Slavic 760

Instructor: Charles Gribble, Dept. of Slavic & EE L&L

Meets MW 12:30-2:18; first class will be in CC 206; thereafter the class will meet in Cunz 445

Slavic 760 will survey the Slavic languages and their writing, sound, and grammar systems. There will be discussion of the development of the literary languages on the background of general political, cultural, and historical events and movements. We will see how the Slavic languages are related to the other Indo-European languages, and to English in particular, with etymological exercises providing illustrations. At the end of the course you will use your newly-acquired knowledge to practice reading bibliographical materials and possibly other short texts in various Slavic languages.

Prerequisite: at least one year of Russian or permission of the instructor. No knowledge of any languages other than English and Russian is assumed. No linguistics background is assumed. The course will introduce such concepts as phoneme, allophone, morpheme, articulation points for consonants and vowels, markedness, etc. The course is designed for linguistics, literature, and area studies students, although not all parts will be of equal interest or use to all three groups.

Office hours: MW 10:30-12:00, Tu 9:30-11:00 & by appt., 339 Cunz Hall. Please feel free to call me at home if you have urgent questions any day of the week (including weekends), 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. If my office hours are not convenient, I will be happy to meet you any day at any mutually convenient time. During the time before exams, feel free to call me with any questions. If you have requests or suggestions about the course (material to be covered, etc.), please let me know. I will be glad to give careful consideration to them.

The course will have a mid-term exam and a final exam. If the class votes for a second hour exam after the results of the first are known, there will be a second. There will be some exercises to prepare for class, but no term paper. In classes this small and select grading on a curve is not valid, so there will be no curve - your grade will depend upon your own individual accomplishments in the course. You can all get A or E or any anything between those extremes, based on your own work and knowledge at the end of the course.

Approximate division of classes (total of 19 meetings):

1. Introduction: The Slavic Languages: enumeration, location, general considerations, historical setting, question of what constitutes a single language or two different languages, grouping of the Slavic languages, Old Church Slavonic as an "elder sister" to the modern languages, Church Slavonic (2 meetings).

2. Sound and writing systems with attention to principles of describing sound systems (2 meetings)

3. The breakup of Common Slavic and phonological changes from Common Slavic to the modern languages (2 meetings)

4. Morphological systems of Common Slavic and the modern languages (3 meetings)

5. Indo-European to Common Slavic, with some attention to Germanic, Greek, and Latin (2 m.)

6. Practice in etymology (2 meetings).

7. The dialects of Common Slavic and of the modern languages (1 meeting).

8. How to decipher a text in a Slavic language on the basis of what you know from this course and Russian (or another Slavic language) and practice doing it (this is similar to what you would do if putting together a bibliography for an article or book, when you have to decide if a title is relevant and worth pursuing) (2 meetings).

9. The development of the modern Slavic literary languages (1 meeting)

10. Mid-term exam (1 meeting)

11. To be determined (1 meeting)

Texts : Unfortunately, no suitable textbook for this course exists, although there are some things that may be of help as optional readings (see below). Copies of them will be placed on reserve. An extensive set of handouts, including copies of examinations from previous years, will be provided.

Books in EES or on reserve or to be on reserve as soon as possible:

Bernard Comrie and Greville G. Corbett, eds. The Slavonic Languages. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.

Karel Horalek. An Introduction to the Study of the Slavonic Languages. Nottingham: Astra Press, 1992. 2 volumes. Translated from Czech by Peter Herrity.

Terence R. Carlton. Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1991.

Alexander M. Schenker and Edward Stankiewicz. The Slavic Literary Languages: Formation and Development. New Haven: Yale Concilium on International and Area Studies, 1980. (One copy is on reserve; another in the Slavic Reading Room, 3rd floor).

Alexander M. Schenker. The Dawn of Slavic: An Introduction to Slavic Philology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Charles E. Townsend and Laura A. Janda: Common and Comparative Slavic: Phonology and Inflection with special attention to Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1996.

While all of the above books are valuable, they will not be equally comprehensible. The Slavic Literary Languages is fairly easy but only covers one part of the course. Townsend and Janda will probably be most helpful, although the emphasis is on Common Slavic, while this course emphasizes the modern languages. Your notes, the handouts, and the exercises will be your primary sources of information.