Cynthia Vakareliyska
University of Oregon
May 17, 3:00-4:30, 145 Straub
A Morphophonemic Constraint on ě–ȩ Vowel Representation in Bulgarian Church Slavonic
Manuscripts of the XIII/XIVth Centuries
The talk focuses on morphological environments for the orthographic alternation between Old Cyrillic ѣ
(representing Late Common Slavic *ě, which was probably pronounced approximately as [æ]), and ѧ
(representing LCS front nasal vowel *ȩ). While the ѣ/ѧ alternation in medieval Macedo-Bulgarian
manuscripts obviously indicates that the reflexes of the LCS vowels *ě and *ȩ had merged in local
dialects, it has been assumed up to now in the scholarly literature that the orthographic alternation was
random, particularly since there were no hard-and-fast orthographic rules during that chronological
period. My preliminary comparison of features of three Macedo-Bulgarian ecclesiastical manuscripts of
the XIIIth and XIVth centuries shows that in fact, this orthographic alternation was not always random,
but was in part morphologically driven. In each of the three manuscripts, the orthographic alternation in
noun forms is subject to what I have called a paradigm-crossing restraint: that is, it is not found in
inflectional morphemes if the alternation could result in some morphological ambiguity within the case
paradigm. That three Macedo-Bulgarian manuscripts from the XIII–XIVth centuries appear to display this
same pattern suggests that this constraint was common in manuscripts from that period and
geographical area, although the scribes were probably not conscious that they were avoiding vowel
letter alternations in these morphological environments. (A shorter version of this talk will be presented
at the Nineteenth International Congress of Slavists in Minsk, Belarus, in September 2013.)