the experimental and the test group. The analysis of the empirical research is based on the principle of whether students used finite or nonfinite nominal clauses in their translation. The results of the theoretical analysis have been confirmed by the empirical results since the students generally avoided using English nominal non-finite clauses when translating the sentences from the questionnaire.
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We will study, in this paper, the semantic functioning of phraseological adverbial units. How can they create meaning within their external combinations? What relationship do they have with the units that surround them? Do they impose semantic constraints on the units constituting their co-text? What are the factors of semantic variation of these units? By switching meaning, do these units change their function? We will attempt to answer these questions by describing a corpus of adverbial units according to the methodological approach of the theory of the three primary functions.
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