On the Survival of Slovene o-Grade Deverbal Thematics in Resian.

In an article dedicated to Rado Lencek' I studied the survival of Indo-European [IE] 0grade deverbal masculine thematics in Slovene. From a reading of Pletersnik I found about 87 such nouns. Based on that list I then studied the survival of such nouns in the speech of one cultured nuclear family of Serbian speakers, i.e., the survival of fOIInal Serbo-Croatian cognates of Slovene nouns. That study produced about 68 surviving equivalents. Of course, a full and independently based study of the survival of this class in each language would be desirable. For further details of these studies, see the articles referred to. For the present, at least, they give us some idea of one parameter of comparability of two South Slavic languages. I also studied the survival of such IE formations in nouns and adjectives of Dutch, as a means of contemplating the Germanic record through one sample. 3 There I found 50 current words, of which about 33 have a reasonable chance of reflecting an IE patrimony (i.e., show probable related IE forms, though not all of the formation in question). Of these, some 17 show a matching formation elsewhere in IE, but only 6 find such an equivalent in Slavic; it must be remembered too that in Dutch we have a wider field to choose equivalents from, since the formation originally selected includes adjectives. The ratio here is thus, very crudely, Slovene-Serbian 68: Dutch-Slavic 6 (or 5, if the adjective 'red' is excluded). I now present the portion of the Slovene list for which I have succeeded in eliciting the Resian cognates. I am confident of these forms, for I have known and worked with the speaker for 12 years, and my analysis of the dialect is based on her speech. The forms are highly trustworthy, since the speaker has a remarkably clear pronunciation, an amazingly high sense of precision and accuracy, a strong critical sense and insistence, great patience, and alert discriminating observation; I know no native speaker I would rate higher. She has a very large and discerning vocabulary, a tasteful sense of style, an articulate mastery of propriety; she is a born scholar, an ornament of her language. We have here, therefore, an excellent specimen of a very "small" language (+ 1500 resident speakers) in a rich, sophisticated version. If we lack forms here it is not because we can call this language or idiolect impoverished. The fOIIus are all given in their OseaccolOsojane shape. I describe the phonology elsewhere, where I also introduce some corrections to Baudouin de Courtenay. I use here a relatively broad, largely IPA-based phonetic transcription, different from what I favor in other circumstances, in the interests of giving a linguistic and Slovene public an immediate impression of the sound qualities of this much misunderstood variety of language. For each noun I give a selection of declensional forms to show the alternations that establish its underlying phonology. I present the Resian forms below in the order in which their cognate forms appear in the Slovene list mentioned above; here, cognates are italicized. Entries in parentheses are indirect survivals, in that they are extant only in other derivations.