Many philologists say that the history of the modern Russian language should be studied from the beginning of a new era. Then there still did not exist those languages ​​that today belong to one large Slavic group. A huge part of Europe in those days was inhabited by people who spoke Proto-Slavic (or Old Slavic).
The palatalization of consonants in it is one of the processes by which this language gradually acquired features characteristic of modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian and many others. In addition, many scientists say that the languages ​​of the Baltic countries also came from this common ancestor. As a confirmation of their hypothesis, they cite numerous similarities, both in phonetics and in lexical composition.
When did a common ancestor exist?
On this account, various scientists express points of view, sometimes dramatically different from each other. Therefore, the date of the emergence of the Proto-Slavic language varies from the first millennium to the birth of Christ until the beginning of a new era. It began to fall apart into several parts, which were then transformed into modern Slavic languages, around the tenth century. This time coincides with the beginning of the creation of the Russian state and the baptism of our people by Prince Vladimir.
Reconstruction
The ancient ancestor of all Slavic languages did not leave written documents. Therefore, it is not known for certain what he was. However, as a result of the painstaking work of philologists, his writing was able to be recreated. Therefore, at present there is an opportunity to see how the texts might look like. But how certain words sounded, it is not possible to find out. How did scientists reconstruct the ancient language? They came to the aid of knowledge about such processes that took place with him during the long history of his existence.
Working on the reconstruction of ancient words, the researchers relied, among other things, on information about palatalization in the Old Slavonic language.
Definition of the term
Palatalization is the softening of consonants. This term, like many other words from scientific use, came to the Russian language from Latin and means “heaven”. In anatomy, it is customary to call the part of the human oral cavity that separates it from its neighboring nasal cavity.
Remembering the anatomy ...
The sky, in turn, has two parts - hard and soft.
The first one is located directly above the tongue and is a dome formed by the skull bone. The soft palate is located closer to the throat. This is a fold of nerve endings, muscles and skin tissue.
What is heaven for?
It performs several important functions in human life.
Firstly, the sky, as already mentioned, serves as a wall between the cavities, the nasal and the oral. This is necessary, inter alia, for the implementation of such a process as feeding a baby with breast milk. It is known that some mammals are born without such a partition. This is considered a serious defect that could lead to the death of the baby. In addition to this physiological function, the sky is also involved in speech processes. Phonetics, the science of the sound features of a language, names the sky among the main body parts involved in articulation. Besides him, lips, teeth, tongue and other organs are also important.
Hard and soft consonants
The palatalization of consonants in the Old Slavic language, as well as in others, is impossible without the participation of this organ important for phonetics.
To soften consonant sounds, the back of the tongue bends in the middle and touches the hard palate, and to get the opposite effect, when the sound becomes harder, the tongue also bends, but in this case it touches the soft part of the organ.
Speaking of palatization in the Old Slavonic language, it is worth clarifying that this term has two meanings.
Values
First, palatization is a softening of sounds. Linguists distinguish consonant palatal, that is, those in whose education the main role is played by the sky, and palatalized. When pronouncing the latter, lips, tongue and so on are of the greatest importance. The sky is activated when it is necessary to soften these consonants.
As an example, such pairs as “c” are hard and soft, “n” with the same qualities and others. In the word “dream”, the first consonant is solid, and in the name of the precious metal “silver” it appears in a softened form. By the way, in modern Russian language, not only consonants facing front vowels (and, e) and those that are used with a soft sign in a letter can be palatalized. For example, according to existing rules, the word “snow” should be pronounced with a palatalized “c”.
Palatalization in the Old Slavonic language is not the only such phenomenon in world history.
English
It is known that the main state language of Great Britain was formed at about the same time as Russian (9-11th century AD). It turned out as a result of the gradual transformation of German, with the addition of part of the lexical stock from French.
Remaining unchanged in spelling, the Germanic roots of the words acquired a different phonetic sound under the influence of new pronunciation rules. So, consonants, similar to the Russian “k” and “g,” went into “h” and “sh.” For example, the word fisc (“fisk” - fish) was converted to fish (“fish”).
The solid consonant at the end of the word was gradually superseded by the soft version. The same thing happened with the word used to denote a child.
Child ("child") was originally written as cild and read as follows: "kild."
Reasons for palatalization
Philologists usually single out two reasons for replacing hard consonants with soft ones. Firstly, the phonetics of another language introduced by immigrants as a result of the conquest of a country or some other event can affect the sound of words.
Secondly, such a transformation often comes into the literary language from local dialects and dialects. For the spoken version of many languages, changing consonants is common. For example, in several European regions of Russia the word "bakery" is usually pronounced as "bakery". This option was even recognized as the norm and for some time was used everywhere.
Most likely, both of the above circumstances could act on the Old Slavic language. It is known that the ancestors of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and their kindred peoples were periodically attacked by other tribes, as a result of which foreign speech influenced their language.
In addition, the Slavs for a long time did not have a written language and were settled on a vast territory. As a result, there were many pronunciations of the same words. Subsequently, when forming the literary version of the language, the softest version of sound was chosen.
First wave
Scientists say that palatalization in the Old Slavonic language took place in three stages. This chapter will focus on the first period.
The first palatalization in the Old Slavonic language affected the solid consonants z, k and x, which were in front of the vowels of the so-called front row, that is, those in the composition of which there are no noises. Also, when they are pronounced, the tongue stretches as far forward as possible, towards the teeth. There are two sounds (e, and) in the Old Slavonic language. The first palatalization transformed r, k, x, facing them, in w, c and w, respectively.
The compilers of the Slavic alphabet, the monks Cyril and Methodius, took the Greek letters as the basis of the new alphabet.
However, among them there were no signs to indicate sounds that appeared as a result of palatalization. Therefore, they had to invent these symbols themselves. Thus, the Slavic language was enriched at that time not only with new sounds, but also with letters that were not previously used. Many words changed their sound and spelling as a result of the first palatalization in the Old Slavonic language. Examples of them are presented below.
The root “quetvores”, which came from the parent language, changed as a result and began to sound like “four”. There are no written documents confirming the existence of just such an Indo-European form. However, in Lithuanian this word today sounds like "Keturi." Other Baltic and Slavic peoples have similar roots. So, we can make an assumption that their first sound has remained unchanged since the time of the common ancient language.
The consequences of this process of changing phonetics have survived to the present day.
Palatalization in the Russian language today is represented as an alternation of consonants in some roots. Here are examples of such words:
Hand-pen, foot-leg, bake-bake and so on.
In some cases, the new sound did not take root, and some time after palatalization the reverse process took place. In some dialects, there are words such as shear and bake. There are similar examples in the dictionary of the modern Russian language (“weaves” instead of “weaves”).
Second phase
After the first palatalization, all the sounds of r, k and x changed their sound before e, and. And accordingly, there was no more material for mitigation. But by that time, another process had taken place in Old Slavonic — the simplification of the diphthongs of ay and ay in and, that is, two fused sounds now turned into one.
Therefore, new words appeared with the letters r, k and x in front of the vowels of the front row. Now the named sounds began to be transformed into c, s and c, respectively.
Here is an example of the transformation of a word as a result of a second palatalization in the Old Slavonic language.
The ancient word “koyna” first turned, as a result of simplification of the diphthong, into “ken”, and then, after palatalization, it began to sound like “price”.
Below is another chain of such changes:
Guoyda - star - star.
Third palatalization in the Old Slavonic language
This process did not occur in all territories where Slavic tribes were settled. Therefore, its consequences can not be observed in all languages ​​of this group.
The changes took place according to the same scheme as in the second stage of softening of consonants (gs, k-c, xc). But now sounds are transformed, not facing, but after the vowels of the front row.
Examples:
Ovika is a sheep, face is a face.
Scientists also separately distinguish iota palatalization in the Old Slavonic language. Its essence lies in the fact that in many ancient words the consonants preceding the sound [s] were softened, and then other sounds could arise next to them. For example: "zemya" was changed to "earth."
Conclusion
The article dealt with palatalization in the Old Slavonic language. With knowledge of this process, high school students more easily learn the subject of “alternating consonants.” Also, this information may be useful to students of philological faculties.