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SEMITIC

References Kienast, Burkhart. 2001. Historische Semitische Sprach- wissenschaft [Historical Semitic ]. Wiesbaden: Bergsträsser, Gotthelf. 1983. Introduction to the Semitic lan- Harrassowitz. guages, transl. by . Daniels. Winona Lake, In: Lipin´ski, Edward. 1997. Semitic languages: outline of com- Eisenbrauns; revised, 1995 (German original, 1928). parative . Louvain: Peeters. Black, Jeremy, George, and Postgate 2000. A Moscati, Sabatino, Anton Spitaler, Edward Ullendorff, and concise of Akkadian. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Wolfram von Soden. 1964. An introduction to the compara- Brockelmann, Carl. 1908. Kurzgefasste vergleichende Grammatik tive grammar of the Semitic languages, ed. by . Moscati. der semitischen Sprachen [Brief comparative grammar of the Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Semitic languages]. Berlin: Reuther & Reichard. Nöldeke, Theodor. 1889. Semitic languages. Encyclopædia ––––––. 1908–1913. Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik Britannica, 9th edition, revised 11th edition, 1911. der semitischen Sprachen [Foundations of the comparative von Soden, Wolfram. 1952. Grundriss der akkadischen grammar of the Semitic languages], 2 vols. Berlin: Reuther Grammatik [Foundations of Akkadian grammar]. : & Reichard. Pontifical Biblical Institute, 3rd edition, 1995. Gelb, . . 1952. Old Akkadian writing and grammar. : ––––––. 1958–1981.Akkadisches Handwörterbuch [Akkadian University of Chicago Press, 2nd edition, 1961. desk dictionary], 3 vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ––––––. 1969. Sequential reconstruction of Proto-Akkadian. Wright, William. 1890. Lectures on the comparative grammar Chicago: University of Chicago Press. of the Semitic languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Gelb, I. J., et al. (eds.) 1956–. The Assyrian dictionary of the Press. Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 21 vols. Zimmern, Heinrich. 1898. Vergleichende Grammatik der semi- Chicago: Oriental Institute. tischen Sprachen [Comparative grammar of the Semitic lan- Geller, . 1997. The last wedge. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 87. guages]. Berlin: Reuther & Reichard. Gray, Louis . 1934. Introduction to Semitic comparative lin- guistics. New York: Columbia University Press. PETER T. DANIELS Hetzron, (ed.) 1997. The Semitic languages. London: Routledge. See also Afroasiatic; Arabic; Aramaic; Philology

Serbo-Croatian and South Languages

The South , Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, which, together with the Black Sea, separates South Bulgarian, and Macedonian, descend from Slavic Slavic from Ukrainian. Within the South Slavic that were brought to the sub-Alpine and branch, two subgroups are distinguished: Western Balkan regions of southwestern . 500 CE by South Slavic, constituted by Slovene and Serbo- waves of westward migration along and across the Croatian, and Eastern South Slavic, constituted by Danube, Drava, and Sava river systems. In their new Macedonian and Bulgarian. The languages are also territory, the South encountered and undoubted- divided along cultural and religious lines: Slovene and ly mixed with -speaking peoples, probably Croatian are spoken predominantly by Catholics, descendants of older Indo-European-speaking peo- whereas Serbian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian are spo- ples, for example, and Thracian. ken by Eastern Orthodox . The exact relationships among the dialects at the These divisions have determined the choice of time of settlement are uncertain, but it is not the case alphabet, Latin being chosen in Catholic areas, and that there were already nascent Slovene, Serbo- Cyrillic (a modified of the ) in Croatian, Macedonian, and . Rather, Eastern Orthodox areas. Bosnia, which has been reli- these formed over the subsequent millennium. The giously and ethnically mixed and also includes a sig- South Slavic group may now defined by its geo- nificant Muslim population, had vacillated among graphical discontinuity to the remainder of the different alphabets. Since the disintegration of Slavic-speaking world. To the north, Slovene is bound- , the standard Bosnian of is written ed by Friulian and Italian in , by German in in the , whereas the Bosnian use , and by Hungarian in . Croatian and Cyrillic. As with most Indo-European languages, the Serbian are also bounded by Hungarian and Romanian South Slavic group is characterized by many grammat- (). Bulgarian is bounded by Romanian, ical endings, with and verbs changing form

956 SERBO-CROATIAN AND depending on their position in the sentence or on their The Serbo-Croatian speech territory is character- function as subjects or objects, singulars or plurals. ized by three distinct areas, each labeled by Slovene and Serbo-Croatian go with the rest of the both professionals and the laity by the word meaning Slavic-speaking world in having preserved most of ‘what’. A transitional zone called the Torlak group dis- these endings in nouns, but verbs have become some- plays features of both Štokavian and neighboring what simplified. Macedonian and Bulgarian have the Macedonian and is thus arguably within the scope of opposite: simplified nouns but complicated verbs. the Balkan , an area of linguistic conver- Serbo-Croatian is spoken by approximately 16 mil- gence among distantly related or even unrelated lan- lion people. It is the state of the Republic of guages caused by long-term contact, which also (where it is called Croatian), Bosnia and includes Albanian, Aromanian, Greek, Romanian, Herzegovina (where it is called Bosnian), and Romany, and, to some extent, Turkish. and (where it is called Serbian); minority Generally speaking, linguists’ attention has been speakers are also found in Italy, Hungary, Austria, drawn to Serbo-Croatian (as well as Slovene), espe- Romania, , and . cially for its phonological (sound pattern) features, The Serbo-Croatian standard was formed in the high degree of dialect , and preservation of nineteenth century as a compromise between Serbs key that aid in the reconstruction of Proto- and , whose major dialect divisions and corre- Slavic, the prehistorical language thought to have been sponding divergent literary traditions, particularly in spoken by all Slavs before 500 CE. Standard Slovene the Croatian case, had fostered disunity. The Hakavian and Serbo-Croatian, as reflected in many of their and dialects, both spoken in Croatian ethnic dialects, contrast long and short , and, along territory, and which had developed into sophisticated with , have rising and falling tones (similar to literary vehicles during the and Chinese), .. Slovene brá:t(i) ‘to read’ (long low Reformation, respectively, were abandoned as models pitch), brà:t ‘to go read’ (long high pitch), and bràt for the in favor of the Štokavian ‘brother’ (short high pitch). Other features are of inter- dialect, spoken in Croatia and all of Serbia, as well as est, particularly word and sentence structure, e.g. in and Montenegro. In Serbo-Croatian has begun to simplify its nouns, as has Serbia, the new Štokavian-based standard replaced the occurred more radically in Macedonian and Bulgarian, artificial Slaveno-Serbian , which by reducing the number of grammatical endings was based largely on Old Church Slavic. The compro- (‘cases’), especially in the plural. mise, which was engineered by intellectuals around Structurally, Slovene is closest to Serbo-Croatian the Croat and the Serb Vuk KaradDic´, was and is spoken by approximately two million people, codified in the Literary of 1850. The stan- largely in the Republic of , where it is the dard had two varieties, the Croatian (or Western), writ- primary (alongside regionally offi- ten in a modified Latin alphabet, and the Serbian (or cial Italian and Hungarian). It is also spoken by sig- Eastern), written in a modified Cyrillic. This standard nificant minorities in neighboring Italy, Austria, and persisted officially as the language of the Croats, Hungary. Serbs, and (Bosnian and SandDakian) Muslims, as well Modern standard Slovene, which began its develop- as the facto lingua franca of Yugoslavia, until the ment with the religious of the Protestant disintegration of the state in 1991. Since then, separate Primus Truber (PrimoD Trubar in Slovene) in the mid- Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian state languages (the sixteenth century, was established in largely its current latter using the same alphabet as Croatian and having form toward the end of the nineteenth century. It is a relatively higher number of Turkish and other based on the urban speech of the capital, Ljubljana, Islamic cultural borrowings) have been cultivated, and the surrounding central dialects, although it also each continuing from their inherited Štokavian-based has features selected from its highly variegated precursor; all three standard languages remain almost dialects. It is written in a modified variety of the Latin completely mutually intelligible. (For this reason, alphabet, similar to Croatian. ‘Serbo-Croatian’ persists as a linguistically valid term, With its relatively small speech territory, Slovene referring to the speech territory and the common base has seven dialect bases and greater internal differenti- of the separate language collectively. However, it is no ation than any of the South Slavic languages. Speakers longer considered an acceptable term to most lay from the most extreme dialects (e.g. Rezija, speakers or the governments of the successor states.) ) generally cannot be understood by stan- Other regional movements, including notably a dard speakers. Slovene preserves archaic features that Montenegrin one, suggest the possibility of forming have been lost in Serbo-Croatian. For example, it dis- further standard languages in the future. tinguishes not just singular and plural but also dual

957 SERBO-CROATIAN AND SOUTH SLAVIC LANGUAGES number (pogovarjava se ‘we two are conversing’); it zhenata ‘I saw the [a certain] woman’ vs. Vidov zhena makes the with an and a ‘I saw a woman’; Serbo-Croatian makes no such dis- (bom sedela ‘I shall sit’); and it preserves a tinction, having only Vidjela sam Denu ‘I saw the/a special ‘supine’ form of the verb that signals intention woman.’ A distinction expressed by choices among (kupovat bom šel ‘I shall go to shop’). In contrast to alternative verb forms is made between witnessed and Serbo-Croatian, Slovene has a relatively significant nonwitnessed events, e.g. Bulgarian Toj napisa pis- number of borrowings from German (e.g. farba moto ‘he wrote the letter [I know so because I saw ‘color’ from Farbe), Italian (fant ‘boy’ from fante), him do it]’ vs. Toj napisal pismoto ‘he wrote the letter and Friulian (kriD ‘cross’ from a seventh-century [so it is said—I did not see him do it]’; Serbo- Friulian form kroDe). Croatian makes no such distinction, having only Bulgarian is spoken by approximately nine million Napisao pismo ‘He wrote the/a letter.’ The inherit- people, predominantly in the Republic of ed has been lost and replaced by a subordi- Bulgaria, where it is the primary state language, as well nate clause, e.g. Bulgarian Iskam da otida na maJ ‘I as by minority speakers in Serbia and Macedonia. want to go [literally ‘that I go’] to a game’ vs. Serbo- Structurally, Bulgarian is closest in type to Macedonian. Croatian Hoc´ i_c´i na utakmicu ‘I want to go to a Modern Bulgarian dates to the seventeenth century game.’ The origin of such convergence features is and developed substantially into its current form in the much debated: they may be a continuation of struc- middle of the nineteenth century. It is based on the tures from languages that have disappeared (substra- TaK rnovo dialect of northeastern Bulgaria, but with ele- tum languages)—Illyrian and Thracian—or a result of ments from various dialect areas. Medieval varieties of itself and diffusion of linguistic fea- Bulgarian served as the primary examples of Slavic tures, although the working of both explanations writing, with prominent writing centers located in together is not excluded. Preslav and TaK rnovo. Modern Bulgarian is written in a The South Slavic languages represent a picture of modified variety of Cyrillic. great diversity among the Slavic languages, and, Macedonian is spoken by approximately two mil- because they are located at a crossroads of European lion people, primarily in the Republic of Macedonia. languages and cultures, they have been affected by Significant groups of Macedonian speakers are also contacts with numerous languages. The volatile polit- found in northern , western Bulgaria, Serbia, ical fortunes of the region promise to push the devel- and in some villages in . opment of the languages, especially the newly Macedonian was codified as a standard language in differentiated Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, toward 1944, although the beginnings of the contemporary ever greater diversity. language may be traced to the middle of the nineteenth century. Macedonian is written in a modified variety of References the Cyrillic alphabet. The language of the Macedonian speech territory can be traced back organically to the Browne, Wayles. 1993. Serbo-Croat. In Comrie and Corbett. speech that gave rise to the first Slavic written language Comrie, Bernard, and Greville G. Corbett (eds.) 1993. The Slavonic languages. London: Routledge. in the ninth century CE, known today as Old Church Friedman, Victor A. 1993. Macedonian. In Comrie and Slavic. Corbett. Linguists have tended to concentrate on the structure Greenberg, Marc . 2000. A historical of the Slovene of Macedonian and Bulgarian words and their relation- language ( Historical phonology of the Slavic languages ship to and meaning, as well as the interaction of XIII). Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag. Huntley, . 1993. Old . In Comrie and the languages with others in the Balkan linguistic con- Corbett. vergence area (or Sprachbund). For the period from the Ivic´, Pavle. 1958. Die serbokroatischen Dialekte: Ihre Struktur tenth to the twelfth centuries, the textual evidence of und Entwicklung. The Hague: Mouton & Co. Proto-Macedonian and Bulgarian is important for the KaticK ic´, Radoslav. 1976. Ancient languages of the . The earliest body of attestations of Slavic in general, known Hague: Mouton. Koneski, BlaDe. 1983. A historical phonology of the as the canonical period of Old Church Slavic. For this ( Historical phonology of the Slavic reason, Indo-Europeanists have made substantial use of languages XII), transl. by . A. Friedman. Heidelberg: Carl older Macedo-Bulgarian material. Winter Universitätsverlag. Because of their participation in the convergence Lehiste, Ilse, and Pavle Ivic´. 1986. Word and sentence prosody area, Macedonian and Bulgarian display features not in Serbocroatian. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Lencek, Rado L. 1982. The structure and history of the Slovene found elsewhere in the Slavic-speaking world. For language. Columbus: Slavica. example, the category of is marked by the Priestly, T. M. S. 1993. Slovene. In Comrie and Corbett. presence (vs. absence) of an after the first Scatton, Ernest A. 1993. Bulgarian. In Comrie and Corbett. member of a phrase, e.g. Macedonian Ja vidov MARC L. GREENBERG

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