Vocabulary of Civilization in Bulgaria: Rule and State

In the development of standard languages vocabulary undergoes, as a rule, immense changes. One of the remarkable phenomena in this regard is the way the range of vocabulary is extended resp. cultivated when an individual language community is integrated into a supra-regional sphere of civilization. The form and extent of this expansion is determined by a multiciply of external and internal factors and varies from language to language. Still, more or less typical patterns and mechanisms can be established, despite the variety of languages and the differences of historical conditions. This project is an independent part of a wider joint project whose goal is a first comprehensive, comparative recording and interpretation of the vocabulary of civilization and the processes of its development as represented in the South Eastern European standard languages Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Greek and Osmanic-Turkish. During a three-year pilot phase, the development of those parts of the total vocabulary of civilization that deal with the central themes of state and ruling power between 1840 and 1870 shall be examined. Corpora of examination will be periodicals (in the case of Bulgarian: Carigradski vestnik, Constantinople 1848-62), supplemented by selected individual texts (e.g. edicts and statutes). The comparative analysis hopes to provide general as well as area-specific information about the internal and external history of the genesis and further development of standard languages. In addition, insights into the cultural history of language politics and the cultivation of languages as such may be expected. The period of language-development in Bulgaria that forms the object of this research stretches from the phase of modernization called Tanzimat to the partial liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman hegemony in 1878. As evidence so far has shown, this period was characterised by a highly dynamic and complex process of vocabulary development.

Based on an examination of the South-East European standard languages of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Greek and Ottoman-Turkish, this research work forms an independent part of a wider project which, for the first time, engages in a large-scale recording, comparison and interpretation of civilizational vocabulary and of the processes accompanying its development. Because of their diversity, and the fact that the people who speak them belong to a variety of political and religious communities, these languages provide an ideal basis for such research. The political changes that have come about since 1989 afford them particular relevance with regard to the politics and preservation of language as practised in these areas. In the course of a three-year pilot phase, the development of state and governance were singled out from the totality of civilizational vocabulary as central themes for examination. The first body of material examined in connection with Bulgarian consisted of a selection of newspaper articles. From the number of periodicals which appeared during the relevant period, 1848-70, we chose the outstanding Constantinople Courier (Carigradski vestnik) because of its importance and variety. It appeared weekly in the years 1848-62 and constituted the first official organ fostering and promoting the Bulgarian language. Supplementary to these texts we used translations, dealing with the same theme, of directives and regulations issued by the Ottoman government, original Bulgarian documents (statutes of associations and other institutions), and the first Constitution text (Tarnovo 1879), which also served as the basis for the establishment of a comparative lexicon of generic terms. The once powerful Bulgaria ceased to exist when conquered by the Ottomans in 1393-96. Although the first formation of the standard language of new Bulgarian was not concluded until ecclesiastical independence (1870/72) and political independence (1878-1908) were achieved, the foundations for it were laid at the time when Bulgaria formed part the Ottoman Empire and the Church was subject to the Greek Orthodox patriarchate of Constantinople. The process had its roots in the awareness of identity through national language as found in the early stages of the epoch of so-called Re-birth initiated by the Enlightenment in Europe; took concrete shape in the realization of the necessity to expand and unify its own linguistic resources; and culminated in the freedom to develop systematically which it enjoyed during the Ottoman reform period dating from 1839. Because of its wide range of single and multiple usages and rival form variants, which were gradually reduced and standardized on the basis of East Bulgarian dialect, its dynamism and complexity found clearer expression in civilizational vocabulary than in other areas. In this process the elimination of Turkish words (often used initially simply to clarify) went hand in hand with the adoption of Russian, Russian-Church Slavonic, and western European borrowings (imported largely via Russian). This reflected a turning away from the long predominant orientation towards Greek culture in favour of openness towards Russian models.