Reviews for A historical phonology of the Macedonian language (Historical phonology of the Slavic langua...

The average rating for A historical phonology of the Macedonian language (Historical phonology of the Slavic langua... based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-02-08 00:00:00 Raymond Goldstein The linguist Blaže Konevski wrote extensively on the history and modern dialectology of Macedonian starting from 1945 when it gained recognition as a language in its own right. This work, which explores Macedonian historical phonology from the breakup of Common Slavonic to the 20th century, appeared in 1983 when Viktor Friedman translated it into English and was published in Mouton de Gruyter’s “Historical Phonology of the Slavic Languages” series that offers many pleasures besides this volume. Konevski’s presentation is divided into two main parts chronologically. In the first part, he sets out the sound changes from Common Slavonic into the Macedonian dialects from the 7th-8th century to the 13th–15th. The phenomenon described here will be roughly familiar to anyone who has studied Slavonic comparative linguistics in general: the fall or strengthening of the yers, reflexes of the nasal vowels, etc. The second part of the book describes further changes from the 13th–15th centuries until approximately the mid 1900s, which include shifts affecting Turkish loans, as well as convergences and divergences among Macedonian dialects. In his survey, Konevski describes the whole range of dialects that can be called Macedonian, i.e. not only those of the Republic of Macedonia proper but also across the border in southeastern Albania and northern Greece. Comparison is also sometimes made to the dialects of western Bulgaria. A strong point of this book is taking Albanian-Macedonian and Aromanian-Macedonian interaction into account when tracing sound changes; I wouldn’t have expected a book of this generation to be so strong on contact linguistics. The presentation could have been a bit tighter – sometimes the text becomes fragmented, the author only throws out whatever facts he has at hand. And certainly in the decades since Konevski wrote this work, further insights have come to light. Nonetheless, this remains an informative and useful book for the comparative linguist.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-04-14 00:00:00 Sarah Charlton A variety of research tossed together. Sort of like listening to some eccentric college professor that is just over excited about stuff he read or found out about...and wants to go back to double check some things.. but regardless...it is just so cool to them. Yeap... that is what I think. Of course, with all thing one reads...if it is claimed as fact... verify as possible.