23.1.1 The Composition of the Slavic Lexicon

Many Slavic words related to core concepts may be regarded as Indo-European inheritance, for example most Slavic kinship terms (*mati ‘mother’), terms denoting certain natural objects (*vodà ‘water’), most numerals (*trь̏je ‘three’), etc. However, beside the words that have reliable Indo-European etymologies, there are words particular to Balto-Slavic or Proto-Slavic, including animal terms (e.g. *žaba ‘frog, toad’), food (e.g. *plodъ ‘fruit’), and others. The lexicons of different Slavic languages also contain inter-Slavic borrowings, as well as numerous borrowings from non-Slavic languages (Greek, Latin, French, German, English, etc.). The sources of borrowings vary dramatically across the Slavic linguistic group (for more detail, see Chapter 25).

In terms of frequency, top lexemes demonstrate a significant amount of overlap across Slavic languages. The top ten lexemes in most Slavic languages are functional words including the conjunction ‘and’ (Rus. i, Bul. da, Pol. i, Cze. a), certain spatial prepositions, demonstrative, interrogative, and personal pronouns, and, in some languages, the verb ‘to be’. Top nouns and verbs show overlaps (‘people’, ‘year’, ‘time’, ‘to want’, ‘to have’, ‘to know’), as well as some revealing differences. Differences in the top nouns and verbs are motivated, at least partially, by different paths of grammaticalization and lexicalization in different Slavic languages. For example, Pol. pan ‘lit. lord, master’ is one of the most frequent Polish nouns, which reflects its grammaticalized status as a polite second person pronoun. The Bulgarian verb iskam ‘lit. I seek’ is among the most frequent Bulgarian verbs, unlike its cognates in many other Slavic languages (e.g. Rus. iskat’ is not even among the top hundred). This reflects its lexicalization in Bulgarian in the meaning of ‘want’, one of the basic lexical terms and grammatical meanings. Frequency lists also reveal some lexical differences in the preferred expression of basic grammatical meanings. For example, in Russian, obligation is frequently expressed by the adjective dolžen ‘obliged’, which as a result is one of the top ten most frequent Russian adjectives. On the other hand, in Polish, the most frequent expression of obligation is verbal, and consequently Pol. musieć ‘must’ is one of the top ten Polish verbs.

23.1.2 Old Church Slavonic and Its Influence on the Vocabulary of Slavic Languages (Especially Russian)

Old Church Slavonic, the first Slavic literary language, was based primarily on the Macedonian (South Slavic) dialects and used in the ninth century by the missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius for preaching to the Moravian Slavs and for translating the church services and the Bible into Slavic. OCS was readily adopted in other Slavic regions, where, with local modifications, it remained the religious and literary language of Orthodox Slavs throughout the Middle Ages, and it has continued, in its various local forms, as a liturgical language (known as Church Slavonic) into modern time. It had significant influence on the languages of the orthodox Slavs (Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian).

Thus, the Church Slavonic word for ‘humility’ (Greek tapeinōsis) originated as a contamination of derivatives from words for ‘measure’ and ‘peace’; it presupposes both moderation of one’s ambitions and peaceful acceptance of reality. This word is also used in Russian and Bulgarian (smirenie). The counterparts of humility in other Slavic languages emphasize either submissiveness (Bel. pakora, Pol. pokora, Cze. pokora) or acceptance of one’s low status (BCS poniznost).Footnote ¹

The most significant was the influence of Church Slavonic vocabulary on the Russian literary language that grew out of a compromise style incorporating many Church Slavonic words into the native Russian (East Slavic) vernacular. Thus, the homonymy of words for ‘peace’ and ‘world’ in Russian results from the use of mirъ ‘harmony; peace; good arrangement’ (probably borrowed from Iranian in the prehistoric era) as the Church Slavonic translation of Greek words εἰρήνη ‘peace’ and κόσμος ‘world, universe; community’ often co-occurring in the Orthodox liturgical texts (e.g. ‘give peace to Thy world’, etc.). The spelling of the two homonyms in Church Slavonic has been differentiated since the 1750s; the Russian language pre-1918 spelling followed the Church Slavonic orthography and made a distinction between the words for ‘peace’ (миръ) and ‘world’ (міръ); the spelling of the word for the latter meaning did not correspond to the usage rules of the letters for і (according to the modern Russian orthography, the spelling for both ‘peace’ and ‘world’ is the same, namely, мир).

No such homonymy exists in other Slavic languages. In most Slavic languages, the words that go back to mirъ (Bel. mir, Ukr. mir, Bul. mir, Ser. mir, Cze. mir, etc.) are used for ‘peace’, while the words that originally go back to the word for ‘light’ (that is, electromagnetic radiation that can be detected by the eye), which was also probably borrowed from Iranian in the prehistoric era, are used for ‘world’ (e.g. Bel. svet, svit, Bul. svjat, Ser. svet, Cro. svijet, Pol. świat, Cze. svět). This word (свет according to the modern Russian orthography) is still in use with the original meaning ‘light’ in Church Slavonic and Russian (in addition, the word svet in certain collocations can also mean ‘world’ in Russian: vokrug sveta ‘around the world’, tot svet ‘the “other world”, the afterlife’, etc.). In most modern Slavic languages, ‘light’ is conveyed by derivatives of the original word (Bel. svjatlo, Ukr. svitlo, Bul. svetlin, Ser. svetlo, Cro. svjetlo, Pol. światło, Cze. světlo).

When Church Slavonic lexical units co-exist with their East Slavic counterparts in the Russian lexicon, they usually have a more abstract meaning: ravnyj ‘equal’ vs. rovnyj ‘smooth, even’, pomošč’ ‘help, assistance’ vs. pomoči ‘suspenders’, predat’ ‘to betray’ vs. peredat’ ‘to pass, to transfer’, etc. (see also Sections 23.1.3, 23.2.1, 23.3.2). Many Russian scholarly terms have Church Slavonic roots and affixes; for example, Rus. skazuemoe ‘predicate’, podležaščee ‘subject of the sentence’, vselennaja ‘universe’, rastenie ‘plant’.

23.1.3 Lexical Development and Lexical Divergence

Historical development has resulted in the lexical divergence of Slavic languages. Various processes such as semantic shifts, word formation, and lexical borrowing have led to cross-linguistic false equivalence: two or more words of the same origin may have totally different meanings in different Slavic languages (false equivalents are sometimes referred to as ‘false friends’, or ‘false cognates’).Footnote ² Well- known examples of false equivalents are such pairs of words as Rus. pozor ‘shame’ vs. Cze. pozor ‘attention’ (for a more detailed discussion of false equivalence see Chapter 27 in this volume).

A particular case of false equivalence is interlingual enantiosemy. The term enantiosemy in its narrow sense refers to the occurrence of two opposite meanings for one and the same lexical unit. For example, the Russian word proslušat’ (lekciju) may mean either ‘to hear’ or ‘to fail to hear, to miss’ (so, enantiosemy in its narrow sense is a very particular case of polysemy). Hence another term is often used for enantiosemy, namely, auto-antonymy. Enantiosemy in this narrow sense is a relatively rare phenomenon. Examples of enantiosemy that one can find in the linguistic literature are unsystematic and may seem anecdotal. In a broader sense, ‘enantiosemy’ is a diachronic phenomenon; the term may be understood as referring to the opposition of two linguistic items that go back to the same item. Enantiosemy in the broader sense is not restricted to linguistic expressions that belong to the same language; they may belong to different languages as well; for example, the Russian adjective čerstvyj ‘stale’ has the same origin as the Cze. word čerstvý ‘fresh’. Another example of interlingual enantiosemy in Slavic languages is verbs arising from the development of the Proto-Slavic *ląčiti (probably ‘to bend’): Bel. lučyc’, Pol. łączyć ‘to unite, to connect, to join; to link’ vs. Bul. lǎča, Cze. loučiti ‘to separate’ (consider also the Russian prefixed verbs slučit’ ‘to pair, to mate’ and razlučit’ ‘to separate’).

Enantiosemy arises from semantic shifts when the meaning of a linguistic item takes two different paths with the resulting formation of two opposite meanings. Enantiosemy in the broader sense is a regular phenomenon probably depending on general principles of cognition and communication. Although instances of enantiosemy might seem to be of great variety, their sources may be reduced to quite regular and well-known semantic shifts. Hence, the study of enantiosemy in the broader sense is very important as it represents the final point of the semantic development of Slavic languages. It also shows that there is no clear borderline between ‘the same meaning’ (the starting point) and ‘opposite meanings’ (the final point), and so it may reveal the relationship between the semantic equivalence (synonymy) and antonymy.

Thus, enantiosemy involving evaluation may result from adding two opposite evaluations to the originally neutral term (which is typical of terms for ‘odor’, ‘weather’, ‘appearance’, and so on). The conventionalization of evaluative connotations can occur in a situation when a word is typically employed with evaluative elements. Enantiosemy arises when the evaluation differs in different types of usage. Evaluative connotations often arise for words with the meaning ‘smell’: when such connotations are conventionalized, they acquire the meaning ‘pleasant smell, aroma, fragrance’ or, in contrast, ‘bad smell’. This leads to interlingual enantiosemy of Russian von’, Bul. vonja ‘stink’, and the etymologically identical Church Slavonic vonja and Cze. vůně ‘aroma, fragrance’ (the Russian word obonjanie ‘sense of smell’ with the same root is evaluatively neutral). The Russian word pogoda ‘weather’ is evaluatively neutral in the standard language; however, it means ‘fine weather’ in some Russian dialects (namely, southern and western dialects) and ‘bad weather, foul weather’ in most other dialects.

The asymmetry of action/process and result manifests itself in a situation where the same result can be achieved by ‘opposite’ actions or the ‘opposite’ actions are directed towards the same object. For example, the opposite meanings of Ser. spor ‘slow’ and the etymologically identical Russian sporyj ‘fast’ derive from the existence of two opposite ways of increasing work output: one can work longer or with greater efficiency. These are two paths of development of an adjective that clearly signified ‘copious’ initially: on the one hand, ‘long’ and thus ‘slow’ and, on the other, ‘intensive; effective’ and thus ‘fast’.

An interesting source of enantiosemy is linked to emotional states that combine the characteristic traits of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings. Depictions of emotional states easily shift to contiguous emotions, leading to the appearance of semantic chains whose links can correspond to emotional states that are perceived as ‘opposite’. Thus, the Pol. word litość ‘compassion, empathy, pity’ is etymologically identical to the Rus. word ljutost’ ‘ferocity’. The ‘missing link’ can be seen in the Cze. word lítost (the Polish word is an intra-Slavic borrowing from Czech) that denotes a special emotion, something like ‘a feeling of acute pity for oneself that arises as a reaction to humiliation and evokes a feeling of aggression in return’.

The conventionalization of pragmatic inferences is tied to the enantiosemy of such Russian prefixal verbs as pereizbrat’ <X> ‘to reelect X, to elect X another time’ and ‘to elect another person instead of X’; perepisat’ ‘to copy or reproduce a text’ and ‘to write a text anew or differently’. Here the very meaning of the prefix is such that it directly permits the appearance of totally opposite inferences: one may want to do something again for two opposite reasons: (i) if the actor does not like the result of their action, they may want to do it again to achieve a better result; (ii) if the actor likes the result of their action, they may want to do it again to achieve the same result. So, verbs with the prefix pere- with the meaning of a repeated performance of an action can mean ‘to do the same thing again’ or ‘to do it differently’.

The polarization of actants takes place when two participants in a situation (actants) begin to be perceived as ‘opposite’, while the description of the situation from the standpoint of one of these participants is perceived as ‘opposite’ to the description of the same situation from the standpoint of the other. Such ‘opposite’ descriptions of a situation are metonymically connected since they presuppose contiguity, that is, contact or proximity in time or space. Examples include the situation of buying and selling (the roles of buyer and seller are polarized), visiting (the roles of guest and host are polarized), borrowing, and leasing. As the situation is the same, its descriptions from ‘opposite’ points of view can make use of the same lexical unit (with a change of diathesis), which can begin to be perceived as enantiosemic. Thus, the Russian verb odolžit’ ‘to lend’ with the constructions komu ‘to whom’ and u kogo ‘from whom’ means ‘to grant a loan’ and ‘to contract a debt’, respectively. Consider also the interlingual enantiosemy of Cze. hostit ‘to host’ vs. Rus. gostit’ ‘to be a guest; to visit’ (it should be noted that both Cze. host and Rus. gost’ mean ‘guest’).

23.1.4 Contemporary Development of the Slavic Lexicon

Contemporary development of the lexicons of individual Slavic languages makes use of the same mechanisms as the historic development of the Slavic lexicon, that is, productive derivation, neologisms, borrowings (see Chapters 11 and 25). Note that different Slavic languages show different attitudes to borrowing words: some of them resist foreign linguistic influences, which is sometimes referred to as purism. Purist tradition was stronger in those Slavic cultures, like Czech or Slovene, that were exposed to German administration for longer periods of time. Even very closely related languages such as Serbian and Croatian differ in this respect: although there have been periods when purism was strong in Serbian, it has been much more constant in Croatian, and is very visible now. Consider such well-known examples as Ser. fudbal vs. Cro. nogomet ‘football’; Ser. fabrika vs. Cro. tvornica ‘factory’; Ser. univerzitet vs. Cro. sveučilište ‘university’; Ser. stomak vs. Cro. želudac ‘stomach’. Interestingly, puristic tendencies may treat Romance and Germanic loanwords differently from certain inter-Slavic borrowings. For example, Russian (a mostly borrowing-tolerant language) in its puristic periods tended to replace non-Slavic borrowings (or form calques from non-Slavic languages) with the use of Church Slavonic morphemes, which were perceived as part of the Russian language. For example, the word golkiper from English goalkeeper was replaced by OCS vratar’ ‘gate keeper’. Likewise, Ukrainian in certain periods treated Polish borrowings as native terms, while considering Russian borrowings as loanwords. For example, Ukr. pojizd ‘train’, from Rus. poezd, is gradually being replaced by potjah ‘train’, which comes from Pol. pociąg.

23.1.5 Brief Outline of What Follows

The following types of relations occur between lexical units: paradigmatic relations (relationships of choice); syntagmatic relations (relationships of co-occurrence); epidigmatic relations (relationships of motivation). Combination of paradigmatic, syntagmatic, and epidigmatic relations in the lexicon determines vocabulary as a system.

Paradigmatic relations are based on the similarities and differences of meanings. They include relationships with other words of similar meaning (synonyms; see Section 23.2.2.1), of opposite meaning (antonyms; see Section 23.2.2.2); denoting ‘opposite’ participants of the same situation (converse terms; see Subsection 23.2.2.2.3); just belonging to the same semantic group (kinship terms, body parts, plants, color adjectives, etc.).

A particular case of paradigmatic relations is hyponymy. Hyponymy exists within a given semantic group; it is the relationship between a generic term (hypernym) and a specific instance of it (hyponym) as well as between co-hyponyms, that is, hyponyms of the same hypernym (for more details see Subsection 23.2.2.2.4).

Syntagmatic relations are linear relationships of neighboring words in sentences, phrases, and collocations. They characterize compatible combinations and co-occurrence restrictions of a given word (see Section 23.2.3).

Epidigmatic relations constitute the third dimension of the lexical system. They have to do with word formation and polysemy. They characterize relations between a word and its derivatives as well as relations within a word between its different lexical meanings. Epidigmatic relations involve regular derivational mechanisms (such as affixation) and mechanisms of semantic derivation (e.g. metaphor and metonymy). They are sometimes based on connotations, that is, semantic associations produced by the word in its original meaning (Section 23.2.4).

Explanatory dictionaries usually define lexical meanings using the words of the same language. Relationships between a word and the words included in its definition are relevant for the lexical system, along with its paradigmatic, syntagmatic, and epidigmatic relations. The structure of the lexicon is shaped by ‘system-forming meanings’ and the words that represent them. A system-forming meaning is “a meaning that constitutes a part of the meaning of a large number of linguistic units of various nature … and under certain conditions, is realized in the same way regarding the rules of interaction of meanings” (Reference Apresjan, Apresjan, Apresjan, Babaeva, Boguslavskaja, Iomdin, Krylova, Levontina, Sannikov, Uryson and ApresjanApresjan 2006: 52). For example, ‘cause’ is a system-forming meaning because it creates a separate semantic class within several different parts of speech (most notably, causative conjunctions, prepositions, and verbs), as well as forming part of the meaning in many other semantic classes, such as emotions, attitudes, and natural processes.

23.2.1 Different Parts of Speech

The lexicon is to a great extent shaped by the system of word classes. As a technical term, ‘word class’ refers to the parts of speech, that is, morphosyntactically defined categories of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, numerals, pronouns, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections). Slavic languages do not have articles: although there is a category of definiteness in Bulgarian and Macedonian expressed by a postpositive article, it in some respects behaves as an affix rather than a separate word.

23.2.2 Paradigmatic Relations

23.2.3 Syntagmatic Relations

Syntagmatic relations of a given word characterize its compatible combinations and co-occurrence restrictions. Thus, in Russian one may express the meaning ‘the clock is ten minutes fast’ by časy spešat na 10 minut (literally, ‘the clock is 10 minutes in a hurry’), časy begut na 10 minut (literally, ‘the clock is 10 minutes running’), or časy vpered na 10 minut (literally, ‘the clock is 10 minutes ahead’), but not *časy operežajut na 10 minut (literally, ‘the clock is 10 minutes outpacing’); *časy bystry na 10 minut (literally, ‘the clock is 10 minutes fast’); one may say, časy otstajut na 10 minut ‘the clock is ten minutes slow’ (literally, ‘the clock is 10 minutes lagging behind’), but not *časy nazad na 10 minut (literally, ‘the clock is 10 minutes back’); *časy medlenny na 10 minut (literally, ‘the clock is 10 minutes slow’); consider also the Pol. zegar spieszy się o dziesięć minut ‘the clock is ten minutes fast’ (literally, ‘the clock is 10 minutes in a hurry’).

There are two important types of syntagmatic relations.

1. (1) Relations between a predicate and words that are dependent on it and represent its actants (they usually fill in the valences of the predicate in question). The valences of a predicate are specified by its government pattern. Government patterns of cognates may not coincide in different Slavic languages; consider, e. g. the Rus. slušat’ muzyku (with Accusative) vs. the Pol. słuchać muzyki (with Genitive).

2. (2) Relations between a word and other words that can be joined with it in collocations. It is often possible to account for these relations using the mechanism of lexical functions, that is, extremely abstract meanings (such as ‘high degree’ or ‘low degree’), which have different representations in combination with different words.

Lexical functions are a tool for the description and systematization of syntagmatic semantic relationships, that is, relationships between particular lexical units, especially in collocations, developed within Meaning-Text Theory (Reference Mel’čuk and CowieMel‘čuk 1998, Reference Mel’čuk, Burger, Dobrovol’skij, Kühn and Norrick2007, Reference WannerWanner 1996). The most common lexical functions include synonyms, antonyms, conversives, Magn, Oper, and Func. Synonyms and antonyms are discussed in Section 23.2.

The lexical function Magn primarily comprises adjectives and adverbs that denote high degree: Rus. prolivnoj doždʹ ‘pouring rain’, tjaželaja boleznʹ ‘serious illness; lit. heavy illness’, bezumnaja ustalostʹ ‘strong fatigue; lit. insane fatigue’. More idiomatic Magn adjectives and adverbs tend to develop from adjectives and adverbs with other primary meanings via metaphor or bleaching: Rus. krepkij čaj ‘strong tea; lit. robust tea’, dikaja žalostʹ ‘strong pity; lit. wild pity’, strašno ustatʹ ‘to be terribly tired’. This mechanism of deriving Magn is found across Slavic languages; see ‘to love terribly’, as in Rus. užasno ljubitʹ, Bel. strašenna lubic’, Bul. užasno običam.

Conversives are words that have the same set of semantic arguments, yet with different syntactic status. For example, Rus. kupitʹ ‘to buy’ and prodatʹ ‘to sell’ are conversives: the seller is the syntactic subject in prodatʹ, but indirect object in kupitʹ, and vice versa. Slavic languages usually have lexical or morphological conversives, that is, this relation is either expressed by different words, or by morphological derivation. Kupitʹ – prodatʹ are lexical conversives, as are Pol. kupić and sprzedać or Ser. kupiti and prodati. Verbal morphological conversives can be formed with the reflexive suffix: Rus. razbitʹ ‘to break’ – razbitʹsja ‘to get broken’, učitʹ ‘to teach’ – učitʹsja ‘to learn, to study’ are morphological conversives, as are Pol. rozbić and się rozbić, uczyć and się uczyć. Sometimes, conversives are polysemes of the same word, that is, they are formed by semantic derivation: Rus. odolžitʹ with different morphosyntactic realization of actants means either ‘to loan money to smb.’ or ‘to borrow money from smb.’ (see also Section 23.1.3), as does Pol. pożyczyć. Most conversives are verbs, as they are the most typical part of speech that has arguments.

Other frequent verbal lexical functions are Oper and Func. Oper is a light verb used with nouns (usually verbal) as direct objects, in the meaning ‘to do X, to feel X, to undergo X’. For example, Rus. pomoščʹ ‘help’ has Oper okazyvatʹ ‘to give’, as in okazyvatʹ pomoščʹ ‘to give help’; rečʹ ‘speech’ has Oper govoritʹ ‘to say’, proiznositʹ ‘to pronounce’, vystupatʹ ‘to speak’ as in govoritʹ / proiznositʹ rečʹ, vystupat’ s reč‘ju ‘to give a speech’.

Func is a light verb used with nouns as subjects, in the meaning ‘to exist, to go on, to take place’. For example, Rus. urok ‘lesson’ has Func idti ‘go’, as in Idet urok ‘A lesson is taking place; lit. is walking’, Rus. ogonʹ ‘fire’ has Func goretʹ ‘to burn’, as in Vdali gorit ogonʹ ‘There is a fire ahead’. Oper and Func are sometimes the result of semantic bleaching in verbs with primary semantics of motion (idti ‘to go, to walk’, vyjti ‘to go out’), transfer (davatʹ ‘to give’), and some others: Rus. Func Vyšla neprijatnostʹ ‘Trouble occurred; lit. Trouble went out’, Russian Oper On dal signal ‘He gave a signal’. The same phenomenon is found in other Slavic languages: Pol. dać sygnał ‘to give signal’, Nic nie wychodzi ‘Everything fails; lit. Nothing not goes out’; Bul. Polkovnikǎt dade znak ‘The colonel gave a signal’; Verojatno e da ne izleze ništo ‘It’s likely that nothing will come out of it’.

23.2.4 Epidigmatic Relations: Derivational Mechanisms and Polysemy across Slavic Languages

Derivation is the creation of a new lexical item (a new word or a new lexical meaning) from an old one. There are two main ways of lexical derivation: word formation and semantic change (a change in a single word’s meaning, which leads to polysemy). In both cases the meaning of a new item is motivated by the meaning of the original word. This means that there is a semantic relation between the meanings, which manifests itself in the fact that the definitions of the meanings in question share a significant common part (or the original word is simply included into the definition of the derived item). For example, the Russian adjective vetrjanoj (derived from veter ‘wind’ and used in such collocations as vetrjanaja mel’nica ‘windmill’, vetrjanoj dvigatel’ ‘wind motor’) means ‘converting wind power into mechanical power’. Similarly, Rus. bljudo ‘dish’ has two meanings (the second meaning being derived from the first one): (1) ‘container; piece of crockery designed for serving food’ and (2) ‘food prepared in a particular way’ (the common part here is ‘food’).

The main mechanisms of word formation are discussed in Chapter 11 in this volume. As for the sources of polysemy, they stem from the fact that the meaning of a lexical unit may undergo different kinds of modifications when the latter occurs in a certain context. Initially these modifications do not go beyond occasional contextual uses, but over the course of time they are gradually conventionalized and thereby new meaning emerges. For example, Rus. dvornik denotes a person whose duty is to maintain the grounds and to clean the interior of a property. When people invented a mechanical device to wipe the windscreen of a car, it became referred to as dvornik as well, because of its similar function. Gradually this name came into general use, hence the word dvornik acquired a new meaning, which is sometimes called semantic derivation.

The mechanisms of semantic derivation reveal a certain degree of regularity. The primary mechanisms of semantic derivation are metaphor (in particular, emotion metaphor, embodiment metaphor, etc.) and metonymy (in particular, metonymy of actants, part-whole, container-object, etc.). Throughout the twentieth century more particular types of semantic derivation became the object of detailed study: the narrowing and widening of meaning, the acquisition of an evaluative component, hyponymic and hypernymic shifts (the shift from a class to one of its specimens or vice versa), the shift from a parameter to its value (cf. the meanings ‘temperature’ and ‘high temperature’ of Rus. temperatura), the conventionalization of a connotation (connotation-based polysemy; cf. Rus. svin’ja), the conventionalization of an implicature (implicature-based polysemy; cf. Rus. ničego ‘nothing’ which can express the meaning ‘not bad, normal’: the fact that nothing has happened implies that nothing bad has happened), etc. For a more detailed discussion of metaphor and metonymy and some other mechanisms of semantic derivation, see Chapter 24 in this volume.

The role of systemic relationships for the structure of lexicon can be exemplified by the words for smile and laughter.

23.3.1 Kinship Terms

Most Slavic languages have a complex system of kinship terminology; for example, English ‘brother-in-law’ is translatable into Russian as šurin ‘wife’s brother’, zjat’ ‘sister’s husband’ (the word also can refer to ‘daughter’s husband’), dever’ ‘husband’s brother’. Now, the tendency toward gradual simplification of the terminological system describing kinship is characteristic of all the Slavic languages; for example, many speakers of modern Russian prefer to use descriptions such as brat ženy (instead of šurin), sestra muža ‘husband’s sister’ (instead of zolovka), sestra ženy ‘wife’s sister’ (instead of svojačenica), etc. However, the words svëkor ‘husband’s father’, svekrov’ ‘husband’s mother’, test’ ‘wife’s father’, tëšča ‘wife’s mother’, zjat’ ‘daughter’s husband’, nevestka ‘son’s wife’ (note that in Czech nevěstka means ‘harlot’) are still in use and quite common.

23.3.2 Temporal Vocabulary (Days of the Week, Months)

The system of day names is uniform across the Slavic languages with the sole exception of Rus. voskresenʹe ‘Sunday’ from voskresenie ‘resurrection’. In all other Slavic languages, Sunday is denoted by a word deriving from the collocation ne delat’ ‘not to do’ (cf., for example, Ukr. nedilja, Bel. njadzelja, Bul. nedelja, Pol. niedziela, etc.). In Russian, this meaning has been preserved in expressions deriving from Church Slavonic calendric terms. At the same time, the word nedelja was transposed in the Russian language to the seven-day period including Sunday.

The words for Monday (Rus. ponedel’nik, Bul. ponedelnik, etc.) are compounds deriving from the collocation ‘the-day-after-the-no-work-day’; the words for Wednesday (Rus. sreda, Bul. sreda, etc.) mean ‘the middle (of the week)’; the words for Saturday (Rus. subbota, Bul. sǎbota, etc.) go back to the Hebrew Shabbath; words for Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday go back to numerals (e.g. Rus. vtornik ‘Tuesday’ is derived from vtoroj, ‘second’, četverg ‘Thursday’ from četvërtyj ‘fourth’, pjatnica ‘Friday’ from pjatyj ‘fifth’).

OCS had month names derived from Latin (borrowed from Greek). Some modern Slavic languages (e.g. Russian, Bulgarian) borrowed OCS month names; some (e.g. Slovak, Slovenian) probably borrowed month names immediately from Latin; several (e.g. Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Polish, Czech) have Slavic names. Isolated Latin names occur in Belarusian (maj ‘May’) and Polish (marzec ‘March’ and maj ‘May’).

Original Slavic names of months often are false equivalents in different Slavic languages, for example Bel. studzen’ ‘January’ vs. Cro. studeni ‘November’; Ukr. kviten’ ‘April’ vs. Cze. květen ‘May’, Cro. travanj ‘April’ vs. Ukr. traven’ ‘May’, Cro. lipanj ‘June’ vs. Ukr. lypen’ ‘July’, Cro. rujan ‘September’ vs. Cze. říjen ‘October’, Cro. listopad ‘October’ vs. Cze. listopad ‘November’, etc.

23.4.1 Miscellaneous Resources in Slavic Languages and Literatures

• https://slavistik-portal.de (an aggregator of sites associated with all areas of Slavistics, – digital libraries, journals online, bibliographies, online dictionaries, digital archives, cinema)

23.4.2 Russian

• http://jargon.ru (crowdsourced online dictionary for slang words and phrases, arranged by slang groups, over 47,000 words)

• https://teenslang.su (crowdsourced online dictionary for youth slang words and phrases, arranged alphabetically, with a search system)

• http://slanger.ru (crowdsourced online dictionary of slang, arranged by topics, with a search system)

• www.slovonovo.ru (crowdsourced online dictionary for youth slang words and phrases, arranged alphabetically and by topics, with a search system)

• www.slangdictionary.ru (crowdsourced dictionary of Russian slang)

• www.russki-mat.net (bilingual and monolingual dictionaries of taboo words, slang, and jargon)

• www.math-solution.ru/slang-list (alphabetically arranged dictionary of slang with examples, synonyms, origin)

• http://law.niv.ru (online dictionary of taboo words and criminal jargon)

• https://ojargone.ru (alphabetically arranged dictionary of slang)

• http://odessa_slang.academic.ru (a dictionary of regionalisms from Odessa)

• http://slovoborg.su (crowdsourced dictionary of ‘popular language’)

23.4.3 Ukrainian

• http://slovnyk.ua (explanatory dictionary of Ukrainian)

• http://r2u.org.ua (Russian-Ukrainian dictionaries)

• http://lcorp.ulif.org.ua (Ukrainian linguistic portal, online dictionaries)

• http://sum.in.ua (Ukrainian 11-volume dictionary of Ukrainian)

• www.mova.info (corpora, dictionaries, spelling textbooks, tests)

• https://github.com/brown-uk (ongoing project of a large electronic dictionary of the Ukrainian language with declension paradigms)

• http://ukrlit.org/slovnyk (explanatory online dictionary of the Ukrainian language)

• www.jnsm.com.ua/sis (dictionary of loanwords)

• https://slovotvir.org.ua (dictionary of loanwords)

23.4.4 Belarusian

• http://slounik.org (a collection of explanatory, bilingual, dialectological, and etymological dictionaries and encyclopedias)

23.4.5 Carpathian Rusyn

• https://web.archive.org/http://slovo.uz.ua (dictionary of the Ruthenian language – a total of 2,637 words)

23.4.6 Slovak

• www.juls.savba.sk (short dictionary of the Slovak language, a supplemented and modified form of a one-volume glossary of standard Slovak reflecting changes in Slovak vocabulary after 1989)

• https://slovnik.juls.savba.sk (contemporary and historical dictionaries, parallel corpora)

23.4.7 Czech

• https://korpus.cz (Czech National Corpus, includes written contemporary Czech (over 4 billion tokens), spontaneous spoken language (over 7 million tokens), diachronic corpus of historical texts and parallel corpus InterCorp with translations from or to 30+ languages)

• https://ssjc.ujc.cas.cz (dictionary of the standard Czech language)

• https://prirucka.ujc.cas.cz (search via word forms)

• https://vokabular.ujc.cas.cz (Old Czech)

23.4.8 Polish

• https://sjp.pwn.pl (dictionaries, encyclopedias, translation)

• https://wsjp.pl (Great Dictionary of the Polish Language)

• www.rcin.org.pl (Old Polish dictionary)

• www.poznan.pl/mim/slownik (Poznań dialect)

23.4.9 Lower Sorbian

• www.dolnoserbski.de/ndw (online version of the most important Lower Sorbian-German dictionaries)

23.4.10 Upper Sorbian

• www.soblex.de (online version of Upper Sorbian-German dictionary)

23.4.11 Kashubian

• www.cassubia-dictionary.com (several bilingual Kashubian dictionaries)

23.4.12 Slovenian

• https://fran.si (different dictionaries of the Slovenian Language Institute – bilingual, etymological, terminological)

• http://bos.zrc-sazu.si (Dictionary of Standard Slovenian Language)

• https://fran.si (etymological dictionary)

• https://viri.cjvt.si (Slovene Morphological Lexicon)

23.4.13 Croatian

• http://hjp.znanje.hr Croatian language portal

• https://rjecnik.hr (School Dictionary of the Croatian Language)

• https://pravopis.hr/rjecnik (spelling dictionary)

23.4.14 Serbian

• http://recnik.biz/srpsko-srpski (explanatory dictionary of Serbian and bilingual Serbian dictionaries)

• www.vokabular.org (explanatory dictionary of Serbian)

• http://lab.unilib.rs (online language laboratory – forms, texts)

23.4.15 Macedonian

• http://drmj.eu (explanatory dictionary of Macedonian, several bilingual dictionaries, synonyms)

• https://tekstlab.uio.no/glossa2 (Macedonian corpus)

• http://drmj.eu (digital dictionary of the Macedonian language)

23.4.16 Bulgarian

• https://rechnik.chitanka.info (explanatory dictionary of Bulgarian, synonyms)

• https://ibl.bas.bg (15 volumes of explanatory dictionary of Bulgarian, over 119,000 words)

23.4.17 Old Slavic

• http://gorazd.org (Old Church Slavonic digital hub with link to Digital Old Church Slavonic Dictionary)

• http://monumentaserbica.branatomic.com (Old Slavonic – Greek/Latin Dictionary – a database based on Lexicon Palaeoslovenico-Graeco-Latinum by Fr. Miklosich, 1865 edition)

23.4.18 Online Corpora

24.4.1 Lexical Metaphor

The transfer of designation from one concept to another on the basis of similarity is lexical metaphor. The relationship between the concept that is being designated and the one whose designation is taken over is based on similarity, which is never absolute, but rather concerns one feature these concepts have in common. All the other features are usually completely different, since metaphor links two separate domains of reality. For example, the primary sense of the Serbian noun korito ‘trough’ is the following: ‘a hollow, usually shallow and elongated container made of wood, metal, stone etc., used for washing clothes, bathing and similar domestic needs’. Through the metaphor mechanism, the secondary sense of korito was derived – ‘a depression through which a river flows or used to flow, river-bed’. Only the physical shapes and content of a trough and a river-bed are similar; nonetheless, that was sufficient to use the same noun to designate both concepts.

The concept to be designated and the one lending its designation can be similar in terms of shape, color, function, position, or content, or connected by a concrete–abstract relation. For instance, when the sun is called golden because it resembles gold due to its color and shine, the metaphor in question is color metaphor. When someone’s commendable morals are referred to as high morals, the mechanism applied is concrete–abstract metaphor.

Special attention shall be paid to metaphors based on collective experience (Reference Gortan-PremkGortan-Premk 2004), that is, metaphors based on connotation (Reference Iordanskaja, Mel‘čuk and KempgenIordanskaja & Mel‘čuk 2009), since these can vary in different languages, unlike most of the aforementioned metaphors. There are folk beliefs concerning the traits of objects around us. Some of these interpretations are founded on (true) reality, while others are not. For instance, Serbian speakers believe that foxes are cunning, bears are clumsy, etc. These beliefs belong to the domain of collective experience, which can be a source of metaphor. A stupid woman might be called a guska ‘goose’ or ćurka ‘turkey’. On the other hand, in certain Polish dialects the noun indyk ‘turkey’ and some of its derivatives designates an angry woman. Reference Mikołajczuk, Athanasiadou and TabakowskaMikołajczuk (1998: 172) states that anger is the main characteristic of a turkey in the collective consciousness of Poles: “[it] is seen as a bird with red crop and cock-comb and with ruffled feathers, which reminds us of an angry person with a red face and a puffed up figure.” Therefore, collective experiences of two language (and cultural) communities can be dissimilar, and translators need to pay special attention so as to avoid mistranslations.

24.4.2 Lexical Metonymy

Тhe transfer of designation from one concept to another on the basis of a logical connection is lexical metonymy. For instance, in all Slavic, as well as in many other languages, the amount of liquid can be designated by the name of the container where the liquid is stored (e.g. Ser. šolja čaja ‘a cup of tea’, tanjir supe ‘a bowl of soup’). Instead of saying that we have drunk the quantity of tea that two cups can hold, it is more economical to say that we have had two cups of tea. In this case, the metonymic transfer is founded on the connection existing between a container and the amount that the container can hold. That connection enables us to call the amount by the container’s designation. When we say fabrika je izašla na ulicu ‘a factory has taken to the streets’, the noun fabrika ‘factory’ refers to the workers, managers and other staff employed by the factory. Once again, the mechanism used is metonymy, based on the connection existing between an institution and the people permanently related to it in some way.

The usual definition that metonymy is the transfer of designation from one concept to another on the basis of a logical connection is overly general. The more challenging part is determining what kind of relation can serve as the basis for metonymy. The Serbian linguist M. Reference KovačevićKovačević (1999) revealed that there are at least four connections between the source concept (whose designation is transferred) and the target concept (to be designated): spatial connection: Seosku kuću ne može zadesiti veća sreća ‘It’s the greatest blessing a house [a family] in the country could wish for’; temporal connection: Sedeli su, pili i pevali sve do prvih petlova ‘They sat, drank and sang until cockcrow [dawn]’; cause-for-effect: Ustao je ponesen rakijom ‘He stood up driven by brandy [drunkenness]’; and possessive connection: Čitaću Andrića ‘I’ll read Andrić [books by Andrić]’. Thus, metonymy can be defined as the transfer of a designation from one concept to another where the two concepts belong to the same domain of reality and are closely related by a spatial, temporal, cause-for-effect, or possessive connection.

Some linguists refer to metonymy as regular polysemy, due to the fact that all lexemes belonging to the same thematic group are considered to follow one metonymic formula, which is applicable to all group members. For example, all nouns of the thematic group ‘containers’ may develop the secondary sense ‘amount that a container can hold’: Ser. Nabrao je korpu šljiva ‘He picked a basket of plums’.

24.4.3 Lexical Synecdoche

The transfer of a designation from one concept to another on the grounds of the logical connection part-for-whole or whole-for-part is synecdoche. In other words, the word signifying a part of the whole is used to refer to the whole, or, less frequently, the word signifying the whole is used to refer to its part. It should be emphasized that synecdoche is sometimes subsumed under metonymy, whereas transfers species-for-genus and genus-for-species, which we understand as examples of generalization and specialization, are sometimes considered a kind of synecdoche (for a review of the literature, see e.g. Reference Nerlich, Burkhardt and NerlichNerlich 2010).

The part → whole synecdoche is realized via different models: ‘part of human or animal body’ – ‘human or animal’: Ser. Nepoznato lice je ušlo u prostoriju (‘An unknown face [person] stepped into the room’); ‘part of an object’ – ‘the whole object’: Nemamo drugog krova (‘We have no other roof [house]’); ‘name of a plant or animal’ – ‘species of the plant or animal’: Jela raste najbolje u visokim planinama (‘The fir tree [fir trees] thrive best in high mountains’); ‘singular’ – ‘plural’ (grammatical synecdoche): Združio se Rus sa Crnogorcem (‘The Russian [Russians] is now friends with The Montenegrin [Montenegrins]’).

Some models of the whole → part synecdoche are the following: ‘plant’ – ‘fruit or flower of that plant’: Ser. Jeli su divlje maline (‘They ate wild raspberries [fruits of the raspberry plant]’); ‘animal’ – ‘meat or fur of that animal’: Stavila je lisicu oko vrata (‘She put a fox [the fur of a fox] around her neck’); ‘group of people’ – ‘individual in that group’: Stoj, vojsko! (‘Army [Soldier], halt!’).

Synecdoche may be regular too. For instance, in all Slavic languages nouns belonging to the thematic group ‘type of fruit tree’ can designate the fruit of that tree. Even when the socio-historical circumstances cause the replacement of a designation with a new one, the mechanism of regular polysemy still functions. In many Slavic languages the name for almond nut and almond tree is a Greek loanword (Rus. mindal’, Ukr. migdal’, Cze. & Slk. mandle). On the other hand, some Slavic languages (Ser., Bul., and Mac.) use the Turkish loanword badem instead for both. That implies that the lexeme preserved the formula ‘tree’ – ‘the fruit of that tree’.

24.5.1 Syntagmatic Lexical Relations

Words combine in sentences according to particular grammatical, semantic, stylistic, and other rules. The grammatically correct combination of two or more words is known as a collocation. The semantic relation between two adjacent words can be impossible (outside poetry, e.g. a square circle), possible (but rare), Ser. rezati kosu ‘to shear hair’, and preferable (because of the frequency), Ser. šišati kosu ‘to cut hair’; therefore, collocations can be classified into impossible, possible, and preferable collocations.

The subject of collocation is particularly important for translators and language learners, as collocations often cannot be literally translated. In addition, collocations play a key role in the interpretation of the intended sense of a polysemous lexeme. The collocate češalj ‘comb’ facilitates the comprehension of the metaphor from the Ser. collocation zubi na češlju ‘teeth of a comb’. Owing to it, we understand that teeth do not designate hard white objects inside one’s mouth, but a part of a comb. The Ser. collocation grad spava ‘the city is asleep’ implies that grad stands for the city’s population, not its buildings and streets. Thus, the collocate spava ‘sleeps, is asleep’ enables one to understand the metonymy used in the previous example.

Some words are collocates of a number of words, while others have a more limited range of collocates. There are words that can form a collocation with one word only. For example, the Ser. adjective loš ‘bad’ can be used with an immense number of nouns, forming preferable collocations; on the other hand, the Ser. adjective užegao ‘rancid’ can be used with a few nouns only, for example užegao maslac ‘rancid butter’, užegli orasi ‘rancid walnuts’.

If collocations are constant in composition and meaning, like Rus. domašnjaja rabota ‘homework’, we no longer consider them and call them collocations, but multiword expressions or quasi-idioms. In contrast to true idioms (which are also multiword and of constant composition and meaning), such units of language structure are formed of lexemes used in their basic meaning, are not figurative, and represent a common way of expressing a given concept (Reference MečkovskajaMečkovskaja 2019, 151–152). Multiword expressions show us that the lines of demarcation between lexemes and collocations, and collocations and idioms are not clear-cut, but blurred by at least one, transitional type of language structure unit. Moreover, we can speak of a cline of lexicalization and/or idiomatization, since even among idioms (proper) there are those which are totally idiomatic, because they are characterized by ‘alogism’ (as above Ser. kad na vrbi rodi grožđe ‘when pigs fly, never’, literally ‘when grapes grow on a willow tree’), and those that are partially idiomatic, because they are based on a natural but metaphorical image, like Rus. sobaka na sene ≡ Ser. niti glođe niti drugom daje ‘dog in the manger (said of a person who will not give up something even though it is of no use for him or her)’, literally (Rus.) ‘dog on the hay’, (Ser.) ‘neither it [the dog] gnaws on the bone nor gives it to another’ (Reference MečkovskajaMečkovskaja 2019, 150).

24.5.2 Synonymy

The usual definition of lexical synonymy is the following: the relation between two lexemes of the same meaning formed with different word stems, for example Rus. rodina – otečestvo ‘homeland – fatherland’. However, many authors (such as Reference WierzbickaWierzbicka 1997, 191–195) would say that the members of this very pair differ both in connotation and range of application, and even, at least to some extent, in sense (see Section 24.1), and that they cannot be considered synonymous. And those authors would, strictly speaking, be right. But, in this case those authors who are also numerous, and who claim that there are probably no absolute synonyms would also be right. Therefore, it should be emphasized that the ensuing passages concern only synonyms understood more broadly, that is, those that have in common at least a denotation.

In case of two polysemous words, either some or all of the words’ senses can be synonymous. The former is an example of partial synonymy, while the latter is known as total synonymy. Total synonymy is exceptionally rare, usually possible only between monosemous lexemes, for example Bul. car – imperator ‘emperor’. Partial synonymy covers parts of polysemous networks and is significantly more frequent. An example would be the relation between the Ser. nouns kuća ‘house’ and dom ‘home’. Many, yet not all senses of these two lexemes overlap: kuća can refer to furniture (e.g. Poneo je sa sobom celu kuću ‘He took the whole house with him’), while dom cannot. On the other hand, dom can refer to а body forming the national parliament (e.g. Sednice oba doma su javne ‘The sessions of both houses are public’), and kuća is never used in this sense.

If only certain senses of two lexemes are compared, rather than their entire polysemous networks, synonymous relations can be divided into three types. The first type is the synonymy between the primary senses of these two lexemes, known as typical or true synonymy. The second option is the synonymous relation between the primary sense of one lexeme and a secondary sense of another lexeme. Compare the following Ser. sentences: Svi stanovnici grada spavaju ‘The whole population of the city is asleep’ and Ceo grad spava ‘The whole city is asleep’. An adequate context is necessary for the noun grad to exhibit its synonymous meaning, developed by metonymic transfer. The third option is synonymy established between secondary senses of two lexemes. For instance, a good child can be likened to an angel or gold: Ser. To dete je pravi anđeo ‘That child is a true angel’ or To dete je pravo zlato ‘That child is pure gold’. These two nouns are not synonyms in their primary senses, but when some of their semantic features are highlighted in the process of metaphorical transfer, they become synonyms.

Therefore, the synonymy between the nouns stanovnici and grad or the nouns anđeo and zlato is achievable in a specific context and represents quasi-synonymy or contextual synonymy. Why is it important to distinguish these two types of synonymy and the first one? Because the first one, although typical, is much less frequent than the second and the third type of synonymy. Being far more common, the second and the third type are especially important for translators.

24.5.3 Antonymy

According to the well-known definition, lexical antonyms are words of opposite meanings. The simplest (and usually sufficient) test for determining antonyms is a survey in which native speakers are asked to think of a word which is opposite to the given word. If the answers of all respondents are the same, we can be almost completely certain that a proper antonym has been obtained. If the answers vary considerably, the researcher should conclude that the lexeme probably has no proper antonyms whatsoever. For example, everyone would say that the Ser. adjective plitak ‘shallow’ is the antonym of dubok ‘deep’, but many will have to ponder upon the Ser. noun čovek ‘human being; man’.

Our survey showed that 36 percent of native speakers of Serbian chose the noun životinja ‘animal’ as the antonym of the noun čovek, a total of 32 percent of subjects opted for the nouns žena ‘woman’ or dete ‘child’, 16 percent said nečovek ‘evildoer’ (literally ‘no-man’), 1 percent chose Bog ‘God’, while 4 percent could not provide an answer. As a matter of fact, the last group made the ‘right’ choice, since the noun čovek does not have its proper antonym.

The question is why plitak and dubok are such unambiguous antonyms, while čovek and životinja or Bog are not. In other words, what is the thing that enables these adjectives to mean the opposite regardless of context? The answer lies in the fact that they designate the opposite poles on a property scale, that is, their meanings share all components but the component which establishes opposite relation. The noun čovek, on the other hand, features a lot of meaning components that can establish opposite relations. Depending on which component is focused by the respondents, they will give different answers. With respect to [+ conscious] and/or [+ able to speak], životinja is the antonym; with regard to [+ mortal] and/or [−perfect] – Bog, etc.

Besides this, similar to synonymy, the typical kind of antonymy is a semantic relation of primary senses. Thus, if primary senses of two lexemes are opposite, as in the pair plitak – dubok, they are connected by true antonymy. On the other hand, the noun čovek, really enters the semantic relationship with the nouns žena and dete as their opposite, but not via its primary sense (‘human being’), but its secondary (‘man’). That is why it cannot be claimed that čovek and žena or dete are not antonyms, but their status is certainly not the same as the status of those antonyms whose senses are opposite regardless of context. Consequently, this type of opposition is known as quasi-antonymy or contextual antonymy.

One more option is the opposition of the secondary senses of two lexemes. This is the relation between the Ser. nouns vuk ‘wolf’ and ovca ‘sheep’ when the former designates an experienced and dangerous person, while the latter designates an innocent and harmless one: Janko nije bio vuk, a ni Marko baš nije bio ovca ‘Janko was not a wolf, and Marko couldn’t be called a sheep either’. This kind of antonymy also requires a specific context, enabling the expression of metaphorical senses based on collective experience, so it is another type of quasi-antonymy or contextual antonymy.

In addition to the opposition of primary senses, an important indicator of true antonymy is the semantic correlation. At first glance, the members of the lexical pair man – woman oppose each other in the same way as the members of the lexical pair mother – father. The nouns in both pairs are indeed opposite, but there is no correlation between the nouns in the second pair. In the case of antonym pairs correlation is verified by an attempt to define a lexeme using the negative definition: ‘short is not long’ or ‘short is not tall’, ‘a man is an adult human being who is not a woman’. Hence, the noun man is defined via the noun woman. However, the noun father is not defined via the noun mother (‘the one who is not a mother’), but as ‘a male person who has a child’. Both mother and father are defined via the noun child, not via their correlation. It can be concluded that the nouns mother and father cannot be classified as (true) antonyms. On the other hand, mother and child are not antonyms at all, for they are correlated but are not opposite.

25.3.1 Borrowing in Proto-Slavic

The oldest layer of Proto-Slavic lexis was inherited from the Proto Indo-European language. Lexical borrowing from contact Indo-European languages (Germanic, Iranian, Greek, Latin, and possibly Baltic and Celtic) and those from non-Indo-European families (most notably Turkic) was a mechanism of expanding Proto-Slavic vocabulary along with lexical derivation and composition. Contacts with Germanic peoples have introduced some common words such as PSL *хlěbъ ‘bread’, *mečь ‘sword’, *kotьlъ ‘kettle, cauldron’,Footnote ² and *plugъ ‘plow’. Germanic languages also participated in the chain of borrowings of Latin words such as PSL *kupiti ‘to buy, to purchase’ (< German kaufen ‘to buy, to purchase’ < Latin caupō ‘tradesman’) and possibly Celtic words such as PSL *lěkъ ‘medicine’. Contacts with Iranian languages are responsible for words like PSL *gonja ‘cloak, mantle’ and *raji ‘heaven’. Slavic-Latin contacts have introduced words, such as PSL *kolęda ‘carol’ (< Latin calendae ‘the first day of the month’) while Greek-Slavic contacts have ushered in words like PSL *korabľь ‘ship’ (< Greek karábion ‘boat’). Finally, non-Indo-European influence can be illustrated by the words such as PSL *bisьrъ ‘pearl’ and *tъlmačь ‘interpreter’ that originate from Turkic languages.

25.3.2 Borrowing in Individual Slavic Languages

There are three distinct phases of borrowing in individual Slavic languages: (a) contact and cultural borrowing in the areas of dispersion following the disintegration of the Proto-Slavic community (sixth to seventeenth centuries), (b) the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution-initiated Westernization of the vocabulary (eighteenth to twentieth centuries), and (c) post-industrial processes (twenty-first century). These three phases will be discussed in turn.

Following the disintegration of the Proto-Slavic community, the vocabularies of East Slavic languages (initially as Old East Slavic) were enriched by the borrowings from neighboring languages, most notably Turkic (e.g. žemčug ‘pearl’,Footnote ³ šatjor ‘tent’), Greek (e.g. saxar ‘sugar’, tetrad’ ‘notebook’), North Germanic (e.g. knut ‘whip’, akula ‘shark’), Baltic (e.g. derevnja ‘village’, kuvšin ‘jug, pitcher’), and Finno-Ugric (e.g. sauna ‘sauna’, tundra ‘tundra’). A number of cultural borrowings from Greek (e.g. ikona ‘icon’), usually with CS mediation, and to a smaller degree Latin (e.g. medicina ‘medicine’), and even Arabic (e.g. alkogol’ ‘alcohol’), were another source of vocabulary enrichment in the Slavic East. East Slavic languages were also marked by two waves of South Slavic Influences, the first (ninth to thirteenth centuries) and the second (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries).Footnote ⁴ As a result, some East Slavic roots appear both with East Slavic phonological features, having, as a rule, more concrete meaning (e.g. golova ‘head’, anatomically, with the olo pleophony as an East Slavic feature) and with South Slavic features (e.g. glava ‘head of an organization, chapter of a book, etc.’, with the la metathesis and lengthening as a South Slavic feature). West Slavic languages were shaped in this period by a number of contact and cultural borrowings from Germanic languages (e.g. burmistrz ‘mayor’Footnote ⁵ < Middle High German bur(e.g. g)-mīster ‘mayor’, ratusz ‘city hall’ < Middle High German rathus ‘city hall’), and Italic languages, most notably Latin (e.g. marzec ‘March’ < Latin Mārtius mensis ‘the month of Mars’, data ‘date’). Polish was also marked by borrowings, where Czech and East Slavic languages are either sources or final links in the chain of borrowing, Czech for those ultimately from Greek and Latin (e.g mnich ‘monk’, Greek > Medieval Latin > Old High German > Czech > Polish), East Slavic languages for words ultimately from Turkic languages (e.g. tapczan ‘couch, sofa’, Tatar > Russian > Polish). South Slavic languages, and even their dialects, are highly diversified in terms of their lexical influences in this period. Slovene and the Croatian Kajkavian dialect are primarily defined by Germanic influences (e.g. Sln. ura ‘hour, clock’ < Middle High German ūre, šparati ‘save, economize’ < German sparen ‘save, economize’). To a smaller degree, Slovene was also defined by Italian loanwords (e.g. punca ‘girl’ < pulcella ‘girl’, fant ‘boy’ < Italian fante ‘boy’). Italian influences are central in the Croatian Čakavian dialect (e.g. vapor ‘ship’ < Italian nave a vapore ‘steam ship’, šugaman ‘towel’ < asciugamano ‘towel’), while the Scr. Štokavian dialect, Macedonian and Bulgarian are mostly defined by Near Eastern loanwords (e.g. Mac. šeќer ‘sugar’, Mac. šiše ‘bottle’) and Greek loanwords (e.g. Mac. daskal ’teacher’, Mac. kambanarija ’bell tower’). Near Eastern words came, as a rule, with Turkish mediation, but a large proportion of them are ultimately of Arabic, and a smaller part of Persian descent. Hungarian loanwords (e.g. Scr. ašov ‘shovel’, Scr. lopov ‘thief’) are another important source in West South Slavic languages. Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian were also influenced by Church Slavonic (e.g. Ser. vaskrsenije ‘resurrection’, mošti ‘relic, of a saint’).

While Slavic languages in the sphere of Western Christianity have been importing words from the Greco-Latin stock, often with German mediation, from the earliest times, it is the era of the Enlightenment and industrial revolution, commencing in the eighteenth century, that has significantly increased the influx of these words, primarily in the sphere of various terminologies. Equally importantly, Slavs from the sphere of Eastern Christianity start opening to Western lexical influences following pivotal events in the late seventeenth century. For Eastern Slavs, this was a consequence of the Westernizing reforms of Peter the Great. For Serbs, these influences commence with their seventeenth- to eighteenth-century migrations to Southern Hungary. Various terminologies have started to emerge and words like biologi(j)a/biologie ‘biology’, geografi(j)a/geografie ‘geography’, parlament ‘parliament’, armi(j)a ‘armed forces’, and general ‘general’ started to be used in all Slavic languages. Most of these words come from the Greco-Latin stock, and they were imported into Slavic languages with German and French mediation. In addition to this, various words from German, Italian, French, English, and Dutch entered Slavic languages in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. English becomes a dominant source of borrowing in the twentieth century.

The unfolding post-industrial era is primarily marked by globalization. English, as the lingua franca of this era, is the strongest source of borrowing for Slavic languages. Analyzing recent compounds in Bulgarian and Czech (many of which contained borrowed lexical material or patterns), Reference AvramovaAvramova (2003) identifies the tendency toward internationalization, tendencies to intellectualize and democratize the lexicon, but also some structural features such as increased analyticism in the structures (e.g. Bul. stendbaj kredit ‘standby credit’). These tendencies are largely a result of English lexical influence. Along with words, English affixes actively participate in Slavic lexical derivation and composition. For example, Reference DragićevićDragićević 2018 has analyzed data from the year 2000 and found 70 English loanwords in Serbian with the prefix multi- ‘multi’ (e.g. multikulti ‘multicult’, multimodalan ‘multimodal’). Similarly, studies of Russian (Reference Orexov, Axapkina and RaxilinaOrexov 2014) and Serbian (Reference DragićevićDragićević 2018) derivatives with Western European prefixes super- ‘super-’, video- ‘video-’, avto-/auto- ‘auto’, avia-/avio- ‘air(plane)-, aero-’, media- ‘media-’, nano- ‘nano-’, mega- ‘mega-’, multi- ‘multi-’, audio- ‘audio-’, mini- ‘mini-’ and giper-/hiper- ‘hyper-’ conducted in the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century show that these prefixes are used in a similar way in both languages and that both languages use virtually the same number of words featuring these prefixes. Similar findings have been attested for other Slavic languages (Reference WaszakowaWaszakowa 2005, Reference GeorgievaGeorgieva 2013). As a result of the aforementioned processes in the industrial and post-industrial era, loanwords from Western European languages dwarf all other sources of lexical influence, even in those languages that have had significant exposure to the borrowings from the Near Eastern cultural sphere.

While Slavic languages were mostly recipient languages, some Slavic languages have also been prominent as donor languages. In the times of the Russian Empire (1721–1917) and the Soviet Union (1922–1991), Russian was donor to various indigenous languages of those states and some neighboring languages, such as Mongolian as well as to practically all other Slavic languages. The donor status among Slavic languages is not restricted to Russian. In the field of karst geology, Scr. and Sln. have supplied numerous terms to English and other languages: polje, ponor, doline, uvala, and others. Various Slavic languages have contributed their lexical items to Hungarian, Romanian, and, to a smaller degree, Albanian.

25.4.1 Phonological Adaptation

Phonological adaptation concerns inherent and suprasegmental features alike. The resulting phonological form of the loanword depends on numerous factors. One important factor is whether the loanword was adopted through the written or spoken medium. If a loanword comes from a language with less phonetic spelling, and if the loanword was adopted in written form, it is that form that determines the adaptation. For example, the English word hockey has been adapted in many Slavic languages as hokej based on the written form in English rather than *hoki, which would be consistent with the pronounced form. Similarly, Polish borrows etat ‘job, position’ from the written German form Etat and French état, rather than from the spoken form in these languages, which would have yielded *eta in Polish.

While loanwords are generally mapped onto the nearest correspondents to the donor language sounds in the phonological system of the recipient language, that mapping is far from being straightforward. Habits formed in borrowing (e.g. by using the written form as the basis) may lead to the exclusion of some sounds from mapping. For example, Pol. bulion ‘bouillon, culinary’ comes from French bouillon ‘bouillon’ but the French nasal ɔ̃ is not rendered with the Polish nasal o and it is not spelled as *bulią. Similarly, vocalic r [r̩], which would be a more faithful rendering of the English [ɜr], is excluded from English borrowings into Scr., so call girl is adapted as kolgerla, rather than *kolgrla. Borrowings can also extend the range of phonetic inventory of the recipient language, such as in adding the vocalic l [l̩] to Scr., as in bicikl ‘bicycle’, monokl ‘monocle’.

It is very common in Slavic languages that in their suprasegmental features, loanwords form patterns of their own that deviate from the stress system of the recipient language. For example, while Macedonian has the word stress generally placed on the antepenultimate syllable (the third from the end of the word, or the first syllable if the word only has one or two syllables), numerous Macedonian loanwords have the stress on the other syllables (e.g. klišé ‘cliché’, rather than *klíše, literatúra ‘literature’, rather than *literátura).

25.4.2 Morphosyntactic Adaptation

Morphological adaptation relies on establishing a basic transfer form, which is then included into various inflectional, word-formation, and syntagmatic patterns that may be restricted loanwords or shared with the material of the recipient language. In nominal inflections, a major issue in adaptation is if the loanword remains uninflected or assumes an inflectional pattern in the recipient language. There is a large degree of variation in how Slavic languages adapt loanwords that do not fit the existing stems. For example, Rus. and Ukr. metro ‘subway’ is not inflected at all; Pol., Cze., and Slk. inflection treats the final -o as an ending (N. metro, G. metra); and Sln., Scr., and Mac. treat it as a part of the stem (Scr. N. metro, G. metroa, Sln. N. metro, G. metroja, Mac. Sg. metro, Pl. metroa). Further variation can be seen in how the gender is assigned – while most languages assign the neuter gender to these loanwords, there also are those, like Scr. and Sln., where they are masculine. Issues in morphological adaptation interact with those in phonological, for example Scr. šou ‘show, spectacle’ exhibits variation in its plural form (šoui, šouovi) because of the unusual vocalic segment at the end of the word. Variation across Slavic languages can also be seen in the adaptations in verbal morphology. For example, Polish is more open toward incorporating borrowed verbs into the existing two-aspect system, so English to format (as in a memory unit) is adapted into the imperfective formatować ‘to be formatting’ and perfective sformatować ’to complete formatting’, while Sln. and Scr. formatirati is biaspectual (perfective and imperfective). This particular adaptation of verbs also shows that the manner of adaptation can change over time. For example, along with Scr. dominirati ‘dominate, imperfective and perfective’, izdominirati ‘dominate, perfective’ is also in recent use.

Issues in lexical morphology relate to the possibility and commonness of incorporating loanwords into the existing word-formation patterns of the recipient language. Typically, older borrowings that refer to concepts of general interest and high frequency will feature rich word networks (e.g. cipela ‘shoe’, a Scr. loanword from Hungarian, features 15 derivatives, such as cipelica ‘small shoe’, cipeletina ‘big shoe’, all the way to iscipelariti ‘to kick somebody thoroughly/all over with shoes on’). On the other hand, Slavic languages show considerable variation in how readily they incorporate newer loanwords into the existing word-formation patterns. For example, the English borrowing rock ‘rock music’ in Polish is included into the pattern of deriving adjectives from nouns, so the adjective form is rockowy. This is not the case in Scr., where *ro(c)kovski would be most unusual or impossible. This then has syntactic consequences, where in Polish the derived form conforms to the standard organization of the NP (e.g. muzyk rockowy ‘rock musician’, noun head + declinable adjective as a modifier), while in Scr. it breaks the syntactic pattern as in: ro(c)k muzičar ‘rock musician, indeclinable noun as a modifier + noun head’). Further issues in syntactic adaptation pertain to the cases where government patterns of the donor language interfere with those of the recipient language. For example, to contact (someone) can be rendered in Scr. as kontaktirati koga ‘to contact someone’, following the English government pattern or kontaktirati s kim ‘lit. to contact with someone’, following the pattern of verbs with similar meaning in Scr. In terms of the adaptation of affixes, one should mention that their combination can lead to something that is usually labeled as pseudo loanwords. For example, the combination of the stem gol ‘goal, in sports’ and the affix -man ‘man’ has created Scr. golman ‘goalkeeper’, which looks like an English borrowing but in fact is an indigenous word-formation creation in Scr. Sometimes these indigenous creations may coincide with words in English in their form but not in their meaning, for example Scr. rekorder ‘record holder’ (record ‘record achievement’ + -er ‘-er’), thus creating false cognates (see Chapter 27 in this volume).

25.4.3 Semantic Adaptation

Typically, loanwords which have multiple senses in the donor language enter the recipient languages with a reduced set of senses. For example, gol/gól ‘goal in sports’, found in practically all Slavic languages, is reduced to the meaning in sports, but not in its meaning of ‘aim, desired result’. Semantic adaptation also involves the change of meaning over time (just as happens with any other lexical items). For example, a Turkish loanword in Scr. čaršija, with the initial meaning of ‘commercial part of town (esp. in the Ottoman Turkish period)’, has extended its meaning to ‘city, town’, ‘public opinion’, ‘urban population (viewed negatively)’, etc., where the last example also shows a shift in connotation, from neutral to negative. Other examples of these processes of semantic development of Near Eastern loanwords in Scr. can be found in Reference ŠitoŠito (1988).

25.4.4 Register/Style Adaptation

The change of register/style is the major operation in this type of adaptation. Historically, especially in those Slavic cultures where purist tendencies have been stronger, a typical change in the domain of register/style was the move from neutral to non-standard. For example, Friedhof ‘cemetery’ is neutral in terms of its register in German, but as a loanword in Sln. britof ‘cemetery’ its register is non-standard (so-called lower colloquial) and its neutral synonym is indigenous pokopališče ‘cemetery’. It is also common that a loanword functions only in a limited technical register and also that it becomes dated. Pol. apopleksja ‘stroke, apoplexy’ illustrates both these points. It was used in the technical medical register only, and it is now dated, given that the indigenous wylew ‘stroke, apoplexy’ is now in medical and general use.