Proto-Slavic language. Old Slavonic language

Lecture 2-3

Indo-European languages. The concept of parent language.

Proto-Slavic language. Linguistic Paleo-Slavistics.

INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES, language family, the most widespread in the world. Its distribution area includes almost all of Europe, the Americas and continental Australia, as well as a significant part of Africa and Asia. More than 2.5 billion people - i.e. about half of the total population the globe They speak Indo-European languages. All major languages ​​of Western civilization are Indo-European. All the languages ​​of modern Europe belong to this family of languages, with the exception of Basque, Hungarian, Sami, Finnish, Estonian and Turkish, as well as several Altaic and Uralic languages ​​​​of the European part of Russia. The name "Indo-European" is conditional. In Germany, the term "Indo-Germanic" was used, and in Italy - "Ario-European" to indicate that ancient people and an ancient language from which all later Indo-European languages ​​are generally believed to have descended. The alleged ancestral home of this hypothetical people, whose existence is not supported by any historical evidence (except linguistic), is Eastern Europe or Western Asia.

The oldest known monuments of the Indo-European languages ​​are the Hittite texts dating back to the 17th century. BC. Some hymns Rigveda and Atharvaveda are also very ancient and date back to about 1400 BC. or even earlier, but they were transmitted orally and were written down later. The same can be said about the Homeric epic, some parts of which date back to the 13th or even the 14th century, and also, probably, about the oldest fragments. Avesta(the time of creation of which is very uncertain).

Different writing systems were used to write the Indo-European languages. Hittite cuneiform, Palai, Luvian and Old Persian were written in cuneiform, Luvian hieroglyphic - in a special hieroglyphic syllabary, Sanskrit - with the help of Kharoshtha, Devanagari, Brahmi and other alphabets; Avestan and Pahlavi - in special alphabets, modern Persian - in Arabic script. According to currently available information, all types of alphabets used and used by the languages ​​​​of Europe come from the Phoenician.

The Indo-European family of languages ​​includes at least twelve groups of languages. In order of geographical location, moving clockwise from northwestern Europe, these are the following groups: Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Tocharian, Indian, Iranian, Armenian, Hitto-Luvian, Greek, Albanian, Italic (including Latin and descended from her Romance languages, which are sometimes separated into a separate group). Of these, three groups (Italic, Hitto-Luvian, and Tocharian) consist entirely of dead languages. Of the other dead languages, Palaic and Luvian, as well as Lydian and Lycian, are indisputably Indo-European. Little remains of the Thracian, Phrygian, and Illyrian languages; there is reason to believe that Thracian or Illyrian are the ancestors of the modern Albanian language, and Phrygian is the ancestors of modern Armenian.

The first person to notice the similarities between Sanskrit and European languages ​​was the Florentine merchant and traveler Filippo Sassetti (1540–1588). Comparing Italian words sei, sette, otto,new, Dio, serpe with Sanskrit, sapta, , nava, devas, sarpan, he realized that their similarity was not accidental, but due to linguistic kinship (which can be illustrated by the same examples today). On the other hand, and quite independently, the striking resemblance between Persian and German was noticed and shown in numerous examples by the Flemish scholar Bonaventure Vulcanius in his work Deliteris et lingua Getarum sive Gothorum(1597), and after him - by several German researchers. One of them was the philosopher Leibniz, who, with a great deal of exaggeration, wrote in his OtiumHanoveranum(1718): "You can write poetry in Persian - any German will understand them." Nevertheless, the first scholar who logically deduced from such facts the possibility of the existence of the original Indo-European proto-language was Sir William Jones, who wrote in 1786: “Sanskrit, for all its antiquity, has a striking structure; it is more perfect than Greek, richer than Latin, but at the same time, in its verbal roots and grammatical forms, there is a clear similarity with both of these languages, which could not have arisen by chance, this similarity is so great that not a single philologist in the study of all three languages cannot help but conclude that they originated from one common source, which, apparently, no longer exists. There are similar, though less obvious, grounds for suggesting that Gothic and Celtic also have a common origin with Sanskrit; Old Persian can also be included in the same family of languages. Jones did not delve into this problem, but already in the works of R. Rusk and F. Bopp (c. 1815) a systematic study of Indo-European languages ​​​​was begun and the foundations of comparative Indo-European studies were laid.

To the languages ​​identified by Jones—Latin, Greek, Indian, Celtic, and Germanic—Bopp added Iranian in 1816, Rusk added Baltic and Slavic in 1818, and again Bopp added Albanian in 1854. Armenian, previously considered one of the Iranian dialects, was recognized as an independent Indo-European language by Khyubshman in 1875. The belonging of Tocharian to the Indo-European languages ​​​​was proved by F. Müller in 1907, cuneiform Hittite - by B. Terrible in 1915, Luwian - by him (later), hieroglyphic Luvian - I. Gelbom and P. Meridzhi, Lydian and Lycian - Meridzhi, Palayan - G. Bossert. Any relationship of the Indo-European family of languages ​​with other language families - Semitic, Uralic, Altaic, etc. - has not yet been proven. The Indo-Hittite theory of E. Sturtevant, which considers the Hittite and some other Anatolian languages ​​as an independent, although related, group parallel to Indo-European, does not have sufficient evidence.

The Indo-European parent language was undoubtedly an inflectional language, i.e. its morphological meanings were expressed by changing the endings of words; in this language there was no prefixation and almost no infixation; he had three genders - masculine, feminine and neuter, differed at least six cases; nouns and verbs were distinctly opposed; heteroclise (i.e. irregularity in the paradigm, cf. fero: tuli or I am : I was). According to the classical scheme, the system of phonemes included four classes of stop consonants (voiced non-aspirated, voiceless aspirated, voiced non-aspirated, voiced aspirated) with four positions of articulation (velar, labiovelar, dental, labial); two smooth ( l,r), two semivowels ( y,w), two nasal ( m,n), one sibilant ( s), but none of the fricatives (with the exception of s) and not a single affricate. All nasals, smooth and semi-vowels at the latest stage of the existence of the Indo-European language could act in two functions - syllabic and non-syllabic. In early Indo-European there were only three proper vowel phonemes - a,e and o(long and short); later added to them i, u, and reduced - . The stress was mobile and had well-defined morphological functions. There was a highly developed system of vowel alternations that performed morphological functions, the remnants of which are partly preserved - for example, in English (cf. give, gave, given; drive,drove, driven; sing, sang, sung, etc.) and, to a lesser extent, in Russian (cf. put away, I will remove, dress). The roots were modified by adding one or more root determinants (suffixes) and endings to the right.

Based on the comparison of the Indo-European languages, it became possible to some extent to reconstruct the material and spiritual culture, customs, lifestyle and social institutions of the ancient Indo-Europeans - people who spoke a common Indo-European language. So, from the fact that in Latin there is a word mel, in Gothic - , in Greek - , in Old Irish - mil, in Hittite cuneiform - melit and they all mean "honey", we can conclude that the Indo-Europeans were familiar with this product; and if we compare the Latin boss, umber bue, Old Irish bo, English cow, Latvian guovs, Old Church Slavonic gov-e-do, Tocharian ko, Greek, Armenian kov, Avestan gaus and Vedic gaus, meaning "cow" (less often - "bull" or "buffalo"), it will become obvious that cows were known to the Indo-Europeans. Based on such considerations, it can be stated with sufficient certainty that the Indo-Europeans bred domestic animals, in particular sheep, dogs, cows, goats, pigs, ducks, geese, and later horses; that they cultivated the land with a plow; that they sowed barley, wheat, millet, oats, and spelt; and that they ground grain and made flour out of it. From wild animals they knew a bear and a wolf, from trees - beech, birch, oak and pine. Of the metals, they probably knew only bronze or copper. Apparently, these were people of the late Stone Age, and, as the German word shows Messer"knife", they were familiar with stone tools for cutting. Messer comes from Old High German mezzi-rahs, from mezzi-sahs, whose first element is * mati- (English) meat"meat"), and the second is akin to Old English Seax"sword" and Latin saxum"a rock"; the whole word refers to a knife made of stone and used to cut meat. (The study of such facts is called linguistic paleontology.)

Using the same method, one can try to identify the "ancestral home" of the Indo-Europeans, i.e. the last territory of their settlement before the first division, which took place at the latest in the III millennium BC. The widespread use of designations for "snow" (eng. snow, German Schnee, lat. nix, Greek , Russian snow, Lithuanian etc.) and "winter" (lat. hiems, Lithuanian ziema, Russian winter, Greek Vedic himas), in contrast to the lack of common designations for "summer" and "autumn", clearly point to the cold northern ancestral home. This is also evidenced by the presence of the names of the trees given above, in the absence or late appearance of the names of trees growing in the Mediterranean area and requiring a warm climate, such as fig tree, cypress, laurel and vine. The names of tropical and subtropical animals (such as cat, donkey, monkey, camel, lion, tiger, hyena, elephant) are also late, while the names of bear, wolf, and otter are early. On the other hand, the presence of these names of animals and plants and the absence of the names of polar animals (seal, sea lion, walrus) and plants definitely speaks against the polar ancestral home.

The names of the beech tree, honey, and salmon, which are found only in certain parts of the world, clearly point to Europe; and salmon (German) Lachs, Russian salmon, Lithuanian lašiša; in Tocharian laks means "fish") is not found in either the Mediterranean or the Black Sea, so the only sea that can be discussed is the Baltic. One of the scientists who defended the Baltic hypothesis was G. Bender, other researchers called Scandinavia as the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans, Northern Germany, Southern Russia together with the Danube area, as well as the Kyrgyz and Altai steppes. The theory of the Asian ancestral home, very popular in the 19th century, in the 20th century. supported only by some ethnologists, but rejected by almost all linguists. The theory of an Eastern European ancestral home located in Russia, Romania or the Baltic countries is confirmed by the fact that the Indo-European people had long and close contacts with the Finnish peoples in the north and with the Sumerian and Semitic cultures of Mesopotamia in the south.

Thanks to the development of areal linguistics, a new and very fruitful approach to the problem of the reconstruction of Indo-European culture has developed. It has been noticed that the extreme regions of the Indo-European range (Latin and Celtic, on the one hand, and Indian and Iranian, on the other) reveal a lot of words of a religious, social and political nature, which are associated with a rigid patriarchal social order. Words like latin flames, pontifices, Celtic druides as well as Indian guru- , brahman- , they say that in this society there was a dominance of priestly colleges, which orally transmitted sacred knowledge. These words are undoubtedly preserved from more ancient period and testify that the Indo-European society once had a religious-aristocratic structure based on a rigid social differentiation. Survivals of such a social structure can be observed in the later castes of India, which almost completely reproduce the system of social organization of ancient Gaul, as described by Caesar, as well as ancient Ireland and Rome. The central regions of the Indo-European area (Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Armenian) have lost all or most of these terms and demonstrate in historical time a much more democratic structure, in which the power of the king, nobility and priests is small, there are few priestly associations, and political and judicial matters are decided by the assembly.

INDO-EUROPEANISTICS (otherwise also called Indo-European linguistics), a branch of linguistics that studies the historical development of Indo-European languages ​​and reconstructs their ancient states; the earliest and most developed part of comparative historical linguistics.

The concept of parent language.

Important milestone development of Indo-European studies is associated with the name of A. Schleicher, who worked in the 1850s–1860s. Schleicher finally formulated the concept of an Indo-European proto-language, different from Sanskrit or any other language of the Indo-European family known to us. This once single language subsequently broke up into several languages, from which in turn the modern Indo-European languages ​​\u200b\u200bare descended. There are no texts left of it, but it can be reconstructed on the basis of regular sound correspondences between the languages ​​known to us. Schleicher even wrote a fable in this parent language, considering it to be completely restored. However, later it became clear that it was impossible to completely restore the parent language: much was lost without a trace and was not reflected in the texts that have come down to us; besides, the proto-language might not be completely unified. Based on this, some scientists, without rejecting the very concept of the parent language, believed that the restored "proto-language" is only a theoretical construct, a system of regular correspondences (the last formulation belongs to A. Meie). The concept of the parent language still dominates Indo-European studies, although later (in particular, N. Trubetskoy), in the 1930s, a different explanation was proposed for the similarity of Indo-European languages ​​as a result of the secondary convergence of languages ​​that were not previously related to each other.

Parent language - (base language) - a language from the dialects of which a group of related languages ​​originated, otherwise called a family (see. Genealogical classification of languages). From the point of view of the formal apparatus comparative historical linguistics each unit of the parent language ( phoneme, morph,word form,combination of words or syntactic construction) is given by the correspondence between the genetically identical elements of individual languages ​​originating from a given proto-language. For example, in Indo-European In the parent language, the phoneme *bʰ is given by the correspondence between other Ind. bh, other Greek φ (-*ph), lat. f- (in position at the beginning of a word), germ. b-, Slav. b-, etc. Therefore, in the concept created by F. de Saussure and developed by A. Meillet, each phoneme (as well as other units) of the parent language can be considered an abbreviated record of a line in the table of correspondences between phonemes (or other units) of the parent language and is replaced by an ordinal row number in such a table (matrix). This approach is of considerable interest for carrying out a complete formalization of procedures reconstruction proto-language, in particular, with the aim of using computers to restore the proto-language.

With a meaningful interpretation of the parent language, it is considered as a language that corresponds to universal typological patterns derived from other known languages ​​and that existed in real space and historical time in relation to a certain society. To test the reality of such an approach to the parent language, the cases are especially important when one and the same parent language can be approached both with the help of reconstruction based on the system of correspondences between the languages ​​\u200b\u200bthat arose from it (for example, Romance), and from written sources (folk Latin, which is Romance language). Proto-language of the Romance group of languages ​​- colloquial Latin language may, in turn, come from a dialect of the Italic proto-language, which is traced back to the dialect of the Indo-European proto-language. Sequential construction of all known large families languages ​​of the world(such as Indo-European) to proto-languages, in turn descending from dialects of the proto-language of the macrofamily (for example, Nostratic, cf. Nostratic languages) allows you to reduce all families of languages ​​of the world to several proto-languages ​​of large macrofamilies. According to the hypotheses, these proto-languages, in turn, originated from dialects of the same proto-language Homo sapiens sapiens that existed since its appearance (from 100 to 30 thousand years ago), while the proto-languages ​​of individual macrofamilies existed in a time interval much closer to the historical one ( about 20-10 thousand years ago), and the proto-languages ​​of individual families that emerged from macrofamilies - in an even closer time interval, less than one tens of thousands of years. Thus, the parent language is a historical concept, and there is a hierarchy of parent languages ​​according to the time of their division into dialects: the parent language, previously divided, could later give a dialect from which the parent language develops, which later became the basis for a family of languages, one of the dialects of which, in turn, gives rise to a certain family of languages, and so on.

Proto-Slavic language.

The Slavic languages ​​are ultimately descendants of the Indo-European proto-language. Regardless of whether this happened through an intermediate proto-language (Proto-Balto-Slavic) or whether the development proceeded directly from the Indo-European proto-language, the opinion has long been established in Slavic studies that the Proto-Slavic language existed (in German comparative studies - Urslavisch or die urslavische Sprache, in French slave commune and in Anglo-American Common Slavic). Its contours are, of course, hypothetical; are conjectural, since it existed many hundreds, or even millennia ago and, of course, was not recorded in written monuments. This is a proto-language restored with the help of reconstruction, a kind of linguistic model based on the most important features - phonetic, grammatical and lexical. Nevertheless, we can say with certainty that it was originally a territorially variable language, i.e. representing a set of related and, presumably, some unrelated dialects or dialects. It spread over a certain territory, which was occupied by the tribes that communicated with each other. Due to the expansion or displacement of the habitat, the ties between the individual parts of the Slavic ethno-linguistic area weakened, local features began to develop in speech at all levels, which ultimately led to some rupture of ties and the formation of an independent development channel. Based on the above logic of ethno-linguistic development, we can call the Proto-Slavic language the progenitor of all Slavic languages ​​that once existed and exist now.

To date, a separate discipline has been formed that studies the problems of the Proto-Slavic language - linguistic Paleo-Slavistics, which is an integral part of the general Paleo-Slavic studies. At the same time, the issues of traditional culture, reconstructed on the basis and with the help of language, should also be included in the sphere of its interests. This discipline is already half a century old. The following periodization of its development is proposed:

the first stage is the birth of the science of Proto-Slavic, associated with the work of A. Schleicher "A Brief Essay on the History of the Slavic Languages" (1858) and such names as F. Mikloshich, Leskin, F. F. Fortunatov, V. Yagich, A. A. Potebnya, I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, A. I. Sobolevsky, A. A. Shakhmatov, S. M. Kulbakin, Vondrak, A. Meie, Ya. Rozvadovsky and others;

the second stage begins since the First World War, when the work of G. A. Ilyinsky "Proto-Slavic Grammar" (1916) appears and when A. Belich, P. A. Buzuk, N. N. Durnovo, N. Van Wijk, O. Guyer, J. Zubaty, N. S. Trubetskoy, A. Vaillant, L. A. Bulakhovsky, T. Lehr-Splavinsky, R. Nachtigal and others;

3) the third stage has been developing since the second half of the 20th century, enriching itself with new material, new approaches to the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic language, the appearance of generalizing works both in grammar and vocabulary; among the researchers are F. Maresh, S. B. Bernstein, T. LerSplavinsky, V. I. Georgiev, E. Kurilovich, R. Jacobson, H. Stang, Yu. Shevelev, I. Lekov, P. S. Kuznetsov, V. Kiparsky, O. N. Trubacheva, V. N. Toporov, Vyach. Sun. Ivanov, N. I. Tolstoy, E. Stankevich, H. Birnbaum, V. K. Zhuravlev, V. A. Dybo and many others. Moreover, quite often some of them changed their ideas regarding the periodization of the Proto-Slavic language. The dissonance in the interpretation of the time of the birth of Slavic speech is obvious: from “around the turn of the III and II millennium BC.” to "shortly before the beginning of our era", similarly in the case of the collapse of the Proto-Slavic language - from the prehistoric era of the 2nd half of the 1st millennium BC. until the X-XII centuries. AD The account, thus, goes on millennia. Figures up to a century are especially doubtful.

4.3. Principles of the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic language. The Proto-Slavic reconstruction based on the comparative historical method is more successful than the restoration of the Indo-European proto-language. This is understandable: the time of the existence of the Proto-Slavic is closer to us, and the material of the Slavic languages, which are still the closest languages ​​in relation to each other in the circle of the Indo-European linguistic family, contributes to the reconstruction. These factors also favor the fact that a large number of words and their forms are often reconstructed without going beyond the Slavic languages ​​and dialects. It makes sense in this connection to speak of an intra-group, and in our case, an intra-Slavic reconstruction, which can also be considered as an extension of the internal reconstruction. However, for greater persuasiveness of the results obtained, one still usually has to resort to a control check according to data from other Indo-European languages.

Before illustrating this situation with examples, we note that due to the proximity of many elements and features, Proto-Slavic is often identified with the Old Slavonic language - as was done in the initial period of the development of the comparative historical method, when the Indo-European proto-language was actually equated with ancient Indian Sanskrit. However, this applies not only to the Proto-Slavic language. It has become a tradition to put in such dependence, for example, Latin and Romance languages, Old Norse and Old Norse, Lithuanian and Baltic. There is a significant contradiction in such a formulation of the question: if, say, the Proto-Slavonic is identified with the Old Slavonic, created in the 9th century. based on the Bulgarian-Macedonian dialects, then it should not be placed in the classification in the subgroup of the South Slavic languages ​​and we should not talk about its dialect basis at all! In this case, we should talk about maximum genetic closeness, but not about identity. This is important to keep in mind.

So, let's do a reconstruction of, say, the word brother - i.-e. *b4rater - praslav. *bratrb. To implement the first stage of reconstruction, it is necessary to draw on the material of all Slavic languages ​​and see what the situation is with this word:

Proto-Slavic form - *brat- or *bratr-? In this case, the number of languages ​​does not always help: it may happen that the first form without the final consonant -r- arose as a result of its dropping - in that case the form with -r- is original? And why was it that she was represented in the Proto-Slavic language?

This issue can be solved with the help of external reconstruction, and for this it is necessary to expand the range of compared languages, i.e. go beyond the Slavic, turning to other Indo-European languages, cf .:

It is easy to see that the word brother in the given non-Slavic Indo-European languages ​​clearly (with rare exceptions) demonstrates the final -r. There is nothing left to do but to attribute this to the -r form of the Proto-Slavic word of interest to us, which within the language group is also confirmed by one South Slavic (Old Slavonic) and two/three West Slavic languages ​​(Czech and Upper and Lower Lusatian), in which the proto-form is best preserved .

On the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavonic dictionary.

The reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic dictionary has been carried out over the past one and a half centuries. An indicator of its current level is the publication of etymological dictionaries of Slavic languages ​​(proto-Slavic dictionaries). With the help of lexico-semantic reconstruction, not only the vocabulary of the proto-language is restored, but at the same time the picture of the life of the ancient tribes. Consequently, by reconstructing lexical units, we thereby reveal the contours of the ancient Slavic culture. Since some of the words and their meanings are more than one millennium old, we can talk about a significant advantage of the data of lexico-semantic reconstruction over the data of phonetic and grammatical reconstructions.

However, lexico-semantic reconstruction is a very complex process that is fraught with many surprises. Let's say more: there are many researchers who are skeptical about the possibility of a more or less accurate establishment of the real semantics of proto-linguistic words. It should be borne in mind that the very ideas of the speakers of ancient languages ​​about themselves and about the world around them cannot be fully projected onto our ideas, since for many millennia they have changed, erased, intertwined, etc., thereby hiding from us their original state. As well as ideas about the world, the words themselves and their meanings also changed. This process has always been influenced by internal and external factors. Thus, internal factors manifested themselves in the fact that the meaning of a word could shift or change under the influence of some new associations (connections with another object and meaning), its use in a metaphorical sense, in the expansion or narrowing of the original meaning, etc. External factors were manifested in the change of the surrounding world and in the influence of the surrounding languages.

In 1974, two major events took place in world Slavic studies: the Institute of the Russian Language of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Committee of Linguistics of the Polish Academy of Sciences began publishing multi-volume etymological dictionaries of the Proto-Slavic language. Theorist, initiator, one of the authors and editor of the Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages. Proto-Slavic Lexical Fund” was O.N. Trubachev (after his death, the publication continues under the editorship of A.F. Zhuravlev), “Proto-Slavonic Dictionary” began to be published under the editorship of F. Slavsky. A feature of the dictionaries is that, in addition to lexemes of common Slavic distribution, they also include words characteristic of a part of the Slavic territory, that is, lexical dialectisms that are projected into the Proto-Slavic time. More than 20 thousand words will be reflected in the Moscow dictionary, including derivatives, as well as local (dialect) ones. After the completion of the publication of both dictionaries, it will be possible to more successfully reconstruct fragments of the ancient Slavic worldview and attitude. At the same time, this will also help in determining the degree of closeness of the Slavic languages ​​in relation to each other.

Bulk ancient words Proto-Slavic words are originally Slavic in origin.

Causes and directions of the collapse of the Proto-Slavic language

Some external and internal factors are named as the reasons for the collapse, in some cases focusing on external ones, in others - on internal ones. Thus, the resettlement of the Slavs in vast territories, the movement of its individual parts in various directions, the loss of unity in the political, administrative and cultural terms, the influence of various historical events, etc., act as external factors. To internal reasons include linguistic factors. Usually these are certain phonetic processes that the Proto-Slavic language began to experience in connection with the loss of territorial, social, and so on. unity. Some Slavists insist that the internal disintegration was prepared by the multidirectional development of the vowel system, by the operation of the law open word, which caused, among other things, the monophthongization of diphthongs, as well as the palatalization of consonants, as a result of which not only opposing pairs of hardness and softness could be formed, but also new consonants appeared (hissing, whistling, some affricates). So thought, for example, the Polish Slavist L. Moshinsky (1965).

Concerning the direction in which the disintegration of the Proto-Slavic language proceeded, various points vision. At the beginning of the XIX century. Slovene V. E. Kopitar presented a picture of the collapse into two parts - northwestern (now West Slavic) and southeastern (now South and East Slavic). Already in the twentieth century. the Polish Slavist A. Furdal (1961), on the contrary, taking into account the fate of palatal consonants, noted deep differences between the North Slavic (West and East Slavic) and South Slavic languages. Gradually, the idea is being formed that the initial division of the proto-language took place in the direction "west-east", as a result of which two huge dialect arrays were formed - western and eastern. The first became the source of the West Slavic languages, the second - East and South Slavic. This hypothesis was substantiated by A. A. Shakhmatov, who saw the West Slavic proto-language in the western massif, and the East and South Slavic proto-languages ​​in the eastern massif. Nowadays, the ideas about these two "proto-languages" have changed significantly, if not to say that not all researchers recognize them. Supporters of this point of view believe that this was caused, on the one hand, by the movement of tribes, on the other hand, by the appearance of differences in the language, in particular, in the multidirectional phonetic development. So,

Phonetic differences are also based on when considering the internal division of the resulting dialect arrays. In accordance with the stated point of view, which can be considered traditional, in the west the dialect array that was consolidated breaks up in the direction "north - south" - on the basis of the northern subdialect, a group of Lechit languages ​​\u200b\u200bis formed (Polish, Kashubian) with a transitional Serbal Lusatian belt, and from the southern subdialect Slovak and Czech languages. As for the eastern massif, according to this point of view, it is also divided into two parts: the eastern one, which gave life to the East Slavic languages, and the southern one, on the basis of which the South Slavic languages ​​were formed. Inside the southern massif, there was also a division in the direction "east - west": in the east, the Bulgarian-Macedonian massif is formed, and in the west, the Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian one.

Literature

Dulichenko A. D. Introduction to Slavic Philology. - M., 2014.

Meie A. Introduction to the comparative study of Indo-European languages. - M. - L., 1938.

Georgiev V. I. Studies in Comparative Historical Linguistics. - M., 1958.

Gamkrelidze T. V. Ivanov Vyach. Sun. Indo-European language and Indo-Europeans. Reconstruction and historical and typological analysis of the proto-language and proto-culture, book. 1–2. - Tbilisi, 1984.

Toporov VN Indo-European languages. – Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary. - M., 1990.

5. PRO-SLAVIC LANGUAGE

Slavic languages ​​go back to the same source. This common Slavic ancestor language is conditionally called Proto-Slavic; conditionally because it is not known how the people who spoke this language called themselves in ancient times.

Although the Proto-Slavic language existed for a very long time and no written texts remained of it, nevertheless, we have a fairly complete picture of it. We know how its sound system developed, we know its morphology and the basic fund of the vocabulary, which is inherited from the Proto-Slavic by all Slavic languages. Our knowledge is based on the results of a comparative historical study of the Slavic languages: it allows us to restore the original appearance (protoform) of each studied linguistic fact. The reality of the restored (original) Proto-Slavic form can be verified and refined by the testimony of other Indo-European languages. Especially often correspondences to Slavic words and forms are found in the Baltic languages, for example, in Lithuanian. This can be illustrated by the roots, which include combinations of sounds that changed in different ways in different Slavic languages ​​after the collapse of Proto-Slavic, but remained unchanged in the Lithuanian language.

Many words are common to all Slavic languages, therefore, they were already known to the Proto-Slavic language. The common protoform for them has undergone unequal changes in different Slavic languages; and the design of these words in Lithuanian (and in other Indo-European languages) suggests that the vowel was originally in all roots before I or r. "a°n, *golv-a, *kolt-iti, *vort-a, *gord-b, *korva. The established relationships allow us to formulate a historical phonetic law, according to which it is possible to reconstruct in all other similar cases ( presumably restore) the original proto-form: Russian norov, Bulgarian temper, etc. give grounds for the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic *pogu-b (compare the Lithuanian narv-ytis - "stubborn"), peas, grah, etc. - Proto-Slavic *gorx- b (compare the Lithuanian garb "a - a type of grass), etc. It is in this way that the appearance of the collapsed Proto-Slavic language is restored.

One can speak of Proto-Slavic as a kind of Indo-European language insofar as it is characterized by a complex of features inherent only to it and combined with a series of features known to one degree or another to other languages ​​of Europe and South Asia.

At some stage of their life, a group of European tribes who spoke dialects close to the ancient Baltic, Iranian, Balkan, German, united into a fairly strong union, within which for a long time there was a convergence (leveling, alignment) of dialects necessary to develop mutual understanding. between members of a tribal union. It can be assumed that in the I millennium BC. e. an Indo-European language already existed, characterized by features subsequently known only to Slavic languages, which allows us, modern researchers, to call it Proto-Slavic.

The originality of the Proto-Slavic language is largely due to the fact that its historical changes were determined by development trends inherent only to it. The most common of these was the tendency to syllabic articulation of speech. At a late stage in the development of the Proto-Slavic language, a single-type structure of syllables was formed, leading to the restructuring of former syllables in such a way that they all ended in vowels.

The Proto-Slavic language existed until the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e., when the tribes who spoke it, having settled in the vast territories of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, begin to lose ties with each other. The language of each of the isolated groups of tribes continued to develop in isolation from others, acquiring new sound, grammatical and lexical features. This is the usual way of forming “related” languages ​​from a single source language (proto-language), noticed by F. Engels, who wrote: “Tribes, dismembering, turn into peoples, into whole groups of tribes ... languages ​​change, becoming not only mutually incomprehensible but also losing almost every trace of the original unity.

6. BALTOS-SLAVIC COMMUNITY

In the family of Indo-European languages, the Slavic and Baltic languages ​​are especially close to each other. The latter include modern Lithuanian and Latvian (the so-called East Baltic) and dead (disappeared at different times) languages ​​of ancient tribes that lived in the forest zone of Eastern Europe from the upper reaches of the Oka River to the southern Baltic.

The proximity of the Baltic and Slavic languages ​​is manifested in regular sound correspondences, in the similarity of forms of inflection and word formation, in the commonality of most words denoting the world around us, people, their relationships and activities in the conditions of a communal-tribal system. At the same time, the historically original Proto-Slavic (see Proto-Slavonic language) word formation, restored for the Slavic languages, as a rule, coincides with their formation in the historically attested Baltic languages. For example, restoring the protoform *sun-us for the Slavic son (Old Russian son), we find it in the Lithuanian sun-us, etc. In a very large number of cases, therefore, Slavic words and forms look like converted Baltic ones. These unique relationships within the Indo-European family between languages ​​belonging to different groups have not yet received a generally accepted historical explanation.

In the middle of the 19th century, when a “family tree” scheme appeared in linguistics, explaining the origin of “related” languages ​​​​by the successive division of the parent language (see Proto-language) into separate languages, it was believed that a single Balto-Slavic parent language stood out first, which later broke up into Proto-Slavic and Baltic. This idea of ​​the origin of the Slavic and Baltic languages ​​from their common ancestral language existed in science for almost a century - until the beginning or middle of the 20th century. It was at this time that the idea of ​​the complexity of the process of formation of "related" languages ​​began to form; it was supposed to include not only the disintegration, but also the convergence of "languages ​​as a result of the creation of multilingual tribal unions. The first to doubt the reality of the Balto-Slavic proto-language and substantiate his doubts in 1911 was J. Endzelin, a well-known Latvian linguist.

Since the Baltic and Slavic languages, along with very noticeable common features, are also characterized by very significant differences, the idea of ​​​​the Balto-Slavic community (or community) began to develop in science, which consists in the fact that the Proto-Slavic and Proto-Baltic languages, which originally belonged to different Indo-European groups , being direct "neighbors" for a very long time, became close, developing a set of common features for them. New research has shown that the so-called Balto-Slavic problem (that is, the problem of ancient relations between these two language groups) also requires the solution of the issue of historical relations between the East and West Baltic languages, which in turn are characterized by very ancient differences that do not allow elevate all the Baltic languages ​​to an absolutely single source - the Proto-Baltic language. Proponents of the idea of ​​the Balto-Slavic community explain these relations by the origin of the Western Baltic languages ​​as a result of the convergence of part of the original Proto-Slavic dialects with the East Baltic ones or, conversely, the convergence of parts of the ancient East Baltic dialects with Proto-Slavic. Such an explanation takes into account that the Western Baltic languages ​​in their features are, as it were, intermediate (or transitional), that is, they are similar in some features to the Eastern Baltic, and in others to the Proto-Slavic language (Fig. 2.).

In recent decades, serious attempts have been made to generalize the relationship between the Indo-European languages. Studies have shown that the most ancient features equally unite both Proto-Slavic and Baltic languages ​​with Asian Indo-European languages, with Balkan (Thracian and Illyrian), which disappeared at the beginning of a new era (of these languages, only Albanian), as well as with the Germanic languages. At the same time, the Proto-Slavic language is characterized by a significant set of features that bring it closer to the Western Iranian languages, to which, as is commonly believed, the language of the Scythians belonged; these features are unknown to the Baltic languages. Based on this evidence, it is suggested that the Proto-Slavic language union, which eventually took shape in the Proto-Slavic language, mainly consisted of dialects, some of which were preserved on the Baltic outskirts of the once vast region of their distribution. The final separation of the Proto-Slavic language from the Old Baltic dialects occurred after its rapprochement with the Western Ira by a certain speech of the Scythians who dominated the Northern Black Sea region in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e.

Rice. 2. Balto-Slavic community.

The formation of the Proto-Slavic as a kind of Indo-European language was not connected with the geographical gap between the Proto-Slavs and the ancient Balts: a significant part of the Proto-Slavic tribes continued to live along the borders of the ancient Baltic settlements. Archaeologists note that these settlements existed from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e. until the second half of the 1st millennium AD. e. almost unchanged. At the end of the 1st millennium BC. e. in the Middle Dnieper, an extensive tribal union is formed, which left archaeological monuments of the 2nd century BC. BC e.- II-IV centuries. n. e., known as the Zarubintsy culture. The creators of this culture, as is commonly believed in recent years, spoke dialects of the Proto-Slavic and Western Baltic types. A group of tribes of this association later moved up the Desna River and created settlements in the upper reaches of the Oka River, which received the name of the Moshchin culture in archeology. As evidenced by hydronymic data (names of rivers and lakes), this group of tribes spoke the Western Baltic language. And the Vyatichi who lived on the territory of the Moshchin settlements in ancient Russian times (IX-XI centuries) differed so markedly from the surrounding Slavic-speaking population that the chronicler did not consider them Slavs, just like the Radimichi (by the way, they also lived in the territory where they still names of rivers of Western Baltic origin are preserved).

In the second half of the 1st millennium AD. e., in the era of the formation of the Old Russian state association, the Balto-speaking population of the central forest zone is intensively Slavicized, that is, it is included in the Old Russian nationality, only on the western outskirts preserving the Baltic speech of their ancestors (the descendants of this population are modern Lithuanians and Latvians).

Making the distinction between Western and Eastern stratified not so significant. Intermediate proto-languages ​​are some kind of schematization, useful in formulating the relationships identified by the genealogical classification of languages, but not necessarily corresponding to some historical reality. But the proto-languages ​​of individual macrofamilies can also be considered as intermediate in connection with the question of ...

A complete and comprehensive typology should take into account various principles and build a hierarchy of corresponding morphological features. This is the goal pursued by the most developed classification of languages, which belongs to Sapir. Based on a deep understanding of the language structure and a wide knowledge of the languages ​​​​of the American Indians - the most peculiar of all existing languages. Sapir...

Families occur constantly, their formation, as a rule, dates back to the era before the appearance of a class society. The modern genetic classification of languages ​​does not give grounds to support the concept, popular in the old linguistics, of the monogenesis of the languages ​​of the world. The comparative-historical method originated in late XIX century when, in the course of the study of languages, factors of similarity of these languages ​​were established. On the...

In the next chapter, we will look at the Chinese language from the point of view of various classifications and try to find out the main features of modern Chinese. 2. Typological features of the modern Chinese language 2.1 The place of the Chinese language in the genealogical classification of languages ​​To determine the place of the Chinese language in the typology of languages, it is necessary to consider it in the system ...

All Slavic languages ​​show great similarities among themselves, but Belarusian and Ukrainian are closest to the Russian language. Together, these languages ​​form the East Slavic subgroup, which is part of the Slavic group of the Indo-European family.

Slavic branches grow from a powerful trunk - the Indo-European language family. This family also includes Indian (or Indo-Aryan), Iranian Greek, Italic, Romance, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic language groups, Armenian, Albanian and other languages. Of all the Indo-European languages, the Baltic languages ​​are closest to Slavic: Lithuanian, Latvian and the dead Prussian language, which finally disappeared by the first decades of the 18th century. The collapse of the Indo-European linguistic unity is usually attributed to the end of the III - the beginning of the II millennium BC. Apparently, at the same time, processes took place that led to the emergence of the Proto-Slavic language, to its separation from the Indo-European.

Proto-Slavic is the ancestral language of all Slavic languages. It had no written language and was not fixed in writing. However, it can be restored by comparing the Slavic languages ​​among themselves, as well as by comparing them with other related Indo-European languages. Sometimes the less successful term common Slavic is used to designate Proto-Slavic: it seems that it is better to call common Slavic language features or processes that are characteristic of all Slavic languages ​​even after the collapse of Proto-Slavic.

A common source - the Proto-Slavic language - makes all Slavic languages ​​related, endowing them with many similar features, meanings, sounds ... The consciousness of Slavic linguistic and ethnic unity was already reflected in the ancient self-name of all Slavs. According to Academician O.N. Trubachev, it is etymologically something like "clearly speaking, understandable to each other." This consciousness was also preserved in the era of the formation of the ancient Slavic states and peoples. The Tale of Bygone Years, an ancient Russian chronicle of the beginning of the 12th century, says: “But the Slovene language and Russian are the same ...”. The word language is used here not only in the ancient meaning of "people", but also in the meaning of "speech".

The ancestral home of the Slavs, that is, the territory where they developed as a special people with their own language and where they lived until their separation and resettlement to new lands, has not yet been precisely determined due to the lack of reliable data. And yet, with relative certainty, it can be argued that it was located in the east of Central Europe, north of the foothills of the Carpathians. Many scientists believe that the northern border of the ancestral home of the Slavs ran along the Pripyat River (the right tributary of the Dnieper), the western border - along the middle course of the Vistula River, and in the east the Slavs settled the Ukrainian Polesie to the Dnieper.

The Slavs constantly expanded the lands they occupied. They also participated in the great migration of peoples in the 4th-7th centuries. The Gothic historian Jordanes wrote in his essay “On the Origin and Deeds of the Getae” (chronologically brought to the year 551) that “a populous tribe of Venets settled in the boundless spaces” from the Middle Danube to the lower Dnieper. During the 6th and 7th centuries, waves of Slavic settlement poured into most of the Balkan Peninsula, including modern Greece, and including her southern part- Peloponnese.

By the end of the Proto-Slavic period, the Slavs occupied vast lands in Central and Eastern Europe, stretching from the coast of the Baltic Sea in the north to the Mediterranean in the south, from the Elbe River in the west to the headwaters of the Dnieper, Volga and Oka in the east.

Years passed, centuries slowly changed centuries. And following the changes in the interests, habits, manners of a person, following the evolution of his spiritual world, his speech, his language, inevitably changed. For my long history The Proto-Slavic language has gone through many changes. AT early period of its existence, it developed relatively slowly, was highly uniform, although even then there were dialectal differences, a dialect, otherwise a dialect is the smallest territorial variety of a language. In the late period, approximately from the 4th to the 6th century AD, the Proto-Slavic language underwent diverse and intense changes, which led to its disintegration around the 6th century AD and the emergence of separate Slavic languages.

According to the degree of their proximity to each other, Slavic languages ​​are usually divided into three groups:

• 1) East Slavic - Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian;
• 2) West Slavic - Polish with a Kashubian dialect that retained a certain genetic independence, Lusatian Serbo languages ​​(Upper and Lower Lusatian languages), Czech, Slovak and a dead Polabian language, which completely disappeared by the end of the 18th century;
• 3) South Slavic - Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian. South Slavic in origin is also the Old Church Slavonic language - the first common Slavic literary language.

The ancestor of modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian languages ​​was Old Russian (or East Slavic) language. Two main eras can be distinguished in its history: pre-literate - from the collapse of the Proto-Slavic language to the end of the 10th century, and written. What this language was like before the emergence of writing can only be known through a comparative historical study of the Slavic and Indo-European languages, since no ancient Russian writing existed at that time.

The collapse of the Old Russian language led to the emergence of the Russian or Great Russian language, which is different from Ukrainian and Belarusian. This happened in the 14th century, although already in the 15th-12th centuries in the Old Russian language there were phenomena that distinguished the dialects of the ancestors of the Great Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians from each other. The modern Russian language is based on northern and northeastern dialects Ancient Russia By the way, the Russian literary language also has a dialect basis: it was made up of the central Middle Great Russian akaya dialects of Moscow and the villages surrounding the capital.

3 144

The book by the American Slavist, Professor of the University of California Henrik Birnbaum is a detailed review of the works of linguists devoted to the problems of the Common Slavic (Proto-Slavic) language since the end of the last century. The author traces the main lines of development of scientific ideas in this area of ​​Slavic studies. The book acquaints the reader with the problems of the ancestral home of the Slavs, the connection of the Slavic languages ​​with other Indo-European languages, the history of the common Slavic language, its dialect division.
Recommended for: Slavic philologists, specialists in Indo-European linguistics, historians, anthropologists, etc.

Per. from English / Intro. Art. V. A. Dybo; Tot. ed. V. A. Dybo and V. K. Zhuravlev. -
Translation from English by S. L. Nikolaev.
Afterword by V.K. Zhuravlev.

Download djvu: YaDisk 6.72 Mb - 300 dpi - 512 pages, b/w text, text layer, table of contents

The book of Henrik Birnbaum and modern problems of proto-language reconstruction. Introductory article by V.A. Dybo - page 5
one. . Common Slavonic: Problems of Definition, Existence Proofs, and Approaches to Study – p. 17
1.0. – page 17
1.1. – page 20
1.2. – page 22
1.3. – page 24
1.4. – page 25
1.5. Common Slavic (Proto-Slavic) language as a branch of Indo-European - p. 28
Part I
Achievements in the reconstruction of the common Slavic language (history of research)
2. General theoretical work - p. 33
2.0. Preliminary remarks - page 33
2.1. The structure of the common Slavic language - p. 35
2.2. Slavic Comparative Historical Linguistics - page 39
2.3. Indo-European grammar and dialectology; prehistory of Slavic - p. 52
2.4. History of individual Slavic languages ​​- p. 61
3. Phonology - page 69
3.0. Preliminary remarks - page 69
3.1. Monographic studies on common Slavic phonology - p. 69
3.2. Special studies of common Slavic phonology - p. 83
3.2.1. Common problems - page 83
3.2.2. Accentology - page 88
3.2.3. Vocalism - page 93
3.2.4. Consonantism - page 102
3.2.5. Special factors causing sound changes in the Common Slavic language: syllable structure, final and initial position in a word - p. 105
3.2.6. Morphonology - page 112
4. Morphology - page 114
4.0. General remarks - page 114
4.1. Studies of common Slavic inflection - p. 115
4.1.1. Declension - page 117
4.1.2. Conjugation - page 120
4.2. Studies of common Slavic word formation - p. 124
4.2.1. Nominal word formation - p. 125
4.2.2. Verbal word formation - p. 128
5. Syntax - page 135
5.0. Some General Problems of Syntax Definition and Reconstruction of Common Slavic Syntactic Models – p. 135
5.1. The study of common Slavic grammatical categories
and functions - page 137
5.2. Studies of sentence structure in Common Slavic - p. 144
6. Lexicology - page 148
6.0. Preliminary remarks on the method and purpose of lexicology, especially in relation to word formation; general and theoretical works - p. 148
6.1. The study of the common Slavic dictionary inherited
from Indo-European - page 151
6.2. Special studies on common Slavic semantics - p. 154
6.3. Studies of lexical borrowings in Common Slavic - p. 157
7. Some special problems related to the time and place of distribution of the common Slavic language - p. 163
7.0. Preliminary remarks - page 163
7.1. Studies of the Indo-European environment of the common Slavic; possible common Slavic-non-Indo-European contacts; Balto-Slavic problem - p. 165
7.2. Studies on time limits, periodization and chronology of the development of the common Slavic language - p. 168
7.3. Studies on the disintegration and dialect fragmentation of the common Slavic language - p. 172
Part II
Problems of the reconstruction of the common Slavic language
(studies 1968-1973)
8.Some general problems of modern studies of the common Slavic language - p. 175
9. Modern views to common Slavic sound models - p. 178
9.0. General problems - page 178
9.1. Common Slavic prosodic system - p. 180
9.2. Common Slavic vowel system - p. 183
9.3. Common Slavic consonant system - p. 191
9.4. Factors of common Slavic sound changes: syllable structure, auslaut, morphonology - p. 197
10. Modern research on common Slavic morphology - p. 201
10.0. New approaches to common Slavic morphology - p. 201
10.1. Problems of common Slavic inflection - p. 203
10.1.1. Nominal (n / or pronominal) inflection - page 204
10.1.2. Verb inflection - page 207
10.2. Problems of common Slavic word formation - p. 209
10.2.1. Nominal word formation - p. 209
10.2.2. Verbal word formation - p. 212
11. Study of the structure of phrases and sentences in the common Slavic language - p. 217
11.0. Problems and methods - page 217
11.1. Word Forms and Word Classes: Their Syntactic Usage - p. 218
11.2. Simple and complex sentences– page 219
12. Reconstruction of the common Slavic dictionary - p. 222
12.0. Preliminary remarks - page 222
12.1. Studies of common Slavic vocabulary of Indo-European origin - p. 223
12.2. Research on Lexical Meaning - p. 226
12.3. A new look at some common Slavic and early Slavic borrowings - p. 229
13. Modern concepts of the emergence, evolution and decay of the common Slavic language - p. 232
13.0. Reassessment of definitions, methods and goals of the reconstruction of the Common Slavic language - p. 232
13.1. Some new views on Common Slavic and related Indo-European languages, especially Baltic - p. 234
13.2. Ongoing discussion of temporal boundaries, periodization and chronology of the Common Slavic language - p. 240
13.3. New views on the decay and differentiation of the common Slavic language - p. 243
Part III
Recent achievements in the field of reconstruction of the common Slavic language (1974 - 1982)
14. General theoretical work - p. 249
14.0. Generalized studies of the common Slavic language - p. 249
14.1. Comparative Historical Slavic Linguistics - p. 260
14.2. Works on Comparative Historical Indo-European Linguistics - p. 253
14.3. Common Slavic as a predecessor of individual Slavic languages ​​- p. 254
15. Phonology - page 259
15.0. Monographic studies and general problems of the phonology of the Common Slavic language - p. 259
15.1. Accentology - page 262
15.2. Vocalism (including ablaut and fluent and nasal diphthong changes; fluent and nasal syllables) - page 271
15.3. Consonantism - page 277
15.4. Special factors causing common Slavic sound changes: the structure of the syllable; anlaut and auslaut positions; frequency of use - page 282
15.5. Morphonology - page 286
16. Morphology - page 287
16.0. Monographic studies and general problems of the morphology of the common Slavic language - p. 287
16.1. Inflection - page 288
16.2. Word formation (including education compound words) – page 292
16.3. Morphology of the name (and pronoun) - page 295
16.4. Verb morphology - page 297
17. Syntax - page 301
18. Lexicology, etymology and lexical semantics - p. 304
18.0. General problems of common Slavic lexicology - p. 304
18.1. Common Slavic words inherited from the (proto) Indo-European language - p. 307
18.2. Semantics (special problems of lexical meaning) - p. 309
18.3. Lexical borrowings in the Common Slavic language - p. 314
19. Special problems of common Slavic languages ​​- p. 317
19.0. The place of the common Slavic language in the Indo-European language family - p. 317
19.1. Reconstruction methodology; time limits, periodization, chronology of the common Slavic language - p. 320
19.2. The collapse of the common Slavic language; common Slavic dialects - p. 322
19.3. Ethnogenesis, prehistory and early history of the Slavs - p. 328
20. Conclusion - page 340
Literature - page 342
Appendix V.K. Zhuravlev. The science of the Proto-Slavic language: the evolution of ideas, concepts and methods - p. 453
V. A. DYBO. Comments - page 494

Doing

1.0. Terminology and definitions: common Slavic language and Proto-Slavic language.

The term “common Slavic language” and its equivalents in other languages ​​(English Common Slavic, French slave commun, German Gemeinslavisch, etc.), used diachronically, that is, in relation to one of the stages of Slavic linguistic evolution, - one of two competing terms that are intended to refer to the commonly postulated proto-language (ancestor language) underlying the developmental process of all Slavic languages. If this term were used panchronically (or anachronistically), that is, in relation to all stages of the Slavic linguistic evolution (or regardless of the chronology of this evolution), then it would obviously have a different content. It could refer to some or all of the features common to all Slavic languages ​​at one time or another. Such a meaning of the term would be mainly typological in nature, while in many cases the historical reasons for the structural similarity that stems from the genetic relationship of the Slavic languages ​​\u200b\u200btogether would be ignored. A similar meaning would be put into the term “common Slavic language” if the latter were used synchronously, i.e., relative to a certain period of time in the Slavic language evolution, for example, in the period corresponding to approximately 1000 BC, or the beginning of the 13th century or modern period. However, if such meanings of this term are meant, then, in order to avoid possible confusion, it seems more appropriate to introduce another term, such as “proto-Slavic language” (despite the fact that this term could cause certain historical and ideological associations) or “generalized (generalized) Slavic language”, - a term preferred in the modeling-typological approach; the term “common Slavic language” competes with the term “proto-Slavic language” (English Proto-Siavic, French proto-slave, German Urslavisch, etc.). to some extent, the preference for one or another term is the business of every linguist or scientific tradition. Thus, for example, the French term slave commun is more widely used than proto-slave, due at least in part to the influence of Meillet's classic work. The German term Urslavisch, on the contrary, continues to prevail over Gemeinslavisch, despite attempts to introduce the second term into the scientific literature. The Russian term "proto-Slavic" is apparently still more common than "general Slavic", although the latter was preferred by some scholars, including the Fortunatovs, and became especially common after the appearance of the translation of Meye's book. AT English language the terms Common Slavic and Proto-Siavic seem to be on par, although in recent times, especially in America, there is a tendency to use the term Common Slavic. (It should be noted that Slavonic is preferred in England, and Siavic in America.)

Therefore, if the terms "Common Slavic" and "Proto-Slavic" can in fact be considered as synonyms, then the very existence of these two terms (and their equivalents in other languages) may suggest a somewhat different use of them. For example, in order to distinguish between two main phases in the development of the Slavic parent language, namely: First stage its development - immediately after its separation from some larger linguistic unit, such as the Balto-Slavic language or part of the late Indo-European language - and the final stage of its more or less homogeneous existence, immediately preceding the subsequent breakup into several Slavic language groups. Recently it has been proposed to keep the term "Proto-Slavic" for the earlier phase of the Common Slavic proto-language, and "Common Slavic" for its later phase; both terms roughly correspond to, for example, the German terms Fruhslavisch and Spoturslavisch. However, an absolutely clear division of the Slavic proto-language into earlier and later periods remains incomprehensible due to the relative and often contradictory chronology of many sound changes, on which an attempt at such a division can be based.

These terminological considerations, if they do not meet with objections, rest on the problem of the relationship between those linguistic realities that lie under the concepts of “early Proto-Slavic” and “(general) Balto-Slavic”, on the one hand, and “late Common Slavic” and differentiated “early Slavic” - on the other hand, or more precisely, the problem of the relationship between each individual dialect of the late Common Slavic and a separate pre-literate Slavic language or language subgroup .... it is methodologically difficult to draw a clear line between what can be considered as late (common) Balto-Slavic and what is considered as early Proto-Slavic. The latter - to the extent that its main phonological and morphological structures are reconstructed on internal grounds - is essentially derivable from a hypothetical Baltic linguistic model. The reverse construction of a common (rather generalized) Baltic language structure to its early Proto-Slavic correspondence seems virtually impossible. It should also be noted that the temporal boundary of the late Common Slavic language fluctuates, it is difficult to determine it with the help of irrefutable criteria, since many of the changes are consistent with the general trends that already dominated the previous centuries of Slavic language development. The development of specific Slavic languages ​​and subgroups was undoubtedly preceded by a divergent evolution of the late Common Slavic language in the pre-literate period, which therefore confirms the theoretical assumption that specific Slavic languages ​​existed before they were recorded in writing. Thus, it is only possible to establish the terminus ad quem of the Late Common Slavic language - a time that is different for certain parts of the Slavic language area - the time of the “fall of weak ers” and the “vocalization (clarification) of strong ers” accompanying this process or immediately following it. Therefore, at least in certain parts of the Slavic language area, especially in the East Slavic territory, the period of the late Common Slavic language continued until about the end of the 11th or even the beginning of the 12th century (Isachenko 1970). Sometimes the somewhat vague term "Early Slavonic" refers to this period, covering both pre-literate Common Slavic and the first centuries of written Slavic. Of course, there are no intra-linguistic reasons that could cause the coincidence in time of the end of the common Slavic period and a purely random event - the emergence of Slavic writing in the second half of the 9th century as a result of the mission of Constantine and Methodius in 863. However, if we exclude from consideration the entire common Slavic linguistic evolution, which was characterized by some spatial variability, the end of the more or less homogeneous development of the Slavic as a whole could be dated to approximately 500 AD.

However, since the purpose of this work is to review and evaluate recent and current discoveries and observations related to reconstruction of the pre-literate Slavic proto-language, as well as the formulation of some still unresolved or obscure problems of this postulated language, the term “common Slavic language” is used as a general conditional term for the entire extent of the Slavic (but not pre-Slavic) linguistic evolution up to its fixation in written monuments.

1.1. ancestral home and subsequent settlement of the Slavs.

Any attempt to simply identify the Common Slavic (or Proto-Slavic) language with the language spoken by the "Proto-Slavs" can be seen as a useless shifting of the definition of the Common Slavic language from one level of argumentation to another, just as debatable. Of course, a strict definition of common Slavic spatial and temporal boundaries is closely related to the problem of the ancestral home (English Original Homeland, German Urheimat) of the most ancient Slavs and their subsequent settlement in various directions until the period of rupture of the relative spatial unity of the Slavic community, caused by the arrival of the ancient Magyars at the end of XI - beginning of the tenth century It may therefore be useful to summarize our present knowledge in this field, to the extent that it can be considered consistent.

Experts still disagree on the exact localization of the original territory inhabited by the Slavs by the end of the first millennium BC. With relative certainty, it can be argued that the ancestral home of the Slavs was in the east of Central Europe, somewhere north of the Carpathians and, less likely, from their western fortresses - the Sudetenland. The Slavs moved to this, as it was established, the very first region of their settlement as one of several ethnolinguistic groups that emerged from the undivided late common Indo-European community. Approximately in the IV century. the Slavs already occupied a vast area from the Oder basin in the west to the central Dnieper basin in the east. This area extended from north to south from the southern shores of the Baltic Sea and the Masurian Lakes to the Pripyat marshes. Approximately in the 5th century. the advance of the Slavs to the northeast began, as a result of which the ancestors of modern Eastern Slavs settled the territories in the region of the upper Dnieper and Pripyat, where the Baltic tribes originally lived, which were either assimilated by the Slavs or pushed back to the north-west by them (Toporov - Trubachev 1962; Sedov 1970). In the VI century. This advance to the northeast reached the territories originally occupied by the Finnish tribes. Around the same time, the Slavs moved west, populating the territory from the Odra basin to the basin of the central and lower Lyaba (Elba). Shortly after 500 AD part of the Slavs penetrated south, apparently through the Carpathian and Sudeten passes, while others Slavic tribes, moving from the territory of modern Ukraine, reached the Balkan Peninsula, passing through the South Romanian lowland (Wallachia). In the VI century. part of the Slavs settled in the region of the Eastern Alps (modern Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Slovenia). On the Great Hungarian Plain, originally inhabited by both Indo-European (Thracians, Illyrians, Germans) and non-Indo-European peoples (Huns), Slavic settlements were probably scattered. Later, this territory was conquered by the Altai people - the Avars. During the VI and VII centuries. Waves of Slavic settlement poured into most of the Balkan Peninsula, including Greece, where the Slavs at that time constituted a significant (if not dominant) element, including in its southern part, the Peloponnese. The gradual re-Hellenization of Greece, carried out by the Byzantine administration, feudal lords, powerful cities and influential monasteries, began in the 7th century. And it went on for about six centuries.

Therefore, from the 7th to the 9th century. inclusive, the Slavs occupied a vast territory in Eastern and Central Europe, which stretched from the Adriatic and Aegean Seas in the south to the base of the Jutland Peninsula and the Baltic Sea in the northwest and the Gulf of Finland, Lake Ladoga and the upper Volga region in the northeast. In the west, the Slavs reached the eastern Alps, the Bohemian Forest, the Saale River and the territory beyond the Elbe in its lower reaches, while in the east they had long since crossed the central Dnieper. Only the Black Sea steppe continued to be the territory of the semi-nomadic Altai and Ugric peoples, who settled there for a short time or passed through these steppes on their way from Asia and southeastern Europe to the west.

However, at the beginning of the IX century. this vast territory inhabited by Slavs was not homogeneous in its ethnic and linguistic composition. The Great Hungarian Plain (Pannonia, Transylvania) was ruled by the Avars, who subjugated the scattered Slavic population, then it was conquered and actually devastated by the troops of the Frankish Empire of Charlemagne. Romanesque peoples partially survived in some places inside the Balkan Peninsula (ancestors of modern Romanians) and along the Adriatic coast (now disappeared Dalmatians). Other Balkan territories were occupied by Albanians (who lived in the vicinity of the Romance-speaking population), a people of Indo-European origin. Numerous Greek-speaking populations opposed the Slavs in southern Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Greece itself. By the end of the VI century. the Slavic population, living in a territory roughly corresponding to modern Bulgaria, fell under the rule of the Bulgars, the Altai people, one part of which penetrated the Balkan Peninsula, and the other remained on the lower Volga. The then Slavic population suffered a military defeat from the Bulgars, but, outnumbering the latter, quickly assimilated them. The Bulgars left behind only the name of their people and a few lexemes in the Slavic language. In the northeast of the vast Slavic territory, remnant groups of the Baltic and Finnish populations undoubtedly still existed. long time, partly in inaccessible places, protected by impenetrable forests and vast expanses of water.

1.2. Linguistic uniformity and dialect differences; internal and external reconstruction of the common Slavic language.

It is not surprising that within such a vast area, which the Slavs inhabited with varying densities by the beginning of the 7th century, there must have been dialectal differences. However, it seems that before about 500 AD. them mutual language, although distributed over a large geographical area, was still largely homogeneous. This assumption is supported by recent findings: some of the phonetic isoglosses, on the basis of which the division into two main dialectal areas was usually established, can actually date only after 500 AD. This traditional division postulated a western group of Common Slavic dialects, of which the West Slavic languages ​​were supposedly descended, and an eastern dialect group, which was considered to be the ancestor of the East Slavic languages. The supposed boundary between the groups was the upper and central Bug. The following were considered relevant isoglosses: 1) partially different results of the so-called second (regressive) and third (progressive) palatalizations of the velars, in particular, different reflexes of common Slavs. x and kv, gv(xv); 2) the preservation of combinations tl, dl (in West Slavic), which is opposed to their simplification (> l in East and South Slavic); 3) the emergence and preservation of epenthetic l in the eastern group, as opposed to its absence (at least in a certain position) in the western and 4) different interpretation common slav. tj, dj, inherited in the eastern group as affricates, mostly sibilant, in some cases secondary fricatives (in East and South Slavic), but corresponding to whistling sounds in the western (West Slavic) group. With a high degree of certainty, we can assume that the second palatalization of the velars did not take effect until about 600 AD. and that the third palatalization, the time of which partly coincided with the time of the second palatalization, did not operate before the 8th century. [At present, evidence has increased in favor of the fact that the so-called “third palatalization of the back-linguals” occurred before the second palatalization, the Proto-Slavic nature of which has recently been questioned, see A. A. Zaliznyak. Novgorod birch bark letters from a linguistic point of view. - In the book: V.L. Yanin, A.A. Zaliznyak. Novgorod letters on birch bark from excavations in 1977 - 1983. M., 1986.]. Further, there is reason to believe that the epenthetic l arose throughout the Slavic area, and its disappearance and its disappearance in separate positions in the western group is secondary, as well as its loss in part of the South Slavic area, namely in the Macedonian-Balgarian. Assimilation results t’, d’ (< общеслав. tj, dj) также относительно поздние (позже 500 г.). Что же касается упрощения tl, dl в восточной части общеславянского языкового ареала, то имеются данные, говорящие о том, что оно имело место ранее VI в. Однако здесь ситуация тоже довольно сложная: tl, dl сохраняются в северо-западной части южнославянского языкового ареала, отражаются как kl, gl в ограниченном районе распространения восточнославянского, не говоря уже о других деталях, затемняющих общую картину. Поэтому данная единственная изоглосса, разделяющая западную (в дальнейшем западно-славянскую)и восточную (в дальнейшем восточно- и южнославянскую) группы общеславянского языка, имеет несущественное значение либо вообще никакого значения не имеет (Бирнбаум 1966.;Штибер 1969/71; Щевелев 1964).

So, there are good reasons to believe that before about 500 AD. the common language of the Slavs was still highly uniform. There is no direct evidence that speaks of the phonological and grammatical (morphosyntactic) structures and basic vocabulary of the Common Slavic language, which developed being broadly homogeneous, before 500. In fact, all attempts to restore these early stages of the Common Slavic proto-language must therefore be based on the method of internal reconstruction, i.e., the technique with which the data of the last phase of the already heterogeneous Common Slavic language of the period 500-1000 years. AD can be projected into the past. This method allows us to draw on some facts of morphonological alternations, competing word forms and coexisting syntactic structures at a late stage of the existence of the Common Slavic language. This refers to primary (as opposed to secondary and even tertiary) sounds, forms, as well as at least certain types of phrases and sentences. The application of this method makes it possible to propose relative chronologies of common Slavic language changes (Birnbaum 1970). The validity of the results obtained in this way in many cases can later be confirmed by the correlation of hypothetical primary common Slavic (= Proto-Slavic) data with the facts of other Indo-European languages. Thus, the methods of internal and external reconstruction can be used here to complement each other and to confirm the conclusions of one reconstruction with the conclusions of another. The structure of the fragmented late (after the 5th century) Common Slavic language, in turn, can be reconstructed on the basis of data taken from the attested Slavic languages, partly in their earliest recorded state. However, here the linguist is not bound only by indirect data, but can, in addition to them, resort to some facts that are more directly related to the late Common Slavic language.

1.3. The earliest Slavic texts.

What is the direct evidence relating to the period of separation of Slavic dialects, which in that era were distributed over a vast territory? This period includes the “creation” of the Old Church Slavonic language - the first literary language of the Slavs - by Constantine-Cyril (d. 869) and Methodius (d. 885). apparently, the autographs of the “solunsky brothers” and their closest associates have not come down to us. Most of the surviving Old Church Slavonic texts are copies of earlier originals dating from the end of the 10th and 11th centuries. Nevertheless, they quite clearly reflect the Slavic dialect spoken in the 9th and 10th centuries. in Bulgaria (including its western part, Macedonia). Of particular interest are, in addition, two short manuscripts, probably dating from the second half of the 10th century; their very archaic language, while retaining all the features of the Old Church Slavonic language, contains a number of features indicating the northwestern origin of the manuscripts: this Kiev leaflets and Frasing passages. The surviving copy of the Kiev Leaflets has several phonetic "moravisms" (or "bohemisms") and one morphological feature that is more characteristic of northern than southern Slavic languages; in addition to this, there are many Western elements (of Latin and/or Old High German origin) in the vocabulary of the Kiev Leaflets. It is often believed that this manuscript was created in the Czech Republic (Moravia) or written down by a Czech (or Moravian) scribe who arrived in the Balkans. However, it is more likely that the “moravisms” of KL reflect some features of the early (or original) Slavic version of this text, while the surviving copy points rather to one of the northwestern regions of the Balkan Peninsula. Less acceptable is the point of view that the language of KL is in fact a sample of the dialect of one of the areas of the Slavic language, presumably Panonia, and that the linguistic features of this text are rather genuine features of a special Late Common Slavic dialect, and do not indicate some artificial admixture of West Slavic features to the original Macedonian -Bulgarian type of the Old Church Slavonic language. The nature of the Freising passages is even more contradictory: some linguists believe that this monument is based on the Old Church Slavonic (early pre-Slavic or Panno-Moravian type), on which secondary Slavicisms were layered (Isachenko 1943). Others see in it an example of Old Slavonic, superficially and not completely adjusted to the norms of Old Church Slavonic (see specifically Freisinger Denkmaler 1968).

1.4. Ethnic groupings and linguistic ties within the dissected Late Common Slavic;
evidence of lexical borrowings and toponymy;
the final division of the Slavic language area: division into three dialects;
core and peripheral zones.

Although all the details regarding the routes along which the Slavs moved south from their “expanded” ancestral home have not yet been established, it seems, as already noted, that they followed two main routes: one went through modern Romania to the center of the Balkans, the second through the passes of the Carpathians and Sudetenland, first to the territory of modern Czechoslovakia (Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia), to Panonia and the adjacent regions of the eastern Alps, and then to the western regions of the Balkan Peninsula. Apparently, here, in modern Yugoslavia, the Slavs moving from the north and northwest met and mixed with other Slavs moving to westbound from the shores of the Black Sea. Two ethnonyms - Croats and Serbs(or sorbs), probably of Iranian origin - testify to this early presence of the Slavs in the Balkans. Before 1000 AD ethnonym Croats denoted not only the ancestors of modern South Slavic Croats, but also some Slavic groups that lived on the northern slopes of the Carpathians and Sudetes ( white croats). Also Serbs- this is not only the name of one of the Balkan peoples, but also the name (though in a slightly different form - sorbs) the Western Slavs of Lusatia (the area between Silesia and Saxony in modern East Germany), the remnants of the once large Slavic population that occupied the territory between the central Oder and Neisse in the east and the Saale in the West in the Middle Ages.

Close links originally existed between the language spoken in Slovenia (including part of Carinthia) and the West Slavic language area. In addition to a number of common lexical and grammatical features, two phonetic features that reflect this connection deserve special mention: the partial preservation of the combinations tl, dl in Slovene, which unites it with West Slavic; contractions of the stati type ( trat, tlat, tret, tlet (a, e long)), where t stands for any consonant, it should also be noted that, in accordance with modern ideas, we are not replacing the traditional common slang. O public A(short). The mentioned contacts were interrupted at the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th centuries. subsequently the arrival and permanent settlement of the Magyars on the Great Hungarian Plain and Transdanubian Panonia (in present-day western Hungary). As noted above, the local population of Panonia, conquered by the Magyars, was mainly Slavic and spoke some dialect or dialects, transitional between Proto-Slovak (or “Moravian”) and Proto-Slovenian. The opinion sometimes expressed that the ancient Pannonian Slavs, who lived north of Lake Balaton, spoke Proto-Slovak, while those who lived in the south and south-west of it spoke early Slovene, hardly has sufficient grounds. The so-called Yugoslavisms, that is, South Slavic features in Slovak and, in particular, in the central (historically southern) Slovak dialects, are also traces of early connections between this region and the Slavic South.

Words borrowed from the Early Slavic language and borrowed from Slavic into other languages ​​are of great importance for our knowledge of the Common Slavic language and its dialects. If this rich source of information is used with due care, it provides important facts on such controversial issues as the chronology of the development of the Common Slavic language, the palatalization of the velars, and their immediate results; the emergence of so-called reduced vowels and their subsequent disappearance or modification; denalization (and often concomitant timbre change) of nasal vowels, etc. Especially important are Slavic borrowings from Finnish, Baltic, Germanic, Eastern Romance languages ​​and, on the other hand, borrowings from Slavic in Finnish, Baltic, Germanic, Balkan, Romance, Hungarian, Greek and Albanian languages. The most indicative in this regard are Slavic borrowings and toponyms in areas that were temporarily inhabited by the Slavs. This applies, for example, to the territory of modern Hungary and most of Greece: Slavic lexical and toponymic data from there provide the most valuable information about the phonetics of local common Slavic dialects of the 7th - 9th centuries. Another area of ​​the symbiosis of early Slavic and non-Slavic, reflected in the linguistically detectable Slavization of Late Latin/Early Eastern Romance toponyms, extends along the northeastern coast of the Adriatic Sea and Albania.

Recent studies of common Slavic dialectology seem to confirm the statistical validity of the traditional division of Slavic languages ​​into three groups (West Slavic, East Slavic and South Slavic), but they do not confirm the point of view that suggests a straightforward development of the Slavic languages ​​in the form of a genealogical tree. It should be noted that the peripheral parts within each Slavic language group did not undergo all the early changes and do not have all the characteristic features of this language branch. Thus, it can be shown that Polabian, the westernmost member of the West Slavic language group, developed in some respects differently from other West Slavic languages ​​(cf., for example, the development of Erers in Polabian). Similarly, the Macedonian-Bulgarian language underwent a deep Balkanization quite early, which included the southeastern part of the South Slavic group (i.e. Bulgarian, Macedonian and Torlak dialects of Serbo-Croatian), into the Balkan area of ​​linguistic convergence and remade the phonetic-prosodic and grammatical-phraseological structure of the affected languages. in accordance with a linguistic model originally alien to the southern dialects of the late Common Slavic language. The first indications of a typical Balkan linguistic evolution can actually be traced already in the Old Church Slavonic language. Finally, Russian, the first of the East Slavic languages ​​in terms of the number of speakers, which largely developed on the territory with the Baltic and Finnish substratum, does not have some of the ancient phonetic and grammatical features found in Ukrainian and / or Belarusian, while the latter have such parallels in Slovak and Polish (and partly in Czech, Serbo-Croatian and other languages). For example, such two phenomena as a special development of ь/ъ + j (>i/у + j) and reflexes of the so-called compensatory vowel lengthening (mainly giving high or diffuse vowels), which are not in the Russian language. Thus, if the division of Slavic languages ​​into three groups is also fair in the light of current studies of common Slavic dialectology, then the division into groups within the Slavic language area, namely its division into a central region and a number of separate peripheral zones with partially deviating (and often slow) evolution still needs to be clarified. This secondary internal regrouping also began already in the period of the functioning of the late Common Slavic language.

September 12, 2014

Slavic languages ​​go back to the same source. This common Slavic ancestor language is conditionally called Proto-Slavic; conditionally because it is not known how the people who spoke this language called themselves in ancient times.

Although the Proto-Slavic language existed for a very long time and no written texts remained of it, nevertheless, we have a fairly complete picture of it. We know how its sound system developed, we know its morphology and the basic fund of vocabulary, which is inherited from the Proto-Slavic by all Slavic languages. Our knowledge is based on the results of a comparative historical study of the Slavic languages: it allows us to restore the original appearance (protoform) of each studied linguistic fact. The reality of the restored (original) Proto-Slavic form can be verified and refined by the testimony of other Indo-European languages. Especially often correspondences to Slavic words and forms are found in the Baltic languages, for example, in Lithuanian. This can be illustrated by the roots, which include combinations of sounds that changed in different ways in different Slavic languages ​​after the collapse of Proto-Slavic, but remained unchanged in the Lithuanian language.

The words indicated in the table (and many others) are common to all Slavic languages, therefore, they were already known to the Proto-Slavic language. The common proto-form for them has undergone unequal changes in different Slavic languages; and the form of these words in Lithuanian (and in other Indo-European languages) suggests that the original vowel was in all roots before l or r. In the Proto-Slavic language, the roots of these words were supposed to sound: *bolt-o from the earlier *ba°lt-ă°n, *golv-a, *kolt-iti, *vort-a, *gord-ъ, *korva. The established relations make it possible to formulate a historical phonetic law, according to which it is possible to reconstruct (presumably restore) the original proto-form in all other similar cases: Russian norov, Bulgarian nature, etc. give grounds for the reconstruction of Proto-Slavic *norv-ъ (compare the Lithuanian narv-ytis - “stubborn”), peas, gras, etc. - Proto-Slavic *gorx-ъ (compare the Lithuanian gar̃č- kind of grass), etc. It is in this way that the appearance of the decayed Proto-Slavic language is restored.

One can speak of Proto-Slavic as a kind of Indo-European language insofar as it is characterized by a complex of features inherent only to it and combined with a series of features known to one degree or another to other languages ​​of Europe and South Asia.

At some stage of their life, a group of European tribes who spoke dialects close to the ancient Baltic, Iranian, Balkan, German, united into a fairly strong union, within which for a long time there was a convergence (leveling, alignment) of dialects necessary to develop mutual understanding. between members of a tribal union. It can be assumed that in the I millennium BC. e. an Indo-European language already existed, characterized by features later known only to Slavic languages, which allows us, modern researchers, to call it Proto-Slavic.

The originality of the Proto-Slavic language is largely due to the fact that its historical changes were determined by development trends inherent only to it. The most common of these was the tendency to syllabic articulation of speech. At a late stage in the development of the Proto-Slavic language, a single-type structure of syllables was formed, leading to the restructuring of former syllables in such a way that they all ended in vowels (see the Law of open syllables). It was then that in the cases considered above bă°l-tă°n (etc.) changed into blo-to, bo-lo-to or bla-to (with open syllables).

The Proto-Slavic language existed until the middle of the 1st millennium AD, when the tribes that spoke it, having settled in the vast territories of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, begin to lose contact with each other. The language of each of the isolated groups of tribes continued to develop in isolation from others, acquiring new sound, grammatical and lexical features. This is the usual way of forming “related” languages ​​from a single source language (proto-language), noticed by F. Engels, who wrote: “Tribes, dismembering, turn into peoples, into whole groups of tribes ... languages ​​change, becoming not only mutually incomprehensible but also losing almost every trace of the original unity.