Comparative Slavic Studies

Slavic Studies”—the very expression implies their comparative aspect and raises the question: what enables us to refer to Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Lusatian Sorbs, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Russians by the single all-encompassing term, the “Slavic” peoples? What is their common denominator?It is indisputable that the Slavic peoples are to be defined basically as Slavic-speaking peoples. If speech is the point of departure, the problem becomes primarily a linguistic one. Since the pioneering work of the Czech Abbé Dobrovský (1753–1829), comparative linguistics has proved the existence of a common ancestral language for all the living Slavic languages and has largely reconstructed the sound pattern, grammatical framework and lexical stock of this Common (or Primitive) Slavic language. The problem of where and by whom this Common Slavic language was spoken is being gradually solved by persistent efforts to synchronize the findings of comparative linguistics, toponymy, and archeology. The archeologists' data are like a motion picture without its sound track; whereas the linguists have the sound track without the film. Thus, interdepartmental teamwork becomes indispensable

Bulgarian · Czech · Latvian · Linguistics · Metalanguage · Slavic languages · History · Language and Culture · Linguistics and language evolution · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Philosophy

• Roman Jakobson and American Slavic Studies

  Open Access•Henryk Baran•Roczniki Humanistyczne•2021

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• Reading Race in Slavic Studies Scholarship through a Digital Lens

  Open Access•Hilah Kohen, Katherine M H Reischl et al.•Slavic Review•2021

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