The present treatise tackles three issues: 1. the periodization of the history of currently existing literary Slavic languages, 2. the chronology of phonetic changes in the Proto-Slavic langue until its breakup, 3. the final period of existence of the Proto-Slavic language and the real image of the phonological system of the Old Church Slavonic language, based on dialectological research as well as on detailed analysis of both alphabets (of the phonetic features in correlation with the graphic image of the letters). Ad 1. In languages whose writing traditions developed from Old Church Slavonic, we distinguish a Church Slavonic period of a specific recension (e.g. Ukrainian, Serbian), and subsequently the period of national revival and the contemporary language. In areas where, in contrast, the first texts were written in a non-Slavic language (e. g. Latin) we distinguish periods on the basis of cultural and literary trends. Exceptions: a) The Polish language, which has the longest uninterrupted history of weightings based on the same dialect, for which we distinguish the Old Polish, Middle Polish and Modern Polish periods, b) the Bulgarian language with a Church Slavonic tradition (the language known as Old Bulgarian, based on the dialect of Thessaloniki, used until the 18th century, and Modern Bulgarian based on the Northeastern dialect). Ad 2. It is necessary to distinguish the Proto-Slavic language, common for all Slaves living in their Urheimat, from the Common Slavic language, with dialectal differences, especially in connection with recent dialectological research, in particular since G.Y. Shevelov (1964) published his well-known work concerning historical Proto-Slavic phonology. Ad 3. The analysis of the oldest Slavic alphabets points to the necessity of revising the views on the phonetic value of the graphemes discussed in detail in the paper..
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The Indoeuropean words designing adults of both genders probably date back to the polygamist times and their semantics refer to procreation capacities. The Proto- -Slavic word *zena 'woman' (- Pol. zona 'wife') comes from the root *gen - 'to give birth', which is known in Greek and Latin. The word *maz. 'man' (- Pol. maz 'husband'), coming from the root *men - 'to protrude, project, protuberate, to tower', has a parallel in Germanic languages (Eng. man) and, with a different evolution of the meaning, in Latin (mons 'mountain'). The Balkan languages have conserved the primary meaning of the words *zena and *moz.. In the Middle Ages, the words 'zenszczyzna' i 'mezczyzna' were used in Polish in reference to adults of respective genders. The former has disappeared and has been replaced by the word 'kobieta', known only in Polish. The dialectal form 'kobito' (f), retained until today, indicates that in Old Polish it was an adjective: *kobita zona 'clairvoyant (fortune telling) woman', formed with the -ita(ja) suffix from the noun *kob. 'prediction, augury, good / bad fate', whose Indo-European root *kob- has equivalents in many languages, i. a. Eng. happy. In Polish, this word has disappeared, leaving only one word derived from it: kobuz 'Eurasian Hobby' (Falco subbuteo L). Even though around 30 different etymologies were created in the 20th century, the origins of that word have never been fully proven. Some of the theories were also referring to the *kob- root, but the authors didn't take into account the contemporary Balkan languages, where around 50 words derived from this root exist. It was mainly basing on this material that the existing hypothesis concerning the etymology of the word 'kobieta' was confirmed.
In Slavic linguistics, it was commonly accepted from the beginning of the 19th century that the oral articulation of Old Church Slavonic nasal vowels didn't differ from the articulation of the oral vowels o and e. This opinion was probably based on the fact that the only language that had retained nasal vowels - the Polish language - had this kind of articulation. It was believed that the Old Church Slavonic language didn't differ much from the Proto-Slavic language, and this articulation was accepted for the reconstruction of the phonology of that language. The vowel jat' (e) was treated as an open e, which in some languages and dialects has developed in certain environments into a (Polish and Bulgarian), in other cases into e (this change operated also as an environmentally unconditioned one in Serbian, Macedonian, Russian and Belarusian), but also into i (in the Ukrainian language and Croatian dialects), into the diphthong ie / je (in Croatian), or has remained a distinct close phoneme ('e' in Sorbian languages). The back nasal vowel has in most of the languages changed into u, but in some of them into o (Slovenian), into a (Bulgarian) and further into a (Macedonian). The front nasal vowel changed into e (in the remaining South Slavic languages) or into a (East Slavic languages, Upper Sorbian and initially Czech and Slovak), whereas in Lower Sorbian it merged with the jat' reflexes. In literary Polish, (after long and short nasal vowels had merged) since the 16th century, we have reflexes articulated as e () and o (). The views concerning the articulation of nasal vowels and jat' begun to change under the influence of G.Y. Shevelov's works (1964), which - based on previous borrowings of Slavic words into non-Slavic languages and vice-versa - marked a significant turning point in views on the phonology of the Late Proto-Slavic period. The dialectal materials (taken mainly form works published in connection to the Slavic Linguistic Atlas - OLA) presented in this paper enable a preliminary revision of the views concerning the realisation of Early Proto-Slavic nasal vowels and diphthongs, from which jat' derived. In nearly the entire South Slavic area, a figures among the reflexes of the front nasal vowel and of jat', which points to the common development of Proto-Slavic front diphthongs (containing i and nasal vowels), and therefore to an open articulation of the initial jat'. Therefore the so called jat' umlaut (in Bulgarian or Polish) is not an umlaut, but the original pronunciation before non-palatal consonants. The parallel development of back diphthongs (containing u as well as and nasal vowels) is even more visible: in case of diphthongs containing u, on the entire area, and where the nasal diphthongs are concerned, covering the great majority of Slavic dialects and languages.
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