Transparency of morphological structures as a feature of language contact among closely related languages: Examples from Bulgarian and Czech contact with Russian
Abstract
The chapter analyses the emergence of two participial forms in Modern Standard Bulgarian and Modern Standard Czech respectively, the Bulgarian present converb in -ki and the Czech active past participle in -(v)ší. Both developed under straight influence of Russian in the first half of the 19th century.
In both cases the transparency of morphological structures due to close genetic relationship of the languages involved played a crucial role: speakers and more so philologically trained partisans of the recodification of both languages were able to recognise the particular morphological elements, which facilitated the integration of the new forms. In addition to this the emergence of new participial forms in modern Slavic standard languages during the 19th century is a typical example of how intentional language contact is able to reverse broadly accepted hierarchies of probability of language transfer: while the transfer of participial forms in spontaneous language contact needs a rather high level of bilingualism, the knowledge of Russian in early 19th century Bulgarian and Czech lands was not very widespread.
Nevertheless the forms emerged as a result of language contact, due to the intentional nature of this contact and also due to the fact that the variety in contact was not a vernacular, but an elaborated variety, the emerging modern standard language.