Slavic Liquid Metathesis and Pleophony - Historical Evidence

Historical Evidence

There are glosses of Slavic words that show no effect of liquid metathesis in foreign-language sources, such as when the late 8th century Greek chronicler Theophanes writes Slavic names as Άρδάγαστος and Δαργαμηρός (OCS versions of these names would be Radogostъ and Dragoměrъ). Liquid metathesis can be seen in various borrowings preserved in toponymics; Latin Arba > Serbo-Croatian Rȃb, Latin Albōna > Serbo-Croatian Làbīn, Latin Scardōna > Serbo-Croatian Skràdīn etc. Very illustrative of the process is the name of the King of the Franks Carolus Magnus, died 814, which was borrowed initially as *karlju to become the proper word for king in all Slavic languages (Bulgarian and Macedonian крал, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian kralj, Polish król, Czech král and Russian король).

Read more about this topic:  Slavic Liquid Metathesis And Pleophony

Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or evidence:

    “The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.”
    —Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)

    “Analysis is more likely to adjust evidence than to adjust itself.”
    —Mason Cooley (b. 1927)