Pavlov Vend nyelvtan in prekmurščina kot slovanski jezik

Abstract

For some seventy years linguistics has used the tongue-in-cheek definition, attributed to Max Weinreich or Joshua Fishman, that “A language is a dialect with an army and navy” (A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot). In the case of the Prekmurje dialect, which was presented in Pavel’s Vend nyelvtan (ms. c ompleted i n 1942) a s a standard language, there was no army, nor could the raft across the Mura River be counted as a navy. Nevertheless, there are reasons to consider the Prekmurje dialect a language. For example, the systemic language of the translation of the New Testament, as well as the tradition of a generally uniform written and oral standard usage, different from both standard Slovene and from Kajkavian, could be adduced. In the present paper we present some arguments for the emergence of a distinct dialect of Proto-Slavic that underlies the Prekmurje dialect. This dialect was at first part of the group of South Slavic dialects “north of the Sava River” that later became part of the Slovene dialect complex (Carinthian, Pannonian) and were linked also with Kajkavian dialect. These innovations may have been parallel developments, but they have their roots in a distinct starting point. To illustrate, we sketch a dialectal areal for the areas in question that preserved a rounded feature for PSl. *a [ɒ] that in the second half of the first millennium AD formed the back partener to PSl. *ě [æ].