Balkanisc̀he Lexik im Schrifttum der bulgarischen Wiedergeburt by Thomas HenningerReview by: H. LeemingThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Jul., 1989), pp. 449-450Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4210033 .

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REVIEWS 449 language at the beginning of the nineteenth century when the Greek educa- tional tradition, which was still strong, resisted the independent development of a Bulgarian culture and language. This resistance could be overcome only on the basis of the solid Slavonic tradition in Bulgaria, with support from the Church and the example of Russia.

The formation of the modern Greek literary language and the debates accompanying it are depicted in a long article by G. Hering. He traces the tenacious struggle between the conservative wing, which was trying to restore ancient Greek, and the supporters of the contemporary language spoken by the people. The confused linguistic situation was often complicated by political and even moral attitudes and could be resolved only recently, when the contemporary colloquial language was institutionalized.

The collection concludes with a survey of the formation and standardization of the Rumanian literary language. It is once again only recently that this process can be said to have been completed. Rumanian had to struggle against a heavy burden of loan elements, and in the nineteenth century there was a deliberate attempt to restore some of its Romance features with the help of French influence.

The contributions testify to the growing interest in Balkan studies in their various aspects, and many fresh approaches can be found in this attractively presented book. School of Slavonic and East European Studies THOMAS HENNINGER

University ofLondon

Henninger, Thomas. Balkanisehe Lexik im Schrifttum der bulgarischen Wiedergeburt. Slavische Sprachen und Literaturen, Band I5. Hieronymus, Munich, I987. 434 pp. Bibliographies. DM 78.oo

AFTER an extensive introduction covering the historical and social background to the Bulgarian language revival, with a valuable survey of phonetic, morphological, orthographic, lexical and other developments throughout the period, the author presents the core of his work: a glossary of Turkish (332), Greek (32), Rumanian (ii) and hybrid (I2) abstract nouns occurring in various sources from I762, the date of Paisij Chilendarski's Istorija slaveno- bolgarskaja, to I878, the year of liberation. The fifty titles surveyed include devotional literature, scriptural and other translations, grammars, dictiona- ries, phrase-books, school textbooks, periodicals - a diverse miscellany of genres not untypical for the early stages in the emergence of a literary language.

Thomas Henninger rightly concentrates on the lexicological interest of the material. The phonetic and morphological aspects do not demand a detailed commentary. Each article is constructed on the same model: headword; German equivalent(s); etymological derivation; quotation(s) from the Bul- garian sources; comparison of Bulgarian with native usage; fate of the word in later and modern Bulgarian (archaic, obsolete, colloquial, dialectal, etc.); occurrence in other Balkan languages (Serbian, Greek, Rumanian, Albanian). A second paragraph discusses the synonyms which eventually ousted the borrowed word or made it redundant in the literary language.

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450 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Numerically and intrinsically the Turkisms are the most interesting ele- ments, and Henninger's commentary and conclusions reflect their impor- tance. Few of these words are of genuine Turkic origin. Most are Arabic or Persian loanwords in Turkish. Given the abstract nature of the material chosen this is not surprising. A student of comparative Slavonic lexicology notes a great contrast with the state of affairs in Russian, where, as the historical grammarians point out, the Turkic languages supplied 'highly specific culture-terms' (W. K. Matthews, Russian Historical Grammar, London, I960, p. 254). Many years of the Bulgarian-Turkish bilingualism had pro- duced a situation where a Slavonic neologism or loanword from Russian had to be accompanied by a Turkish synonym. In other cases a Turkism might be preferred for its derisive tone in a pejorative sense or satirical context: budalMtina 'stupidity', es'eklik 'yobbishness' (for which the Bulgarians have no word of their own, according to the quotation from Ljuben Karavelov), kalpazanstvo 'swindling', karag'ozcilaik 'buffoonery', pezevenkldk 'procuring'. Some hybrids with Turkish morphological elements have a similar flavour: kokonldk, kurvaldk, and the racist or anti-ethnic gagauzluk.

The author's broad interpretation of the term 'abstract' allows him to include not only nouns descriptive of quality or state but also action, trade, commercial activity and even weights and measures. This should be borne in mind when using the material for comparative purposes. Among the interest- ing lines of research suggested by this valuable contribution to Bulgarian lexicology are not only the relative roles of Turkisms in the other Slavonic languages, but also the fate of these abstract nouns, or rather their original models, in Turkish itself. From G. I. Antelava's Turecko-russkij slovar' (neolo- gizmy), Tbilisi, I985, p. 26, we learn that the Arabism muaf'immune', source of Bulgarian maf (Henninger, p. 257), is being displaced by bag'iszk, a distant relative of 'English' buckshee, in the sense of both medical and fiscal immunity. London H. LEEMING

Press, J. Ian. Aspects of the Phonology of the Slavonic Languages. The Vowely and the Consonantal Correlation of Palatalization. Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics, ed. by A. A. Barentsen, B. M. Groen and R. Sprenger, vol. 7. Rodopi, Amsterdam, I986. xiii + 320 pp. Notes. Tables. Bibliography.

IAN PRESS, one of the most active and productive British scholars in the Slavonic and Indo-European field, with valuable contributions to Celtic and Baltic studies, here curbs his wide-ranging polyglottal appetite to concentrate on a problem of Slavonic philology, namely the genesis and later fate of the Common Slavonic vowel generally known by its Russian letter-name, jery, a compound noun clearly reflecting both elements of the digraph (R bI, OCS bI).

The conscientious but misleading transcription ui may still be encountered on old library cards, but most Western Slavists now writey in the Polish manner.

For English students of Russian, who have mastered with difficulty the articulation of jery, it comes as a shock to learn that the experts query the phonemic nature of the vowel and regard it as an allomorph of the phoneme /i/ occurring after hard consonants. This brings the pair bI/H into neat agreement with a/,i, 3/e, o/e, y/o as the orthographic presentation of hardness/softness in

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