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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]

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 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]

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]

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 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]

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]

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 article deals with the origin of Proto-Slavic *straxъ ‘fear'. Five etymological solutions have been discussed in order to determine the most convincing among them. The positives and the negatives of each etymology are summarized in a table. It turns out that all five hypothesis are problematic to a certain degree and this fact puts even the best candidates in the range of possible, but not certain etymologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]