Sussex R., Cubberley P. The Slavic Languages

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this context, whereas in Croatian the Slavicizers have established a pattern of lexical

maintenance and renewal which depends less on borrowing.

There is a series of concepts represented by different words in the three variants:

(6) Croatian (Slavic root) Bosnian and Serbian

factory tvo

rnica (make; also Bos) fa

brika

library knj

zˇnica (book) bibliote

music gla

zba (voice) mu

zika

railway station ko%lodv



or (track þ yard) sta%nica (stand)

telegram br%zoj



av (fast þ inform) tele

gram

university sveu

ilı¯ s

te (all þ learn) univerzı



Now that Bosnian is emerging as a language separate from both Croatian and Serbian,

distinct lexical items like the following are candidates to become a formal part of the

new standard Bosnian language. The data show Bosnian positioned lexically between

Croatian and Serbian, though the links to Serbian are somewhat closer:

(7)

Croatian Bosnian Serbian

‘bread’ kru%h kru%h (hl( j)e%b) hle%b

‘train’ vla

kvo

zvo

‘window’ pro

zor pro

zor (pe

ndzˇer) pro

zor

‘town’ gra

d gra

d/va

ros

‘corner’ ku

tu%gao/c

ak c

There are also some words which have different primary meanings in the two

older variants. The number is restricted, but the semantic discrepancies can be

striking. The B/C/S data are based on Franc

(1963: 22–23). Bulgarian and

Slovenian examples are also supplied as an indication of the north-western vs

south-eastern nature of many of these variants:

In general, Croatian is closer to Slovenian, and Serbian to Bulgarian.

(8)

B/C/S Sln Cr Bos Serb Blg

gu%s

a – goiter; craw – throat throat

eg trunk; suitcase trunk; suitcase trunk; suitcase coffin coffin

krı

vica injustice injustice injustice; offence crime krivda ¼ injustice

kr%st christening christening cross cross cross

nı¯ k – apprentice scientist scientist –

tras



ost interior interior interior province(s) interior; provinces

o%bjava advertisement; advertisement; advertisement; announcement advertisement;

announcement announcement announcement announcement

poru

ˇiti

inform inform inform; order order inform; order

pra



anje quarrel quarrel apology explanation –

9.3 Coexistent lexical strata 479

9.3.3 Bulgarian: Russian and Turkish

Something like the reverse situation obtains with modern Bulgarian, which, as a

result of influence from Moscow (still seen as the ‘Third Rome’ after the fall of the

Ottoman empire), shows a layer of lexis derived from Russian, some in fact

a reimportation of Church Slavonic forms, e.g. veroja

ten ‘probable’, stara

ja se

‘to try’. But there are also many internationalisms via Russian Church Slavonic,

e.g. grama

tika ‘grammar’, other Russian forms of the Soviet period, e.g. petile

tka

‘five-year plan’, and now globalizing English and other European influences as well.

The long period of Ottoman Turkish rule inevitably saw a high number of

borrowings, but the late nineteenth-century revival in turn saw the mass replace-

ment of these forms, either by neologisms or borrowings from more ‘acceptable’

sources, in the first place Russian. The survivors include many (some 800 in the

three-volume dictionary of 1955–1959) basic everyday items like c

rap ‘sock’ and

nta ‘purse’. A somewhat larger number are listed as non-standard, alongside

preferred native synonyms, e.g. kjutu

kvsnative pa˘n ‘tree-stump’. Scatton (1993:

241) reports that in analyses of this dictionary, Turkish, with 1,900 items in all,

constitutes 13.5 percent of borrowed words, behind Latin (25.5 percent), Greek

(23 percent) and French (15 percent), and ahead of Russian (10 percent). However,

these figures underestimate the Russian influence, since Bulgarian phonological

patterns tend to mask the Russian or Russian Church Slavonic origin of words like

Blg vsele

na, Rus vsele

nnaja ‘universe’.

Since 1990 globalizing influences have begun to oblige Bulgarian language

legislators to cope with a flood of imports, especially English, with the introduction

of Western consumer culture, technology and capitalistic structures.

9.4 Root implementation and exploitation

9.4.1 Extending word formation

In English, root exploitation is counterbalanced by borrowing (Hughes, 2000), and

the results of word formation and combination tend to lexicalize more readily, and

form semi-autonomous new units. We tend to think of Longfellow, for instance, as

the name of a poet, and only secondarily as ‘long’ þ ‘fellow’. In contrast, Slavic

roots are often widely exploited: Tolstoy (Tolsto

j) is more readily perceived as

deriving from to

lstyj ‘fat’; Pushkin (Pu

kin) from pu

ka ‘cannon’; and Lenin from

na ‘the River Lena’.

In chapter 8 we demonstrated the productivity of affixes in word formation. It is

also useful to survey the productivity of roots. Some common roots like

bel- ‘white’

480 9. Lexis

can form more than a hundred affixed and root-combined words in a single

language, and in all the four major parts of speech. The relatively greater vitality

of the root bel- is evident from the cases where English does not use white- , but

borrows from Greek, Latin and other sources:

(9) Rus bel- ‘white’

abstracts (belizna

‘whiteness’)

politics (belogvarde

ec ‘White Guardsman’, be

lye ‘the Whites’)

medicine (be

li [plurale tantum] ‘leucorrhoea’, belkovı

na ‘albumen’),

animals (belu

ga ‘white sturgeon, beluga’, belu

xa ‘white whale’, belja

‘white hare’)

objects (belo

k ‘egg white’, belja

nka ‘white mushroom’, belı

la ‘white-

out fluid’)

adjectives (belova

tyj ‘whitish’)

verbs (bele

‘to be white’, belı

‘to whiten, cause to be white’).

We show elsewhere (chapter 8), how prefixes, particularly verb prefixes (8.3.1),

form families of derived stems. In contrastive lexicology it is useful to consider the

lexical properties of a single root. We take pis- ‘write’ (see 8.3.1.2) in B/C/S,

Russian, Polish and Czech, following Herman (1975: 337–342):

1. All four languages have an unprefixed verb meaning ‘write’, though in

some of the languages it can also mean ‘paint’ (its earlier meaning,

cf. the PSl root pis- from IE pik’-, from which come Latin and

English (etc.) pict-):

(10a) B/C/S pı

sati Rus pisa

Pol pisac

Cz psa

2. The derived noun in -mo is present in all the languages:

(10b) B/C/S pı

smo Rus pis

Pol pismo Cz pı

smo

But it differs somewhat in meaning. It can mean ‘writing-system,

script’ in all four languages (having earlier meant a single ‘letter (of

the alphabet)’ in OCS, cf. the early work on the alphabet known as

‘O pismene

xy’ – ‘On the letters/alphabet’). But in Russian and Czech it

can also mean ‘the ability to write’. In all but Russian it can designate

‘handwriting’, or the manner of writing. And while in all four lan-

guages this word can refer to what is written, it does so in different

ways: ‘letter’ (Rus, B/C/S; Pol also list), cf. Cz dopis, B/C/S do

pis;

‘written matter’ (Pol, Cz); ‘magazine, periodical’ (Pol); and in Polish

and Czech it may also designate ‘printer’s type’.

9.4 Root implementation and exploitation 481

3. Other affixed forms cover abstract meanings like ‘scripture’ (Rus pisa

nie),

the process of ‘writing’ (Rus, Pol pisa

nie, B/C/S pı



anje ‘writing’; Pol

pisanina ‘pen-pushing’), with various media (Rus zapisa

, Pol

zapisac

,Czzapisovat, B/C/S zapı

sati ‘to record’) and the results (Rus

pis

, Pol zapis, Cz, B/C/S za

pis ‘recording’), agents (Rus pisa

tel

, Pol

pisarz,Czpisatel, B/C/S pı

sac ‘writer’; Rus pise

c,Czpı

sar

, B/C/S pı%s



‘scribe’; Rus pisa

ka,Czpisa

lek‘scribbler’) and objects (Cz pisa

tko ‘slate-

pencil’, B/C/S pı



aljka ‘pencil’). (For the many verbal prefixed forms,

see 8.3.1.) The meaning ‘paint’ is seen in Rus ı

konopis

‘icon-painting’.

9.4.2 Lexical specialization and verbs of motion

Lexical specialization presents a number of interesting phenomena. Some of these

are of restricted generality: for instance, Russian has no generic word for ‘blue’, but

two more specialized terms, sı

nij ‘dark blue’ and golubo

j ‘light blue’. More wide-

spread examples of specialization through types of subject concern verbs like ‘die’,

where one term relates to people and another to animals: using the animals’ term to

refer to people denigrates both the deceased and the manner of dying: Ukr umyra

‘to die [of people]’, zdyxa

ty ‘to die [of animals]’. This example parallels German

essen ‘eat [of people]’ and fressen ‘eat [of animals]’.

More typologically relevant is the rich Slavic lexical system of common verbs of

motion. There are two special vectors. The first involves ‘‘natural’’ vs ‘‘assisted’’

motion: on foot, say, as opposed to movement by vehicle, boat, horse and so on,

similar to German gehen ‘‘natural motion’’ vs fahren ‘‘assisted motion’’: Rus vestı

Sorb wjesc

‘to bring, lead’, Rus veztı

, Sorb wjezc

‘to convey’.

The second dimension involves the old (Indo-European) feature of ‘determinate 

indeterminate’ (8.3), which survives in West and East Slavic. All the languages

retain between 9 (Polish, Slovak) and 20 (Ukrainian) pairs like Rus nestı

[Det] 

nosı

[Indet] ‘to carry’. Of the South Slavic languages, only Slovenian retains a

trace of this distinction, including Sln ne

sti  nosı

ti, but some of the small number

of pairs are actually lexically distinct forms, e.g. Sln pelja

ti [Det]  vozı

ti [Indet] ‘to

convey’. Determinate motion has a goal or end-point, as when one ‘goes’ to the

shop. Indeterminate motion concentrates on the activity rather than achieving a

goal, or ‘walking about’:

(11) ‘go’ Russian

Natural Assisted

Determinate idtı

xat

Indeterminate xodı

zdit

482 9. Lexis

This pattern for ‘‘natural/assisted’’ motion covers only the unmarked ‘go’ and ‘lead,

convey’ verbs, and not uniformly in all languages at that. But the ‘‘determinate/

indeterminate’’ motion criterion applies to a range of verbs – ‘run, fly, carry, swim,

climb, crawl, drag, drive, chase, roll, wander’ – again with some lexical gaps in

individual languages.

These verbs have a special interaction with aspect (6.3, 8.3). Since perfective

aspect favors telic action with an end-point and a goal, the determinate form is the

unmarked perfective. Prefixes reflect their spatial meanings more closely than in

general prefixal perfectivization. Imperfectives are normally derived by prefixing

the parallel indeterminate verbs (8.3).

9.5 Lexical innovation: indigenous lexical resources

Lexical innovation gives rise to a genuine neologism only relatively infrequently, for

example in patented products. Elsewhere new realia or concepts are reflected in lexis

through reallocation of existing words: by the creation of new words from within by

the novel use of existing lexical and morphological material, for instance by com-

pounding; or by abbreviation of one sort or another (stump compounding, clipping

or univerba

cija, acronyms or initialisms). The importation of new words (borrowing)

and the morphological nativization of foreign lexis and calquing are covered in 9.6.

9.5.1 Semantic change

Extending or changing the semantic (denotative) range of existing words occurs

commonly through metaphor or technological advance: on the launch of the first

Soviet satellite in 1957 Russian spu

tnik ‘human companion; natural satellite’

acquired a new ‘‘man-made satellite’’ reading, and in the process became one of

the important Russian contributions – lexical as well as technological – to global-

ized communication. Words may also ‘‘determinologize’’, losing their specialist

senses as they widen their sphere of use and reference (e.g. Rus de

gi, (30)).

A major internal semantic change in connotations occurred with the Communist

revolutions between 1917 and 1948. Here the ideological switch to a totalitarian

atheist regime realigned the connotative value of religious and ethical lexis, or

marginalized it, and supplied a new range of favored lexis. Some of the changes,

however, had been accumulating from around 1900, and the Revolution was

lexically less abrupt than was earlier thought. The pre-Revolutionary institutions

and social roles became of historical interest, and some vocabulary like the word

for ‘secretary’ assumed new importance with its role in the Communist hierarchy.

More important were compounds and abbreviated forms.

9.5 Lexical innovation: indigenous 483

9.5.2 Compounding

‘‘Straight’’ compounding – often hyphenated, and with or without a link-vowel – is

a common phenomenon in Slavic, producing such ‘‘new’’ objects as Rus diva

n–

krova

, Pol kanapa–ło

zko ‘bed-settee’, Rus vago

n–restora

n, B/C/S va



on – resto



‘restaurant-car’, which may be phrases in some languages (Pol wagon [Noun]

restauracyjny [Adj], Cz jı

delnı

[Adj] v

uz [Noun] ‘restaurant-car’); Cz zˇelezobeton

(lit. ‘ironþoþconcrete’), cf. B/C/S a

rmı¯ r



anı¯ be



on ‘reinforced concrete’ (8.2.3

for details).

9.5.3 Abbreviated words

Single words and especially compounds are reduced in various ways: by using only

stumps of their parts (‘‘stump compounding’’, 9.5.3.1); by abbreviating and fusing

the elements of phrases by retaining only one element, and normally supplying a

suffix (univerbacija, 9.5.3.2); or by using initials or a combination of syllables and

initials (acronyms and initialisms, 9.5.3.3).

9.5.3.1 Stump compounds

Stump compounds are words which are formed from two or more words by taking

syllables, usually the first syllable of each word, and creating a new word. Russian,

as the originator of the bulk of these terms in the early years of Communism, has

the largest inventory, and has provided models for the other languages. In English

there are relatively few stump compounds like the former airline PanAm. In English

linguistics the nearest equivalents are ‘‘clipping’’ (demo for demonstration) and

blends (brunch for breakfast þ lunch), neither quite like the syllable-based stump

compound. Like acronyms and initialisms (9.5.3.3), stump compounds are mostly

nouns, or nouns providing a derivational basis for the formation of adjectives. The

most common source is a phrase consisting of an adjective and a noun. In Russian

the stress of the new word generally falls on the stump of the head noun in the

original phrase – normally in last position, even if that syllable was not originally

stressed in the full noun (12a), though sometimes the second word may be retained

in full (12b):

(12a) Rus kolxo

z ‘collective farm’ < kollektı

vnoe xozja

jstvo

Rus specfa

k ‘special faculty’ < specia

nyj fakul

(12b) Rus fizkul

ra ‘physical education’ < fizı

eskaja kul

Rus specode

zˇda ‘special clothing’ < specia

naja ode

484 9. Lexis

Stump compounds formed from more than two words take the first syllable of each

(not necessarily in the same order as the phrase):

(13) Rus Uc

ˇpedgı

z ‘state educational pedagogical printing house’

< gosuda

rstvennoe (state) uc

bno-pedagogı

eskoe izda

tel

stvo

Cz C

edok ‘Czech Travel Agency’ < C

eska

dopravnı

kancela

Some stump compounds derive from a phrase consisting of Noun þ Noun, with the

first noun as the head of the phrase, and the second noun in an oblique case (14a),

while others combine the Adjective þ Noun and Noun þ Noun types (14b):

(14a) Rus ko

mba

t ‘commander of a battalion’ < komandı

r batal

(14b) Rus Komsomo

l ‘Communist Union of Youth’

< Kommunistı

eskij soju

z molod

ezˇi [Gen]

Even the order of the underlying phrase can be rearranged (cf. (13) ):

(15) Rus so

cdogovo

r ‘pact on socialist competition’

< dogovo

r o socialistı

eskom sorevnova

nii

Key words, even head nouns, can be omitted from the underlying phrase:

(16) Rus s

irpotre

b ‘wide demand goods’

< tova

ry s

iro

kogo potreble

nija ‘goods of wide demand’

Rus ro

slesxo

z ‘Russian federal forestry service’

< federa

naja slu

zˇba lesno

go xozja

jstva Rossı

It often happens that Russian stump compounds are borrowed in toto, with

appropriate phonological adjustments, into other Slavic languages:

(17) Rus ko

rmija ‘cavalry’ < ko

nnaja a

rmija (lit. ‘horse army’)

Ukr kina

rmija < kı

nna a

rmija

In other instances the underlying phrase is wholly or partly calqued into the target

language, and a stump compound formed from it:

(18) Rus ko

mjac

jka ‘Communist cell’

< kommunistı

ˇeskaja

jac

jka

(or jac

jka kommunistı

eskoj pa

rtii)

Ukr komosere

dok < komunisty

ˇnyj

osere

dok

The stump compound has proved to be a very convenient device, especially in

East Slavic and Bulgarian. It is shorter than the original phrase. It is usually

transparent, since unfamiliar compounds can often be recovered by analogy from

9.5 Lexical innovation: indigenous 485

existing known compounds: stump compounds containing Rus sov- usually refer to

sove

tskij ‘Soviet’, as in sovxo

z ‘Soviet farm’ < sove

tskoe xozja

jstvo,ortosove

t ‘coun-

cil’, as in sovnarxo

z ‘council for the national economy’, and nar- is usually naro

dnyj

‘people’s’. Confusion does occasionally arise, however, as with kom-,whichmay

mean komite

t ‘committee’, komissa

r ‘commissar’, komı

ssija ‘commission’, komandı

‘commander’ and kommunistı

eskij ‘Communist’, among other less common mean-

ings. A significant number of the components of stump compounds stem from

‘‘internationalisms’’ – words borrowed from international technical vocabulary, or

derived from the writings of Marx and Engels translated into Russian.

Guessing the underlying phrase of unfamiliar stump compounds is something of

a verbal game in these languages. The form of the abbreviated syllable is sometimes

varied to avoid confusion. Komsomo

l itself forms a derived stump compound

komso

rg ‘Komsomol organizer’ < komsomo

skij organiza

tor, in which the stump

form kom- would otherwise lead back to komite

t ‘committee’ or kommunistı

eskij

‘communist’, etc. rather than to Komsomol. The decodability of stump compounds

stems from the limited collocation possibilities of most of the component syllables,

and to a certain regularization of the vocabulary used in them.

The currency of stump compounds varies widely among the Slavic languages.

They are strongest in East Slavic, and to a lesser extent in Bulgarian, which has a

strong tradition of lexical borrowing from Russian since the language revival of the

nineteenth century. Bulgarian has borrowed many Russian stump compounds as

words (the parts not being equivalent forms, e.g. ‘youth’ in Bulgarian has the root

mlad-, not mol(od)-):

(19) Rus, Blg komsomo

Rus, Blg komsomo

lec ‘(male) member of the Komsomol’

Rus, Blg komsomo

lka ‘(female) member of the Komsomol’

In other cases Bulgarian can have partial stump compounds parallel to the full

stump compounds in Russian:

(20a) Rus politru

k ‘political leader’ < polit ı

ˇeskij

rukovodı

tel

Blg politra˘kovodı

tel < politı

eski ra

kovodı

tel

(20b) Blg glavse

k ‘senior secretary’< gla

ven sekreta

Blg litrabo

tnik < literatu

ren rabo

tnik ‘literary worker’

Blg specsre

dstvo ‘special measure’ < specia

lno sre

dstvo

though since Bulgarian is virtually caseless, straight compounds like zame

stnik-

dire

ktor ‘deputy þ director’ are probably more accessible to direct compounding

processes, that is without abbreviation.

486 9. Lexis

In West Slavic, and other South Slavic languages, the tendency is still toward

phrases and calques rather than full stump compounds. Russian stump compounds

provide a concept which is often translated as a phrase

(21) Rus Cz B/C/S

agitkollektı

v ‘agitation group’ agitac

ˇnı

kolektiv ko%lektiv agı



agitpu

nkt ‘agitation centre’ agitac

nı

str

edisko propa



andnı¯ ce%ntar

narko

m ‘people’s commissar’ lidovy

komisar na

rodnı¯ kome%s



profsoju

z ‘trade union’ odborovy

svaz sindı



The total number of stump compounds in recent lists of neologisms in languages

outside East Slavic and Bulgarian, like that of Smo

łkowa for Polish (1976), is

relatively small. Bulgarian has shown a much greater readiness to adopt and borrow

words from Russian than these other languages have. In addition, the structures of

society, economics and administration which were adopted in these countries after

the Second World War were less like the Russian models than those in Ukraine or

Belarus. The stump compounds in widest use across the Slavic world were the names

of economic and political institutions: organizations like Comintern, Cominform,

Komsomol, and these are borrowings from Russian and now part of the past.

9.5.3.2 Clipping and univerbacija

One indication of recent developments, especially in Russian and languages

(Ukrainian, Belarusian) more closely in its sphere of influence, is univerba

cija, the

Russian term for making a new single word from a phrase, usually a noun phrase,

and usually by the removal of the head noun (earlier terms included sras

nie

‘splicing’ (S

vedova, 1980: vol. 1:256) and vkljuc

ˇe

nie ‘incorporation’ (e.g.

Gorbac

evic

, 1971: 135). S

anskij (1975: 224) called it leksiko-sintaksic

eskij sposob

slovoobrazovanija ‘lexico-syntactic method of word formation’). Univerbacija is to

be distinguished, on the one hand, from regular nominalization from adjectives and

participles, where ‘‘thing’’ can be supplied for a neuter, and ‘‘person, people’’ for

other genders and numbers: Rus gla

vnoe ‘the main thing’, bol

j ‘a patient’ < ‘ill’;

and, on the other hand, from anaphora, where adjectives and participles can refer

to ‘‘the ADJECTIVE one(s)’’: Pol wole˛ niebieskie ‘I prefer the blue (ones)’.

Univerbacija usually involves an adjective stem. The inflexion and preceding

word-forming elements are removed, and a suffix, sometimes zero, is added. The

noun deleted, unlike the nominalization cases (above), is not predictable from the

adjective itself. The Russian pattern often involves the suffix -ka:

(22) Rus nalı

nye < nalı

nye de

gi ‘ready (money), readies’

lektrı

ka < e

lektrı

eskij po

ezd ‘electric train’

9.5 Lexical innovation: indigenous 487

ninka < Bibliote

ka ı

meni Le

nina ‘Lenin Library’

amerika

nka < amerika

nskij restora

n ‘American (¼ fast-food)

restaurant’

This tendency is continuing vigorously: a ‘mobile/cell phone’ in Russian is either

mobı

lka (< mobı

nyj ‘mobile’) or so

tka (< so

tovyj ‘cellular’), each with the loss of

telefo

n, cf. similarly Pol komo

rka (< komo

rkowy ‘cellular’ telefon).

9.5.3.3 Acronyms and initialisms

The modern Slavic languages have a large number of abbreviated forms in current

usage. In Western countries we find new abbreviations mainly originating in the

commercial and technical area, in the names of companies, manufacturers or

products (EMI, MG, SAAB, BMW, etc.), and occasionally in the names of

government instrumentalities: agencies like NASA have contributed to the devel-

opment of shortened words in English. Readers of Anthony Burgess’s novel

A Clockwork Orange (1963) will remember how unnatural these structures sounded

in English. In the Eastern Bloc such terms stem more from social, economic and

administrative structures. After the 1917 Revolution the new leaders of the Soviet

Union wanted to break sharply with pre-revolutionary Russia. They consequently

changed, and/or renamed, the basic social and administrative structures of the

country. And with the Communist take-overs in the other countries of the Eastern

Bloc, aspects of the Russian model were adopted for both administration and

language. The Russian experiment with the new forms of language was very

much in the spirit of Futurist poets like Mayakovsky during the first decades of

the century. Many abbreviations of the early Soviet period have vanished, together

with the objects or entities which they designated, and many other terms have not

been adopted by non-Russian Slavs. Furthermore, the conservatism and normative

approach of Slavic lexicographers has kept many such abbreviations out of the

dictionaries, which makes it difficult to establish the vitality of abbreviations in

each Slavic language. Certainly, many abbreviations have been ephemeral. But

they also constitute one of the major means of adapting modern Slavic lexicons to

the demands of changing social and technological factors in the modern world.

Like stump compounds (9.5.3.1), acronyms and initialisms are mostly nouns.

But, unlike stump compounds, they are not semantically transparent, and are

established purely by convention. We again use Russian examples, since Russian

is the main source of this tendency in Slavic.

Acronyms are pronounced as words, and have a conventional syllable structure:

(23) Rus vuz ‘higher education institution’ < vy

ee uc

bnoe zavede

nie

GUM ‘state universal/department store’

488 9. Lexis