Helmut SCHALLER (Philipps University, Marburg)
Bulgarian as a European language from a linguistic point of view
Bulgarian as a South Slavic, Balkan, but also as an Indo-european and current
European language can be considered as a language not only characterized by numerous
“balkanisms”, but also as a language in the framework of the new so-called
“Eurolinguistics”. As the result of convergent development beside genetic relationship the
term “Sprachbund” is admittedly unsatisfactory (Weinreich 1958). Its fundamental fault
seems to be that it implies a complete unit in itself which enforces a decision if Bulgarian is
part of this “Sprachbund” or not. It is historically apparent that the Balkan area has been one
marked by a high degree of ethnic intermixture, bilingualism and illiteracy (Klagstadt 1963).
Perhaps the Balkan area and its languages can be seen as a half-way step to linguistic
integration, which has come to a standstill (Georgiev 1972). So the most highly analytic
languages in Europe seem to be Bulgarian and English. Within the linguistic structure of
Europe there is an obvious “demonstrative area” (Lewy 1942), not only in the Balkans, but
also in Romance, and German, but not in Slavic languages. This means a grammar which
reflects concordances of languages geographically remote from Bulgaria, e.g. in Northern
Europe.
Before scrutinizing European relations of the Bulgarian language in the domain of
grammar, it must be said that any influence that Turkish as a non-European language may
have exerted on the grammar of this Balkan language is covert. We probably still know too
little to be able to ascertain the extent of this influence. The most frequently cited instance of
Turkish grammatical influence in the Balkans is the development of the category of
“reportedness” in the verbal system of some forms in standard Bulgarian. A comparison of
Turkish verbal forms with Bulgarian ones will be helpful.
The main question, which will be answered in this paper is, which pecularities in the
Bulgarian language compared with other European languages are inherited from IndoEropean, e.g. word formation of numerals from 11 to 19, which is also found in Latvian and
in Hungarian as a non-Indoeuropean language. The postposition of definite articles is also
found in Scandinavian languages and the reduplication of pronouns is found in South German
dialects. The analytic comparison of adjectives with “po-“ with the meaning of English
“more” is not only found in Bulgarian but also in Russian and Lithuanian.
The “balkanisms” in Bulgarian can be considered as “Europeisms” from the
synchronical point of view, from the diachronical point of view as “Indoeuropeisms” or in the
sense of traditional Balkan linguistics as results of mutual Romance or Greek influence. Thus
we see that Bulgarian shows synthetical tendencies with word formation of numerals from11
to19, postposition of articles, but also analytical tendencies with reduplication of objects,
analytical comparison of adjectives. So Bulgarian is from the point of view of
“Eurolinguistics” an analytical language with new synthetic tendencies or a language with a
tendency of agglutination, while Modern Greek as a neighboring Balkan language of
Bulgarian may be seen as a language with isolating tendencies.