Re: NATLANG ruki-rule in Slavic

Pavel Iosad scripsit:

> Probably. Bulgarian being a South Slavic language is not much of an
> obstacle, since Russian is so soaked in Church Slavonic, half of the
> words are Russian all the same.
From Ivan Derzhanski's epic on the history of Bulgarian orthography:

# The two languages have had an interesting historical relationship.
# They were little more than dialects of one another when one of them,
# the one geographically closer to Byzantium, was written down; and this
# one became the language of lore for the speakers of both (and other
# tongues beside), so that in all contexts having to do with writing
# the terms `Old Slavic' and `Old Bulgarian' refer to the same thing.
# It arrived in Russia together with Christianity and its books, in the
# late 10C--early 11C, and a somewhat Russianised version of it came to
# be known as `Church Slav(on)ic'.
#
# Many OBg/ChSl words have been borrowed into Russian, including such
# as had regular Russian cognates in existence, usually leading to one
# of the following frequent situations:
#
# (1) B and R differ in register:
# (a) R is a substandard word and B the standard one,
# (b) R is the neutral word and B is elevated (literary);
# (2) B and R differ in meaning, and then usually B has the more abstract,
# metaphorical etc. sense.
#
# Examples (first the regular Ru word, then the cognate borrowed from OBg/ChSl,
# which is also the only word in current Bulgarian):
# (1a) _nadëzha_ `hope' (regional), _nadézhda_ dto. (standard);
# (1b) _górod_ `town, city' (neutral), _grad_ dto. (literary);
# (2) _gorozhánin_ `city-dweller', _grazhdanín_ `citizen';
# _golová_ `head (of body)', _glavá_ `head (of family, of state); chapter'.
#
# [...]
#
# The late 18th century, and most of the 19th, were Bulgaria's
# Renaissance. The national language, complete with a written
# form, was among the things that were to take shape at that time.
#
# But it was a situation very different from Peter's Russia,
# where there was a state -- a strong one -- and an established
# lay high speech -- that of Moscow. In Bulgaria there was a
# multitude of dialects, and no central Bulgarian-speaking authority
# to coordinate things.
#
# And since Bulgaria had not the resources to satisfy its need
# of books, lay or clerical, Russia now `returned the favour'.
# Bulgaria imported books, and with them many Russian and ChSl
# words, including many that were Bg loans in Ru itself. Some
# of those had synonyms or regular cognates in Bg, and then
# one of several situations would arise:
#
# (1) R and B differ in register:
# (a) B is a substandard word and R the standard one,
# (b) B is the neutral word and R is elevated;
# (2) R and B differ in meaning, and then usually R has the more abstract,
# metaphorical etc. sense.
#
# So _chèdo_ (B) is `child, offspring (of one's parents)', whereas
# _ch )Bàdo_ (from ChSl) is `child, offspring (of the Church)'.
# An old priest might call a much younger person the former
# (affectionately, referring to his age) or the latter (formally,
# referring to his office and rank).
#
# In Ru _odézhda_, the standard word for `clothes', is a loan
# from OBg/ChSl; the regular Ru development _odëzha_ is regional.
# Bg borrowed it back, but it means `garment', usually when talking
# of divine service; the regular word for `clothes' is not related.
#
# The Ru word _lev_ `lion' is likewise a ChSl loan -- the expected
# *_lëv_ does not exist (though a man called _Lev_ is
# usually nicknamed _Lëva_). In Bg `lion' is _løv_, the regular
# cognate; the Ru loan _lev_ is the name of Bulgaria's currency,
# which goes back to the lion being the nation's totem animal.
#
# In Ru _dvizhénie_ is `moving (nomen actionis)' as well as `movement,
# motion'; in Bg it's been borrowed for the latter meaning, whereas
# the former is the homebred cognate _dvìzhene_.
#
# And so on.


--
You escaped them by the will-death              John Cowan
and the Way of the Black Wheel.                 jcowan@reutershealth.com
I could not.  --Great-Souled Sam                http://www.ccil.org/~cowan