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The paper presents the work on a typology of the selectional restrictions that verbs from different semantic classes impose on the nouns they combine with. Using the restrictions that have already been defined in FrameNet and VerbNet, we attempt at compiling a unified set of restrictions and translate them as sets of WordNet classes and (sub)trees. As the description of verbs&' conceptual structure is largely language independent, the enriched representation is to a great extent applicable cross-linguistically, as illustrated in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the highlights of the 22nd Biennial Conference on Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature, and Folklore that was held at Ohio University in Ohio on April 7-10, 2022. Topics include the Serbo-Croatian language and Slavic Linguistics studies by Professor Kenneth E. Naylor, the cognitive semantic schemes in Balkan linguistics, and ambitransitivity in Balkan romance and South Slavic.

In addition to a brief overview of the historical development of the Croatian language in the linguistic and sociolinguistic sense (as a literary and standard language), the paper attempts to examine its relationship to the languages of the Balkan linguistic area. Marginal presence of Balkan language features in Croatian is indicated, since Croatian territory is also geographically on the edge of the Balkans. But, since there has not been systematic research on this subject yet, the paper is merely an attempt to draw attention to some phenomena that might be interesting and to encourage further research and discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper deals with the problem of the alleged Glagolitic substratum of the Old Church Slavonic version of the Homilies (λόγοι) of Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 329–390), undertaken in Bulgaria between the late 9th and the early 10th century. This article aims to offer a contribution to this issue in a multidisciplinary perspective. From a methodological point of view, an attempt is made to tackle it not only by studying the material and graphic aspects of the manuscripts witnesses, but also by considering the results of their text-critical and linguistic analysis. Accordingly, a number of previously unstudied paleographical, codicological, orthographical, phonetical, textual and lexical features are subjected to examination. On the one hand, the author investigates the Glagolitic letters found in the oldest Cyrillic witness of this translation, some of which were only recently discovered; on the other, he explores several scribal mistakes, lexical archaisms and hapax legomena. Moreover, a few very special readings, featuring the reflex / šč / for Protoslavic *tj are investigated for the first time. All the collected evidence points to how two Homilies of this corpus in all likelihood originally circulated in Glagolitic and how their Cyrillic transliteration was in all probability carried out soon afterwards in the Balkan area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the early decades of the twentieth century, foreign visitors to Albania noticed a lot of particular aspects of life that they found unique and worth publishing. They shared impressions, perceptions, research outcomes, emotional reactions, and facts about the way the Albanians managed their lives from 1921 to 1939. In the writings that constitute the literary corpus of this paper, the reader perceives an objective insight into the political, economic, social, historic, and ethnographic Albanian context while reading texts, diaries, newspaper articles, political reports, and research outcomes of the British and American authors who got to know the Albanian reality of this period. The relation between language and culture becomes especially significant when the mentalities of people encountering each other in a place are so different that respective linguistic means do not satisfy the linguistic gap that derives from the lack of awareness of the social phenomena they reflect. Such was the case when the British and American writers first needed to understand the Albanian social context and then convey it as closely as possible to a more international reader. However, since this reader had very little or no knowledge at all about Albanian life of the early twentieth century, there were also limited linguistic resources to express in English the treasure troves of Albanian social life hidden beneath the bjeshkë.* Most of the time, the writers seem aware of the fact that translating the word or defining it in the context would vanish most of its original meaning, so they chose to keep the Albanian word. One often finds such a word (in italics or boldface) in the middle of a page entirely written in English. They also chose to alter the phonological features of a word in order to create close pronunciation features between Albanian and English. They also sometimes chose to preserve the Albanian spelling of the word, but adapt its morphologic and syntactic features to integrate it into the English sentence structure. Such linguistic adaptions are as varied as the nature of Albanian words, their meaning, and social significance. The article aims to display the wide range of such linguistic reflections of Albanian life in the texts written in the English language, through phonological, spelling, grammatical, and semantic adaptions. It provides examples from authentic texts in English, classifies them according to the nature of the linguistic alterations, and explains the intertwining phenomena to reflect social particularities through language and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the names for fig tree Ficus carica in the languages and dialects of the western part of the Balkan Peninsula (mainly in Albanian and Serbo-Croatian). The most ancient names of fig tree in the region are explored: Grk. συκιά, σύκα (< σῦκον, τῦκον), Lat. fīcus, and also Dalmat./Ital. pruna, brun-, mur-/mor etc. and South Slav. smokvа. The paper gives a complete classifi cation of more than 120 Albanian and Serbo-Croatian names for fig and its varieties. It is based on different characteristics (including – fruits’: size, colour, shape, flavour, moisture, the time of ripening, the thickness of the peel etc.). These names are etymologically analyzed. The phytonyms derived from expressive words, proper names and place names as well as facts of xeno-nomination are shown. It is demonstrated that the name of fig tree was given to some other plants: prickly pear, agave and birthwort. The name of fig fruit got into somatic lexis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the stress variations of prefi xes with the aim of outlining the fi lters they are sensitive to – prosodic, structural, and psycholinguistic. The main objective of the study is to analyze the accent variations in Bulgarian zero-derived prefi xed nouns within the Primary accent fi rst theory. After Revithiadou (1999) we assume that in lexical stress systems morphemes are accentually prespecified as marked and unmarked, which is not easy to trace among prefixes, and especially among the zero-derived ones. The corpus was a set of 232 nouns formed from verb roots, extracted from OPRBE (2012). The units in it have varying stress – on the prefi x or on the root. The analysis is based on the proposal of Caha & Zikova (2016) concerning the aspectual contribution of verbal prefi xes, which make verbs telic (adding a result state) and perfective (depicting the event as an entirety with a start and an end point), which do not always occur at the same time. The authors decompose the structure in order to identify the specific parts of the verb phrase influenced by the prefix. This allows them to define the specific meaning components assigned by the prefix. This approach aims to account for the difference between the unstressed verbal prefixes and their stressed allomorphs in the zero-derived nouns. The latter depict results or simple events. The diff erence was tested on data from Bulgarian by means of experts and internet examples of the compatibility with inchoative verbs and others denoting phases of the process. The result is that the nouns with accented prefi xes more often denote processes along with results and are compatible with inceptive verbs. This means that these items lack the perfectivity which is high in the functional projection. Apart from the morphosyntactic parameter, other factors are also discussed, such as an anti-homophony eff ect and relative frequency. The conclusion is that the domestic prefi xes are unmarked, adjoined outside the stress domain, but can receive stress under the infl uence of morphological, structural, metrical, and psycholinguistic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romani imperfect and pluperfect are built by the agglutination of the same morpheme to the inflected forms of the present and the perfect, respectively. This morpheme, labelled as “remoteness marker” (Matras 2001: 35) by the literature on Romani varieties, conveys a temporal value of distance towards a determined point of reference excluding at the same time any overlapping with the moment of speech, and thus its meaning approaches the “temporal discontinuity” highlighted by Plungian and Van der Auwera (2006). The remoteness marker is quite homogeneous in Romani varieties and the main recorded forms in the different dialects (-as/-a/-e/-s/-ys/-ahi, cf. Matras 2002: 152) allow to reconstruct a single Proto-Romani form *asi (cf. Bloch 1932, Bubeník 1995) or *sasi (Scala 2020), both going back to the Old Indo-Aryan as- ‘to be’, maybe through the third person Middle IndoAryan form āsi or āsī ‘he/she/it was’. Nevertheless, some dialects show a greater complexity and a certain level of internal variation, and suggest that the general uniformity displayed by Romani varieties may have been preceded by a more composite situation. In particular, the paper analyses the remoteness markers of Kalajdž i Romani of Montana (Bulgaria). Besides the widespread -as, this dialect shows the previously unnoticed remoteness markers -asa and -asta, which have the same distribution of -as, but a diff erent origin. The objective of the study is to propose a reconstruction of the genesis of the two variants. While the remoteness marker -asa can be explained as the outcome of recent internal innovation of Kalajdž i, the remoteness marker -asta seems to be connected to the OIA root sthā - and, pointing to a more ancient phase of the language, suggests a higher complexity of the Proto-Romani strategies to build the imperfect and the pluperfect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes local Balkan phytonyms used for broom and spread on the territory from the Adriatic coast to Greece. In the past, broom was used for weaving and manufacturing rough textile. One can notice a strong influence of Romance (including Dalmatian) on the Serbo-Croatian plant names for broom (Lat. juncus, Ital. giunco, Venet. zunco). In the northern Albanian dialects, especially in the Albanian-Slavic contact areas, a great role was played by the borrowed Serbo-Croatian word žukа (and probably Venet. zunco as well). South of Northern Albanian Ghegnia – in the middle Gheg and Tosk territories – loan-words from diff erent times can be found: Lat. genista, genesta and Ital. ginestra. Further south, in the Albanian dialects of Labёria, in Greece and Italy (Arbёresh), there is a clear influence from the Greek σπάρτο. The research is based on long-term field observations (the fieldwork was conducted in 2009–2019), as well as on the previously published phytonomastical and ethnological data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates word order in three Balkan languages (Bulgarian, Greek and Romanian). It is argued that Balkan languages are discourse prominent and variations with respect to discourse notions like topic or focus are examined from a comparative perspective and in view of their hierarchical ordering in the left periphery of the sentence, which corresponds to that portion of the sentence which hosts topicalized and focalized constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on Annual International Scientific Conference of the Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin Institute for Bulgarian Language at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS). Topics include most recent achievements and trends in research on the Bulgarian language in Bulgaria and abroad is presented; and plenary lecture was given in the area of comparative linguistics.

The article analyses the translations of διάνοια in the Old Church Slavonic texts considered to be translated in the first literacy period, i.e. 9th-11th century. The Greek term is positioned in its development in the Classical and Post-Classical Greek culture. Except for the data provided from the lexicological manuals and databases, the paper presents excerpted Slavonic material from sources that are not supplied with Greek-Slavonic indices, such as Symeon’s Miscellanea of 1073, the Hexaemeron translated by John the Exarch, Athanasius Alexandrinus’ Third Oration against the Arians, and the Didactic Gospel, the last two translated by Constantine of Preslav. Conclusions are drawn based on other early texts preserved in later copies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a presentation and discussion of several words classified as Bulgarian in the original text of Evliya Çelebi’s Seyāḥatnāme as well as in its two modern editions. Besides, some other possible Bulgarianisms are discussed, even though they were not classified as such by the editors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents new ideas on the standardization of Romani, using diff erent Vlax dialects as a base. In cases where it is not possible to take lexical items from these dialects, lexical items from other non-Vlax Romani dialects or Indian languages are suggested instead, and are subsequently adapted to the Romani language. Additionally, examples are given of how neologisms could be created from internationally known words by following the grammatical rules of Romani. The paper also suggests a regional standardization of Romani for the Balkan Peninsula countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dimitar Matov died at the age of 32, but his work has a substantial contribution in the sphere of Bulgarian and Balkan linguistics and ethnography. Among his works there is a paper called “Greek-Bulgarian papers”, and a research called “Within the History of Bulgarian Grammar”, alongside “On Bulgarian Vocabulary”, “Relics of the Sounds ъм, ън, ем, eн in the Kostur Dialect”, “A Short Debate on Macedonian Ethnography”. As a student of Vatroslav Jagić he was very skilful at reviewing works showing the truth about the Macedonian dialects. V. Jagić and I. D. Shishmanov specifi cally pointed in their obituary that science had lost, due to his early death a lot more achievements in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the phytonyms of medicinal herbs in the linguonym of the Aromyns in Malovishta (opshtina Bitola, North Macedonia) and their conformity with languages of the Western Balkans: Bulgarian, official language of the republic of North Macedonia, Serbian, Croatian, Modern Greek, Albanian, etc. The main topics of the study are folk medicine and ethnobotany. The linguistic and ethnological data are based on the materials of fi eldwork in Macedonia in 2017. The Aromyns are famous among their ethnic neighbors (Macedonians, Albanians, Serbs, Roma, Turkish, etc.) as good healers and perfect specialists in the sphere of medicinal herbs and plants. In recent years, after the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, the healers’ practice among Aromyns continues old Balkan traditions and has innovations and new forms determined by language, cultural and social contacts with other ethnic groups. We have fixed local denotations of the herbs and plants which have a huge role in healers’ practice among Aromyns in opshtina Bitola, as well as their medicinal properties: ʻmintʼ L. Méntha, Arom. gjá zmă, Mac. dial. ме́нта, Serb. dial. на́не; in literary languages: Mac. ме́нта (ʻmintʼ, ʻmint tinctureʼ), Serb. на́на, Bulg. ме́нта; Alb. mé nd/ër, -ra, Mod. Gr. μέντα, used to calm stomach pain, “opens the appetite”, etc. ʻMelissaʼ L. Melissa, Arom. mató cina, Serb. ма́тичњак; in literary languages: Bulg. ма́точина, Mac. мелиса; used as a sedative, “for good health”, Mod. Gr. μέλισσα, Alb. bá ri i blé tës, bar blé te, Croat. Melissa, etc. ʻSt. John’s wortʼ L. Hypericum, Arom. kantarió n, Serb. dial. на́валич; in literary languages: Serb. богородична трава (богородично цвеће ʻlilyʼ), Mac. жолт кантарион, Bulg. жълт кантарион; Alb. lú lja e balsá mit, lú le balsá mi; used to normalize blood pressure, cardiac activity, etc. In conditions with limited resources for healthcare, medicinal herbs and plants have become an inextricable component of the medical practices of doctors and healers. These plants are perceived by many of our informants as an effective and unquestionable cure-all. Even properties not acknowledged by either traditional medicine or herbal healers are frequently attributed to them. The new trend towards consumption of ecologically clean products (called bío in North Macedonia and Albania) increases demand for popular medicinal herbs, which are perceived as traditional and correct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we will focus on some lexical features characteristic of the dialects spoken in the villages of Hloi (Greek Χλόη = Bulgarian Hebilevo/Хебилево) in the Greek region of Komotini (Κομοτηνή = Gyumyurdzhina/Гюмюрджина) and of the related dialects in the nearby village of Gorni Yurutsi (Горни Юруци) in the Bulgarian region of Krumovgrad. In particular, we will pay attention to isotopically significant terminology in the fields of health, healthcare, illness, and related phenomena. The local language variety spoken in both the Greek and the Bulgarian villages is clearly identified as a Bulgarian-based Rhodopean dialect, but the two villages deal with radically different conditions of language contact. In the first section, we will give a short overview of the problems of language contact in general. Then, in section two, we will focus on health terminology. We compare language materials collected on the two sides of the border, and discuss the impact of language contact in this area. Our conclusion is that contact-induced change is observed on both sides of the Bulgarian-Greek border, but it takes very different forms in Bulgaria and Greece due to quite different and very complex language influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is based on the unpublished materials of the linguistic and ethnographic field expedition of RAS (2019, research programme № 19-18-00244) to Southern Albania (Himara) and describes the names of oak species in bilingual Albanian–Modern Greek villages. These plants are: holly oak (Quercus ilex), downy oak (Quercus pubescens), sessile oak (Quercus petraea) and Austrian oak (Quercus cerris). Their phytonyms are examined as elements of popular botanical nomenclature, which demonstrates the peculiarities of the conceptualization of the information about green environment in both local varieties – Albanian and Greek. The bilingual situation is made here more difficult by the great influence of the standard languages. We have included a table which gives a clear picture of the semantic microfi eld “The oak names of Himara region”. The discussed phytonyms are: βαλανίδι, σκαρπί, dushk, elke, lis. We have found that the popular botanical classification in the patois of Himara bilingual villages differs from the standard one and especially from the scientific one. In the naming system of both Greek and Albanian local varieties, there is a clear demarcation line between evergreen and deciduous oaks. One can notice the cases of lexical indistinguishableness between Greek (downy oak = sessile oak = Austrian oak = βαλανίδι) and Albanian (sessile oak = Austrian oak = lis). The lexical lacunae of the semantic microfi eld “The oak names” are filled through Alb. standard dushk ‘common oak Quercus robur’ both in Albanian and Modern Greek. All possible etymologies are given. Only one real contact induced borrowing was found – σκαρπί. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a reinterpretation of a few phonetic changes, which mostly have been treated as simple adaptation processes whereas at least some of them reveal phonetic trends either in Bulgarian or in Turkish dialects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pluperfect is generally defined as a tense denoting an event which is prior with respect to a past reference moment. The paper aims at analysing the forms and the functions of the pluperfect in the modern languages of the Balkan linguistic area (Bulgarian, Greek, Albanian, and Romanian), discussing its morphological markers on a formal aspect, and the contexts of its temporal and modal readings on the functional aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the present time, there are less than 5000 Albanians in the Ukraine and only half of them can speak their native language. For the most part, they live in four villages in the south of the country. The culture, history and dialect of Albanians in the Ukraine excited much interest in the 20th century. However, this interest has waned, and during the first two decades of the 21st century this subject is only still popular with specialists in Balkan studies, linguistics, ethnography, social and cultural anthropology, as well as some local amateur researchers. Several important studies on Albanians in the Ukraine have been published recently both by Ukrainian and Russian scholars. Some of them reveal data from the archives that were collected about seventy years ago, while others are based on the most recent field research. In our paper we attempt to analyze three monographs that appeared in 2014 and in 2017. Our goal is to attract more attention to these editions, and not to commend or criticize our colleagues. Using these publications, we reviewed relevant and some possibly problematic issues in Balkan Studies today. In our opinion, these issues could be expressed in three statements: a) it is impossible to get the relevant image of local ethnography, culture, inter-ethnic/interconfessional relations if the linguistic data is not fully involved in the research; b) it is not possible to provide a relevant analysis of linguistic peculiarities of the local dialect since the issues of cultural code and local identity are not taken into account; c) the archives of our predecessors should not be regarded as museum heritage, but they should instead be modified and analyzed in the context of the most recent theories and technologies. We all face the problem of how to save our field research data from becoming museum objects, and how to make it useful and accessible to our colleagues and subsequent generations. Today, there are no readily available solutions, but we believe that language corpora supported by a strong network of various historical, ethnographical, anthropological, etc. commentaries could be a helpful way forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the etymologic analysis of Bulgarian place names containing Шаран- / Саран- stem. The version of Bulgarian linguists on their antroponimic origin is vindicated. The personal name (either surname or byname) Шаран / Саран exists in most Slavic languages and Шаран is considered to be its secondary phonetic variant. The transformation of the anlaut С- to Ш- is explained in the linguistic research by the closeness of their articulation. Also not excluded is the phonetic tendency of appearance of the second focus – lingual – in the Indo-European *s, i.e. sibilant element of articulation (R.M. Kozlova). It is argued that surname Саран could be motivated by the fish name саран 'carp' ‹ *saranъ ‹ *sarati, *sariti with the initial meaning of 'variegated', compare various surnames based on fish names in the Slavic languages. Other etymologic versions of the origin of the fish name, in particular Turkic or Slavic and Turkic hybrid versions are treated quite critically. Early Slavic *Sаrаnъ is related with *Sаrеnъ, *Sаrinъ, *Sаrоnъ, *Sаrunъ, *Sаrуnь and other names reconstructed through the antroponymic material of the Slavic languages. This is an extra argument to support the Slavic origin of the above archetype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with possible traces of the Indo-European adjective suffix *-ṷent- / *-ṷn̥t- in the onomastic remnants of Thracian and Slavic languages, some of them already assumed by Vladimir Georgiev (*aps-ynth- ‘rich in aspen trees' as underlying the names of a tribe, their land, a river and a town in it to the north of the Thracian Chersonesos; Thrac. epiclesis of Aphrodite Zēr-ynthía: ‘rich in wild animals', a kind of pótnia thērôn) and by the author himself (Gk Simó-eis, -entos, a river in Troad < Thrac. *zimo-wenϑ- = OInd. himá-vant- ‘snowy' of mountains, here of a mountain stream, cf. Gk. *kheimá-rhous ‘winter-flowing'). To these instances the epiclesis of Hera Rhēsk-ynthís is added, presumably deriving from the stem rēsk- (also raisk-, resk-) of unknown meaning but well-attested in Thracian anthroponymy. As for the Slavic evidence, the adjective *bogovętъ ‘blessed' (in the phrase ‘every blessed day', only Serbo-Croatian and Slovak) is taken into consideration as a possible counterpart to OInd. bhagavant-, but the interpretation by Marta Bjeletić as a compound of *bogъ ‘God' and *ęti ‘take' seems more plausible. The remaining discussion focuses on the intriguing possibility that the Common Slavic comparative *vęt-jь,vęt-ьši suppletive to *velьjь ‘big, large, great' is somewhat connected with *-ṷent-, either as arisen from the adjectives in *-ṷent- by the way of decomposition or inversely, as reflecting a root noun which was to become, by the way of composition, an adjective suffix known from other IE languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims at clarifying some terms currently used in the scientific literature, for example, Thracology, ‘Dacology', Balkan Studies (‘balkanistika’), the much used Balkansprachbund or Union Linguistique Balkanique, but also terms like thracomania or dacomania, which initially skipped unnoticed into the accepted terminology, and which have become aggressively used over the last decades. While discussing some specific examples and some etymological explanations, this paper tries to point out the good and the bad in the field of Thracian Studies, the scientific and the ideological (read: political) approaches, which cannot be avoided in a serious approach to the topic. We are closer to a better understanding of the Thracian heritage and the role of Thracian in both the ancient world and the making of early Medieval Europe, mainly the mid-first millennium C.E. and beyond. Some brief notes on ‘ethnicity' are are also added. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Makedonia was the name of a Balkan region since ancient times. The geographic region of Macedonia was always multilingual. Modern Slavic dialects in this region are part of the Bulgarian literary language, belonging to the south-east Slavic sub-group. The creation of an independent Bulgarian Church in 1870/1872 marked the end of Hellenism, which had attempted the creation of a language separate from Serbia and Bulgaria. On August 3rd 1944, "Macedonian" was declared as the official language of the Yugoslavian Socialist Republic of Macedonia. As a consequence of World War II, the Bulgarian language had more than one written codification, so one has to speak of a recodification in Macedonia and pluricentrism of Standard Bulgarian, a fact in Macedonia as well as the Aegean part of Greece, Banat and Ukraine. There is a list of Slavic researchers outside Bulgaria, who have published papers and books on this question, e.g. Gustav Weigand, Alfons Margulies and Norbert Reiter. Important research on the question of the so-called "Macedonian language" has also been conducted in Bulgaria and other European countries [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will discuss Bulgarian and Romanian balkanisms in legal terminology in the context of the European Union. To begin, I will give a short overview of the importance of balkanisms and I will discuss Bulgarian and Romanian in the context of Balkan languages in the European Union. Following Schaller (2012, 2018), I will comment on different features of Balkan languages. As Lyutakova (2017, 2018) puts it, the recent development is characterized by significant political, social and economic changes, which are taking place in both Bulgaria and Romania. This development is important in shaping both Bulgarian and Romanian languages, and is therefore important in shaping legal language in both countries. Thus, I will characterize legal language as a technical language, and present its particularities. I will highlight (un)intelligibility, (in)comparability, and (un)translatability as main features of legal documents. Then, I will analyze examples from the Consolidated Version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The main scope is to discuss balkanisms in this Treaty, and to regard balkanisms in the European legal language as EUbalkanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the dissemination of several geographic names from the same lexical stems in the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor and the Aegean basin, such as Ἴστρος/ Histria, Ἄρισβος/ Ἀρίσβη, Ἴλιον/ Ἴλιος, Κεβρήνιοι/ Κεβρήν, Κρίσος/ Κρῖσα, Πέργαμος/ Πέργαμον etc. They are traditionally examined as Thracian in Thrace, pre-Greek in Greece and “indigenous” in Asia Minor. The geographic distribution of the names – from the Danube in Thrace in the north, to Crete in the south, and from Karia in Asia Minor in the east, to the Adriatic Sea in the west – leads to the con clusion that the common lexical stems in the toponymy are a sign of lexical proximity between the languages in the Palaeo-Balkan linguistic space: Thracian, pre-Greek (the so-called Pelasgian), Illyrian and some linguistic idioms in Western Asia Minor, with a probability that it could be due to something more than common Indo-European heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with adverbs derived from nouns that indicate the four seasons, providing a description of the phonetic and accentual variation, their petrifi ed forms, and their syntactic function. Another important point is the difference between the derived forms and the morpheme -s(ka), and the simple adverbs - old locative forms, as well as their competition with different groups of adverbs: adverbialized defi nite forms, derived through semantic derivation (conversion), and adverbialized prepositional phrases. This competition reveals a strong tendency for the replacement of old synthetic forms with new analytical ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper deals with the challenges presented by the competition in wordformation regarding the Bulgarian-Greek substantive hybrids. These are formations which have emerged on the basis of elements borrowed from Greek, aided by Bulgarian wordformative formants (mostly suffi xes and more rarely prefi xes). The article presents the cases of competition in word-formation, regarding the simple and composite hybrid formations. The examples provided here are part of a broader research that covers material from the whole linguistic area. The cases of suffi x competition are studied in the framework of the separate word-formative categories they are part of, following the ideas postulated in the word-formation theory of the Czech linguist M. Dokulil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the microtoponyms, derived from anthroponyms, in the upstream area of the Struma River, and particularly those from the former region of Radomir. Based on the typical onomastic method of names and their forms reconstruction, it can be assumed that the roots of the researched microtoponyms are in fact Thracian personal names. The number of the examples is 30. A new approach for the analysis of remnants from the Thracian onomastics is presented, with a focus on the preserved microtoponymy in the region. Its implementation is possible thanks to the new scientifi c research on the Thracian anthroponymy, published in the recent years. It should be underlined that the offered approach represents only one of the possible options for an etymological analysis.. As a result, important suggestions about the Thracian names continuity and their place in the Bulgarian anthroponymic system can be made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a deficit in the systematic studies of therefl exes of the Indo-European laryngeals in the Thracian language, mostly due to poor language data and the scarcity of certain etymologies. Partial observations on the behaviour of laryngeals in certain positions in the Thracian have been made over the years by some Bulgarian Indoeuropeanists, who examined them from comparative perspective, including their reflexes in ancient Greek and pre-Hellenic (Pelasgian) language1. In this paper, I will try to track and summarize all reflexes of the Indo-European laryngeals in Thracian, according to their positions in the word, by working only with certain or very likely etymologies of Thracian glosses and onomastic material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper “Mountain (European creeping) pine Pinus mugo (montana) within the Balkan linguistic context” deals with the popular plant names of this pine in 8 Balkan languages (including Rumanian) and their dialects. The article is based on onomasiological and etymological analysis. The detailed classification of phytonomastical patterns is given. Some cases of structural isomorphism (“pattern replication”) based on real distinctive features of the plant have been found: ‘curved, bent', ‘knotty, cranked', ‘creeping', ‘thorny, spiny', ‘mountain' etc. Balkan folk plant taxonomies can be observed in the comparison and likening of Pinus mugo with other coniferous plants: genus Pinus (pine), genus Picea (spruce), genus Juniperus (juniper) etc. All the borrowings are analyzed, including both quite clear slavisms in Albanian, Arumanian, Rumanian and Greek and quite opaque substrate element *molika / *munika. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper updates and adds new data regarding the situation of the reconstructable Pre-Indo-European root *OR-, *UR-, also suggested as probable in the case of some previously analysed place-names, Vrbas and Varna, possibly also in Warszawa. This time, the focus is on Romanian oraș, dialectal also uraș ‘township' and uriaș ‘giant, very big', obviously related to a series of place names like Orșova, Oradea and others, in their turn reflecting the ancient Thracian forms attested as ora, oros, oron in a series of Thracian place names like Al-oros, Az-oros, El-oros, Gaz-oros, Thest-oros, Milk-oros, Tarp-oron, Clev-ora, Cap-ora, also in the case of the river name Ordessos, with a probable real pronunciation *ordeʃ (ordeš). In the light of this comparative analysis, the current hypothesis, largely spread among linguists, that Rom. oraș is a borrowing from Hung. város ‘township' cannot be held for valid, as there are several undocumented phonetic evolutions and, equally important, the relationship of these forms has been ignored, including the obvious relationship oraș/uraș ~ uriaș/oriaș, the latter being a usual term of the Romanian tales. Hung. vár ‘a fortress' reflects a borrowing from Rom. oara, now in place names only, while város is an internal evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is based on the published fi eld materials of “Small Dialectological Atlas of the Balkan Languages” (SDABL) and describes the beekeeping terminology of the southern Albanian (tosk) dialect of Leshnjё and the northern Albanian (gheg) dialect of Muhurr. The author carries out the thorough examination of all lexical lacunae (honey fl ow, honey gathering, braulosis, brood nest etc.) and offers some good explanations for these lexical gaps. The cases of lexical indistinctions (e. g. basket to gather honeycombs = pollen basket on bee’s hindlegs; beehive = mud and clay hive = skep made of coils of straw or branches; honey = honeydew = honeydew honey) and lexical neutralizations (‘to fl y away from a hive - about bees': ikin ‘(they) leave’, shkon ‘(he) goes (away)', vjen ‘(he) comes') demonstrate the peculiarities of the conceptualization of the information in both dialects. The characteristics of the beekeeping terminology in both dialects are: very few combinations of words as beekeeping terms on one hand (qumësht blete, taomël gjete ‘royal gelly') and a lot of one-word terms on the other hand - as a result of highly developed synonymy (arkë = koshere= syndyq ‘handmade bee tree’; nёnё, nôn = mbretёresh, mbretnesh = matkё = kallaus ‘queen'). The Leshnjё's synonymy (in 20% of the responses) is much stronger than the synonymy in Muhurr (13%). All the 130 lexemes of beekeeping terminology of Leshnjё and 100 lexemes of Muhurr which form words and multi word expressions are analysed from the etymological point of view. One can observe much less inherited Albanian words of Indo-European origin in tosk Leshnjё than in gheg Muhurr (38% vs. 53%), but much more Latin and Balkan Roman words and later borrowings in tosk Leshnjё than in gheg Muhurr (approx.30% and 30% vs. 23% and 22%). The table demonstrates the more active penetration of Greek, Slavic, Turkish loan-words and new international European terms in the beekeeping terminology of the southern Albanian dialect of Leshnjё. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interesting memorial inscription in Greek has been found in the region of Shumen; it is known as “inscription of Khan Malamir”. The fourth row of the inscription is occupied by six letters, namely “MHPTZE”, which can be read as “Mirche”. The name “Mirche” (In Wallachian “Mircea”) is among the names of the rulers of Wallachia from the 14th-15th c., therefore it is necessary to carefully consider the opportunity that the inscription is related to some of them. A step in this direction is described in the present paper. Proposed is the hypothesis that “The inscription of Khan Malamir” is a commemorative inscription to a person close to “Knyaz” (=Khan) “MALA MHRTZE”. The Prince “MALA MHRTZE”, on behalf of whom is the inscription, is probably Mircea II of Wallachia, son of Vlad II Dracul and grandson of Mircea I of Wallachia (Mircea the Elder). Significantly less likely is that this ruler is Mircea the Elder or another person from the 15th-16th c. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper, presented at the 11th Congress of South-East European Studies in Sofia 31.08‒04.09.2015, deals with theoretical foundations of the Balkan linguistiuc studies, their goals, methods, terminology and major oppositions, areal and intralinguistic constants and dominants of the Balkan languages, tests in data sutability for theories, typologies of contact situations etc. Some widespread contemporary theoretical implications in Balkan and contact linguistics, at least partially going back to Putnam's realism, result in theoretical and terminological ambivalency, deconstructing traditional ideal of knowledge. Balkan studies in St. Petersburg traditionally based on positivism, historism, structuralism and social relevance, creating the “Minor dialectological atlas of Balkan languages” prove their ability to gain new knowledge on Balkan Sprachbund. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his paper the author suggests that three terms for ‘juniper', attested in Lycaonian, Albanian and Greek respectively, are related to each other. Both the Albanian dëllinjë ‘juniper' and Anc. Gk. (Doric) σχέλινος ‘a kind of cypress or juniper' seem to demonstrate both the same root (IE. *ĝhel- ‘to grow up, to be green') and the same collective suffi x *-īno-. The Lycaonian form δέλβεια derives from IE. *ĝhel- by means of two different suffi xes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a case of language contact in Balkan Romance where lexical borrowing has led to a shift in the primary productive verb formation pattern. Historically, there are two major productive verbal patterns in Balkan Romance, though there are differences between the inventories of verbs associated with each pattern, as well as the patterns' relative levels of productivity across the different Balkan Romance varieties. I argue that these differences are largely the result of language contact, with lexical borrowing from French, a prestigious language in 19th century Romania, eventually leading to the promotion of one of the patterns over the other in Daco-Romanian. Due to not being subject to the same infl uence, Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian did not undergo the same development. However, it does appear that a similar shift could be happening in modern Aromanian, though the language responsible for the change is not French, but rather Daco-Romanian itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the inaugural International Conference on Minority and Endangered Languages in the Balkans, discussing bilingualism's effects, linguistic diversity, and societal implications in Southeast Europe. Presentations covered themes such as language contact's impact on linguistic changes, challenges in minority schools due to multilingualism, and the evolving linguistic landscape in specific Balkan regions, offering a comprehensive exploration of language dynamics in the area.

Starting from a lack of consensus regarding the origin of shepherds’ terminology in the Balkans, we apply the experimental, but so far highly successful approach of triangulation, proposed in Robbeets et al. (2021) for anthropological and linguistic purposes. It involves the triangulation of insights from the spheres of archaeology, human genetics and diachronic linguistics/anthropology. This is because the characteristic terminology of shepherds’ culture in the Balkans and the Carpathian mountain range is a prominent and simultaneously common feature. We attempt to shed light on developments in that region during prehistoric times and the possible links between the ancient shepherds’ culture in the Balkans and the Carpathian mountain ranges, and the oldest migration streams into Southeast Europe in a Neolithic context. To do so, we examine the archaeological cultures in question and consider what human genetics can tell us about the individuals taking part in prehistorical migrations and forming innovative cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the subordinating conjunctions in verbal communication in Bulgarian that are specifically marked as colloquial in syntactic literature. The main aim of the study is to analyze and present the semantic-structural peculiarities of these subordinating conjunctions as well as their function in Bulgarian verbal communication on the basis of personally excerpted empirical data (recordings of the colloquial speech of colleagues, undergraduates, relatives, and people in the street), as well as through examples of spontaneous casual and live speech from TV productions and radio programs. Together with colloquial coordinating conjunctions, the specific constructions (repetitive, elliptic, etc.), the different word order, the asyndetic constructions (without conjunctions), the competition between parataxis and hypotaxis, etc. – the subordinating colloquial conjunctions form a part of the characteristic features of colloquial syntax which differentiates it from the syntax of standard language to a great extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we first outline previous research on the morphosyntax and phonology of the varieties of Judeo-Spanish spoken in Bulgaria. Second, we discuss the research gaps resulting from our literature survey and present the research questions that will be addressed in the project “Judeo-Spanish in Bulgaria: a contact language between archaism and innovation”, funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) for a period of three years (2022–2025). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this pilot study is to verify, using acoustic measurements, a probable difference in soft consonants between eastern and western Bulgarian types of articulation. The analyses are based on measurements of four acoustic parameters – consonant duration, F2 transition duration, F2 onset (Hz), and F2 off set (Hz). The comparison is made between velar /k, g/ and bilabial /b, p/ soft plosives with eastern and western articulation types in Cj VC(S) isolated syllables. The results provide evidence that consonant duration is notably different between voiced and voiceless soft consonants, either velar or bilabial, in the western and eastern types of articulation; the median values of consonant duration also proved to be longer in the eastern-type soft plosives compared to the shorter duration of the western soft plosives. The F2 transition duration of [bj ] and [pj ] in both types of articulation correlates with the consonant duration – the longer the consonant, the shorter the F2 transition, and vice versa. The experiment also shows evidence of falling transitions following both eastern and western soft velar and bilabial plosives. Although not all parameter measurements show a clear difference between the eastern and western type of articulation, the results are sufficient to indicate important features of the soft consonants studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the Multilingual Culinary Lexicon – an online repertory for looking up information related to food, cooking, and culinary matters in twenty five languages. A Culinary Lexicon has been developed for Bulgarian, and based on the relations of equivalence with English, it has been connected with 23 languages for which (lexical-) semantic networks are available. This resulted in an online Multilingual Culinary Lexicon which contains synonyms, translation equivalents, (for some languages) definitions and examples, and for some synonym sets (synsets) – the respective ingredients. The synsets in Bulgarian were supplied with explanatory definitions, grammatical and stylistic labels, and examples in a similar way as in the regular explanatory dictionaries. The Bulgarian Culinary Lexicon comprises 3,222 synsets which contain 5,338 synonyms. The article offers an overview of the way the Multilingual Culinary Lexicon is being developed with a special focus on the additional lexicographic information it contains in comparison with the (Princeton) WordNet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the replication of the Balkan areal pattern in Judeo-Spanish adlimitives or ‘until’-clauses. Based on examples extracted from original Judeo-Spanish sources composed between 16th and 20th centuries of diverse genres, the replication in Judeo- Spanish fin ke/asta ke-clauses of the Balkan pattern of prefixed perfective Indicative verbs (with negator) is traced, instead of the Hispanic prospective subjunctive. The change is analysed based on the contrast between Spanish, Balkan languages and the outcomes of their contact in Judeo-Spanish (as a new-comer to the Balkan Linguistic Area). By transferring to the Balkan area, Judeo-Spanish changed from non-strict to a strict negative concord language and this change affected also the structure of until-clauses. The approach is the division of until-clauses into three subtypes (as identified by Muravyev & Georgieva 2018) and their structure presented in contrast between Spanish (a non-strict negative concord language as the remainder of Ibero-Romance) and strict negative concord (Balkan languages and Judeo- Spanish). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article traces in detail the reflexes of the IE laryngeals in Pelasgian, Thracian, Daco-Moesian and Ancient Macedonian. The study is based on the reliable and probable etymologies of the Paleo-Balkan vocabulary and aims to analyze and summarize the results obtained for the main Paleo-Balkan languages, taking into account all the studies to date. The conclusions drawn are an important testimony to the degree of phonetic (and genetic) similarity between the various Paleo-Balkan languages and in comparative terms their proximity to Greek. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reexamines the connection between the Slavic ornithonyms for ‘nightingale' (Luscinia sp., esp. L. megarhynchos)', *solṷьcь, *solṷьcь, and so on, and Hittite šaluwai-, šaluwaja-, šalwini-, which Blažek (1998) already briefly drew attention t [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article appears to be a continuation of several previous publications where I regarded a big number of medieval Bulgarian anthroponyms, toponyms, loanwords of obvious Romance origin and words of "unknown origin" preserved in Middle Bulgarian sources. On the basis of linguistic analysis, I concluded that in the Medieval period Old Slavonic (Bulgarian) and Middle Bulgarian were in contact with two different Romance speaking population groups. The first one was the group of Protoromanians, while the second included communities whose dialects stemmed from the variant of Latin recorded in the Late Latin inscriptions from Bulgarian lands. In the present study I regard new anthroponyms and toponyms of Romance (Non-Protoromanian) origin and present additional arguments in favor of this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]