Original scientific paper
Language Contact and Language Interference: The Case of Greek and Old Church Slavonic
Henrik Birnbaum
; University of California, Los Angeles
Abstract
Considering Academician R. Filipović-s major contributions to contrastive and contact linguistics,
the autor first ponders the possibility of writing an essay to his honor dealing with
Balkan Sprachbund phenomena or with the linguistic contacts of Croatian and German (as
well as Hungarian), or Italian. However, given the present writer's own earlier research in
the area of Greek-Old Church Slavonic language contacts and interference, some hitherto
less explored facts of this subject are briefly discussed. Notably, rather than once again considering
the already much studied syntactic and lexical Hellenisms (Grecisms) of Old
Church Slavonic, attention is focused on the semitisms (which entered via Greek, hence
also referred to as "pseudo-Hellenisms") and the vernacular (non-literary) Byzantinisms of
the earliest liturgical and written language of the Slavs. Yet, the latter do at most qualify
as nascent (incipient) Balkanisms only.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
23940
URI
Publication date:
3.6.1996.
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