Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language • • « • 9 Chapter 1
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(HAWAIIuiimu.iu.iiii of the MACEDONIANLITEBARY LANGUAGE SKOPJE 1952 A GRAMMAR OF THE MACEDONIAN LITERARY LANGUAG.. BY HORACE G. LUNT SKOPJE 1952 j EH5JIHQTEKA . P REFACE It is the aim of this book to introduce the reader to the Macedonian literary language. The first part consists of a description of the structure of the sound pattern and the morphological system of the language, the second part is made up of typical examples of Macedonian prose, and the last gives a representative list of Macedonian words with their English equivalents. This is the first attempt to present Macedonian entirely in its own terms. The current school grammar, MarcedoHcica zpcuiarttKa (1950), by Krume Kepeski, amounts to an adaptation from similar Bulgarian works, with many quite unnecessary comparative and historical references. The only extensive treatment of Macedonian in any other language is the sketch included in R. de Bray©s Guide to the Slavonic Languages (London, 1950; pp. 243 313). De Bray took most of his information from Kepeski, and unfortunately included some of the latter©s misinterpretations. In the Guide, Macedonian is explained exclusively from the comparative point of view, within the framework of the whole group of the Slavic languages. Other published works about Macedonian are only short articles enumerating the salient features of Macedonian as compared to the other Slavic languages. There are, however, several© books and monographs about Macedonian dialects which furnish valuable material for compar ative and historical studies. Principle among them are the works of the French Slavists. Prof. Andre Mazon has written extensively on two of the southwest Macedonian dialects. Conies slaves du Macedoine sud-occidentale (Paris, 1923) treats the dialects in the region of Florina or Lerin, in Greece, and Documents, co-rites et chansons slave de l-Albanie du sud (Paris, 1936) is an exhaustive treatise on the dialect of an isolated group of Macedonians in the village of Bobo§tica in Albania. With Prof. Andre "Vaillant, Mazqn edited and published a nineteenth-centurv text from an area in VI Greece which has long been completely hellenized, L©Evangeliaire de Kulakia, un parler slave du Bas-Vardar (Paris, 1938). The biblio graphical and comparative data about all Macedonian dialects given in this book are particularly important. The Russian scholar A. Selis£ev, writing more from a historical point of view, published several important studies: OuepKu no MaKedoncKou duajieKTOJiozuu. (Kazan©, 1918), a general description and history of Macedonian dialects; MaKedoncKue KoduKu XV 11 u XVIII eeKoe (Sofia, 1933), an analysis of older written materials; and Ilojtoz u ezo 6oJtzapcKoe nacejieuue (Sofia, 1929), which contains a description of a northwest ern dialect. The Polish scholar M. Mafecki studied and published materials from the southeasternmost Macedonian dialects, from the villages of Suho and Visoka, northeast of Salonika. None of these works is directly concerned with the dialects on which the Mace donian literary language is based, although Seli§c"ev does touch on them from time to time. The monograph by the Serbian linguist Aleksandar Belid, Galicki dijalekat (= Srpski dijalektoloSki zbornik,. VII, Srem. Karlovci Beograd, 1935), analyzes a western Mace donian dialect which, although not one of those from which the literary language is drawn, nevertheless has many characteristics in common with them, as for example the accent and the triple definite article. There is a mass of literature dealing with the origins of Macedonian dialects and the question of their relationship to Serbian or Bulgarian. The majority of this literature is polemic and hopelessly biased. An excellent summary of the opinions expressed during the, ©30©s can be found in Malecki©s article ©Z zagadnien dialektologii makedonskiej©, Rocznik Slawistyczny^ (1938), 119 144. - .. ; None of this literature has been used directly in writing the present grammar. Some of the contemporary work by Macedonian linguists has been very important, however. The short monograph by Blaze Koneski on his native dialect of Prilep, ©IIpHJiencKHOT FoBOp©, published in the Foduweu sdopnuK of the Skopje University for 1951 is of great value. It is an analysis of one of the principle SOuii-car.^-i-^xt^.-i ui^ -C -4-1^^.me J.J.1 74-^ LCI •»<•>_.•> cu 1icin ^ -r^ rt>-.ude •. « j-e ~ ,WIIULCJII . .~: 4. A ~»- 'U..,u 4-U~me 1«^J:_— 1\/T_ _~ J__i __ linguistic scholar, and has influenced my point of view in a number of respects. The articles in the little journal published by the Seminar- of South Slavic Languages in Skopje, MaKedoncKu Ja,3UK (1950)^ have also proved useful. Nearly all of the material for the treatment of the accent and the prepositions has come from Koneski©s articles in this journal; and other articles have been used freely, although. in basically modified form. VIJ A number of difficulties face anyone who tries to analyze such a new language. Macedonian, like most literary languages, contains elements from several regional dialects, and is not identical with any single dialect. While there is general agreement on the outlines and the most significant features of the pronunciation, morphology and syntax, there remains a mass of secondary matters which have still to be solved. There is not yet a generation educated solely in Macedonian, and the influences of the school languages (principally Serbo- Croatian, and secondarily Bulgarian) are ever present both in speech and in print. The written norms are now fairly well codified, and people who are concerned with culture write in accordance with the norms. That is not to say that the daily press, which must print hurriedly translated news items, achieves a high standard, nor that the barber or baker who puts a notice in his store window is careful with his spelling or his grammar. But it does mean that there is something which can be identified as standard literary Macedonian and contrasted to other things which are not© standard. As a basis for description, I took prose published in the years 1950-51, further restricting myself to works coming under the general heading of belles-lettres. Poetry was excluded because it admits a plethora of archaisms and dialectisms and abounds in variant forms not found in prose. Journalistic and most expository prose was not included because the writers too often are strongly under the influence of their school Serbo-Croatian, and they have not taken the time to become sufficiently acquainted with the daily language of the people and with the details of the newly established norms of the literary language. As arbiter for the quality of any given work, and for the ,,correctness" of any form or construction, I have relied on the judgment of the members of the Seminar of South Slavic Languages at the Macedonian University in Skopje. The description is thus to some degree also a prescriptive, normative grammar, for it ignores usages arbitrarily termed as not in accord ance with the standard. However a complete description of all the usage found in all prose of the two years in question would fill several volumes with variant details and elements from many different dialects and languages. , . In speaking, most Macedonians continue to pronounce accord ing to their local dialects, and many individuals retain their native morphological and syntactical systems. More and more effort is being made, however, to adopt a pronunciation more in accord with the written standard, and deviant morphological forms are less and less in use among intellectuals. As a basis for the description of the phonemic system, I took the pronunciation of Blaze Koneski, poet, writer, translator, and Professor of the Macedonian Language at VIII the University, a native of Prilep. Certain of my observations are based on the speech of his colleagues in the Seminar of South Slavic Languages, Prof. Krum Toiev (also a native of Prilep), Assistant Bozo Vidoeski (from Porece, an area north of the Prilep Bitola Kicevo Veles quadrangle), and Assistant Rada Ugrinova (from Skopje). Data from recordings which other speakers made for me have in every case been checked with these four people. The grammar is intended to be strictly synchronic. Historical and comparative remarks are confined to the outline in the Intro duction and to occasional footnotes. The description is not complete, for it does not treat in detail the adverbs, conjunctions, and particles. The salient points of syntax are included in the morphology. All the points treated have been illustrated by examples taken from Mace donian prose or from one of the four informants named above. The examples have all been checked by Macedonians, and are thus guaranteed to be standard. Any errors in translation are of course my own fault. The grammar has been written from a strictly linguistic point of view, and will therefore be of most interest to the student of Slavic and general linguistics. I believe, however, that the non- linguist who is interested in learning Macedonian will find it possible to understand the terminology and point of view if he will read slowly and carefully, and will study the examples in conjunction with the grammatical statements. The texts in the second part of the book have been chosen to illustrate different kinds of prose treating different subjects, and at the same time to present a few representative pieces of Mace donian literature. It cannot pretend to be an anthology, for the selection was made more on the basis of length and of type of vocabulary and subject matter than on that of literary value. It was preferred to present long excerpts which are complete in themselves, or complete works, rather than many fragments which might perhaps be more varied, but which would be incomplete. Although some of the selections were written before 1950, they have been edited to bring them into line with contemporary usage.