The present paper should be considered a modest attempt at viewing some external factors (historical and social) that may shed light on the process of development that Old, Middle, and early Modern Bulgarian have undergone in terms of some structural features. The paper includes the following parts:

Historical Background

The question about the genesis of the Old Bulgarian language has not been thoroughly investigated and is likely to become a point of controversy among researchers in the field with the latest findings in this area. Until recently it was believed that Old Bulgarian became the language of the first Bulgarian state, founded in the year 681 A.D., when a nomadic tribe of Proto-Bulgarians, originally living in Turkic and Mongolian steppes crossed the river Danube in Southern Europe, and mixed with the Slavic people who lived in those lands. Little or almost no significance has been given to the part that the language of those Proto-Bulgarian has had in the formation of Old Bulgarian. Thus, research literature on the genesis of the Old Bulgarian language describes it as a Slavic language which originated on the basis of Proto-Slavic with only an insignificant number of Proto-Bulgarian lexical items preserved in its lexicon (Gulabov, 1980, pp.12-16).

Proto-Slavic disintegrated into three groups, which went into further disintegration and thus gave origin to the contemporary grouping of the Slavic languages into: South Slavic -- Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatin, and Slovenian; East Slavic -- Russian, Ukranian and Belorussian; West Slavic -- Slovak, Czech, Polish, and some other extinct languages. (p.12) [my translation of Bulgarian original]

However, Dobrev, P. in his book The World of the Proto-Bulgarians: Realities and Misunderstandings (1994), presents the role that Proto-Bulgarians might have had in the shaping of the Bulgarian language and culture from a new perspective, based on his investigation of many "newly discovered and previously unknown historical sources", and especially of some Indian, Armenian, Arab and Caucasian chronicles. According to his findings the native land of the Proto-Bulgarians was not, as generally accepted, in Turkic or Mongolian steppes, but much more westward, in what used to be called the Imaus mountains (nowadays Pamir). Thus, the Proto-Bulgarian language came much closer to some Pamirian and Caucasian languages (a separate language group) rather than to the Turkic (Altaic family) ones. Also, Dobrev makes reference to the fact that the Proto-Bulgarians had an ancient cultural tradition that could not have been so easily lost when they came in contact with the Slavs. All these facts suggest that further investigations in this direction are quite likely to reveal that the Proto-Bulgarian linguistic and cultural heritage into the Bulgarian language is significantly bigger than described. Besides, the union between Slavs and Proto-Bulgarians in the foundation of the First Bulgarian State presents a classical situation of language contact which might have resulted into a type of pidgin, or a degree of bilingualism, depending on the social status of the two languages and the eventual influence they might have had on each other. This respectively should have brought to some contact-induced language changes on the higher variety, in this particular case the Slavic language.

On the other hand, contemporary linguistic research has revealed evidence of Uralic substratum interference in Slavic languages (Thomason, S. and Kaufman, T. 1988, pp 238-256). This fact suggests that if both Proto-Bulgarian and Slavic had some nonIndo-European interference (Caucasian in Proto-Bulgarian and Uralic in Slavic), then Old Bulgarian must have inherited some of those features too. The question remains which of those features can be traced from ancient times to nowadays. One phonological example of possible Uralic influence found in Bulgarian, Russian, Belorussian and Slovenian is the "akan'je" innovation (The geographic variation of the replacement of the nasalized o by a or ú. [That is, the word man which in Old Bulgarian had a nazalized o, underwent the following changes according to the geographic area: ìîíæ - ìàæ (South-Western regions, Petrich), and ìîíæ - ìúæ (North-Eastern Regions, Pleven, Varna, Plovdiv)] which changed o to a or ú in unstressed syllables, (Thomason and Kaufman, p. 244).

During the time of the first Bulgarian state, Old Bulgarian experienced its first bloom, both politically and culturally. It became the first Slavic literary language, which was used as an official church and state language until Bulgaria eventually had to surrender to Byzantium in 1018. The Byzantine domination lasted for nearly two centuries. During that period Old Bulgarian was in close contact with Greek, the language spoken by the Byzantines. As Greek was considered a highly prestigious language by the Bulgarians, it had a significant influence over the Bulgarian language, in lexical, phonological, morphological, and syntactical aspect. Though, research literature gives account of some of the contact-induced language changes, it still seems to be vague or incomplete in many respects. For example, the influence of Greek over the word order of the Bulgarian language is described by Gulabov (1980) as follows:

What exactly were those similarities and what was the process of implementing them into the Bulgarian language? It is hard to know, as the evidence provided by linguistic research is very little or insufficient. On the morphological level, a great number of compound Bulgarian words were formed under the influence of Greek examples like "bogoljubets" = "godlover".

Despite some of the limitations of the linguistic sources on the influence of the highly prestigious Greek language over Old Bulgarian, a point of mutual agreement among researchers is that it was an important factor in the shaping of the literary Bulgarian language. Greek influence was also observed in the literary translations from that time. Gyllin (1991) gives the following summary of the Greek interference with Bulgarian translations:

Greek language and culture enjoyed an increasing popularity among the Bulgarian people, a fact that started to worry some of their most progressively-minded representatives. The fear of Greek literal and cultural assimilation was best depicted in the first secular literary work Istorjia Slavenobolgarskaja, written by the Athon monk Paisij Chilendarski in the year 1762. Gyllin(1991) writes:

During the second Bulgarian state (1187-1393) the Bulgarian literary language experienced a new period of flourishing, until the Turkish conquest of Bulgaria in 1393 which abruptly stopped any further cultural development. The reflection that the Turkish domination had on the development of the Bulgarian language is best summarized by Gyllin:

Despite the fact that Bulgaria was under the Turkish power for the long period of five centuries, the influence of Turkish over Bulgarian was very limited. Differently from Greek, Turkish was considered a language of low-prestige by the Bulgarians, an attitude that has remained alive until the present day. This was mainly due to the fact that the Turks were not representatives of an ancient and highly sophisticated culture as were the Greek. During those years, though, bilingualism in Bulgarian and Turkish became a widespread phenomenon. As a result of the close contact of the two languages, the semantics of the perfect tense in Turkish developed in Bulgarian into a whole modal category, that is the narrative mood. This category which was completely absent in Old Bulgarian, developed through the transitional Middle Bulgarian into the New Bulgarian, where its main function is retelling events that the speaker has not witnessed himself (Andrejichin, 1944; Popov, 1962; and Stojanov, 1964). This contact-induced grammatical innovation, and the number of lexical borrowings from Turkish almost complete the picture, described in research literature, of the influence of the Turkish language over the Bulgarian language. Further research on the degree of bilingualism that existed at that time may reveal unknown details about the interference of Turkish with Bulgarian.

As a whole, linguistic research lacks a lot in this direction. For example, nothing has been written about the fact that Bulgaria presents a situation of a not so clear-cut distinction between bilingualism and diglossia. For more than two hundred years (17th - 19th century) Church Slavic and New Bulgarian were used alongside each other for the translating and copying of religious texts, and New Greek (dimoki), Turkish, and New Bulgarian all were used for oral communication alongside each other, certainly with some social and geographic but nonetheless not very definite differences.

For the reasons mentioned above it is hard to provide a straight line of natural development from the Old Bulgarian to the modern Bulgarian literary language. In addition, from the 17th century on there appeared works which were to complicate the language situation still more. They were printed books on religious themes originating from Russia and written in Church Slavic. As time went by, they became more widespread than the native Old Bulgarian manuscripts. Gyllin (1991, pp. 12 -13) observes:

Differences between Old Bulgarian and Modern Bulgarian

Again in Gyllin (pp. 37 - 38) we find a complete summary of the most considerable differences in grammatical structure between Old Bulgarian/Church Slavonic, on the one hand, and New Bulgarian, on the other. The following features constitute the differences:

• Presence of a (full) six-case nominal system in Old Bulgarian/Church Slavonic, absence of such a system in New Bulgarian.
• Absence of the definite article in Old Bulgarian/Church Slavonic, presence of such an article in New Bulgarian. Thus, Modern Bulgarian is the only Slavonic literary language that possesses this grammatical feature.
• Synthetical ways of forming the comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives in Old Bulgarian/Church Slavonic versus analytical constructions in Modern Bulgarian.
• Presence of the infinitive in Old Bulgarian/Church Slavonic, absence of this feature in New Bulgarian.
• Presence of a synthetical expression of the future tense in Old Bulgarian/Church Slavonic, absence of this feature in Modern Bulgarian.
• Absence in Old Bulgarian/Church Slavonic of the narrative mood, presence of this feature in New Bulgarian.

The structural differences between Old Bulgarian/Church Slavic and Modern Bulgarian have become the basis for determining the following periods in the history of the Bulgarian language (Mirchev, 1958, pp. 49-58):

Contact Induced or Normal Language Changes

The changes that the Old Bulgarian language has undergone in terms of the number of features, described above, seem to be in the direction of simplification. Of the six features, only two have been traced and described in research literature as contact-induced language changes: (a) the presence of a fully developed case system in Old Bulgarian and its complete loss in Modern Bulgarian, and (b) the absence of the narrative mood in Old Bulgarian and its development into the Modern Bulgarian language.

With regard the loss of the case system in the Bulgarian language, Stoyanov (1964) makes the following observation:

Unfortunately, though, Stoyanov does not provide a more detailed description of the political, and economic relationships between the Bulgarians and the above mentioned neighboring countries which may have further clarified the issue under discussion.

An opposing view about the gradual loss of the complex inflectional system in the Bulgarian language is expressed by Pashov (1990, p. 70). According to him this change can be viewed as a result of the normal historical development of the language. Further evidence in support of Pashov's position can be found in Gyllin (1991) and his detailed analysis of the damascenes.

Further, he makes an extremely valuable conclusion that the fundamental grammatical differences in structure between Old Bulgarian/Church Slavic, on the one hand, and New Bulgarian, on the other, are fully reflected in the damascenes, written in the New Bulgarian language. Old Bulgarian and Bulgarian vernaculars existed alongside each other in an almost diglossic situation; Old Bulgarian being the literary variety which was only used in Church. As it remained quite archaic in form during the political conquests of Bulgaria by the Byzantines and the Turkish, while the spoken dialects continued to live their own natural lives, there came a time when it was hard for the illiterate Bulgarian people to understand their priests in Church. This gives us reason to hypothesize that the simplification of the Old Bulgarian language in the loss of its synthetical forms, can be considered an example of a change of the literary language under the influence of the spoken varieties.

The second feature, that is, the presence of the narrative mood in Modern Bulgarian (discussed earlier in this paper) has been described in research literature as a result of the direct influence of the Turkish language over Bulgarian during the Turkish conquest of the second Bulgarian State in the year 1393 A.D.

In sum, due to the limitations of the available research literature on the process of simplification that the Bulgarian language has undergone, it will be wrong to make any important generalizations. However, it seems quite likely that, Bulgarian like most of the languages of the world has followed a well-familiar path of development, which means that some of the changes it has undergone can be classified as normal historical development of the language (Thomason and Kaufman, 1988, p. 10), whereas others represent classical examples of contact-induced language changes.

In the second part of this paper, I have tried to present the results from the application of a checklist for determining the degree of creoleness of a language to the Bulgarian language.(The idea was suggested to me by the editor of the JPCL, Dr. Glenn Gilbert when, during a discussion of the feature of multiple negation as typical of creole languages, I remarked that multiple negation is widely found in Bulgarian too.)

My initial idea was to use Markey's checklist (1982, p. 201), [as cited in Gilbert, (1993)], but I was to change my mind soon as I found his formulation of the target features rather vague. Instead, I have used a checklist from a draft copy of Gilbert's paper for the Society of Pidgin and Creole Languages (1993). As stated in the manuscript, the first three features on the checklist come from Bickerton (1981), [as cited in Gilbert, (1993)], while the remainder of nine features have been added by Gilbert and Makhudu (1987) [as cited in Gilbert, 1993] in their work on the Atlantic Creoles.

Thus, the checklist includes a total of 12 features. A plus (+) and a minus (-) have been used to mark the presence or absence of a feature, respectively. The symbol  has been used to stand for what Markey (1982, p.201), defines as "more or less". The numeric value of the symbols is as follows: + = 1; - = 0;  = .5. The assignments for Bulgarian are given in parenthesis for each feature.

Total Creole-Positive Features: Number = 5.0

Percentage = 37%

Feature 1. Bulgarian can be called a "free wordorder language", though to a lesser extent than Serbo-Croation (Moneva-Dolapchieva, 1976, p.13). Both SVO and VSO wordorders are possible in Bulgarian. For example,

However, the SVO word order seems to be the most preferred one. This is what Pashov (1989) observes about the word order in Bulgarian:

From another one of his observations, it also becomes clear:

Based on these observations, and the fact that in Russian which seems to be the closest to Bulgarian Slavic language, there is also a preference for the SVO word order, I have assigned a plus to this feature.

Feature 2. The definite article was completely absent in Old Bulgarian. It started to appear in Middle Bulgarian, and is completely present in Modern Bulgarian. Differently from English the definite article in Bulgarian is a bound morpheme, that is, a part of the word and not a separate word. However, it is neither a suffix nor an inflection, as it does not form a new word but only changes its form and grammatical meaning. It always follows the word that it defines. (Stoyanov,1964, p.115). It has different forms for masculine, feminine and neuter.

To this feature I have assigned the  symbol, for though present in the Bulgarian language, it is expressed in an unusual way as described above.

Feature 3. I have assigned a minus (-) to Bulgarian for this feature as it has a fully developed complex verb system, marked for tense-aspect-mood: nine verb tenses, formed through inflectional suffixes; the opposition of completed versus continued, and perfective versus imperfective for aspect; and the conditional, the imperative and the narrative mood

Feature 4. A minus (-) has been assigned for this feature. As a whole, the noun in Bulgarian has the grammatical category of gender. For example, nouns ending in a consonant are masculine for any type of noun marked: [+human], [+animal], [+plant], [+inanimate] or [+abstract]. Nouns, ending in a or ja are feminine, while nouns ending in o or e are neuter, in any one of the above listed conditions. There are a few exceptions to the rule, as for example, when there is a disagreement between the grammatical gender and the extralinguistic category of sex, inherent in the meaning of a noun (only possible with nouns of the type [+human], then preference is given to the natural extralinguistic category that this noun belongs to as: basht(a) [masculine] -- father] (see Pashov, 1989, pp. 55 - 56)

Feature 5. According to this criterion, Bulgarian should definitely be assigned a minus (-), as it has a fully developed, grammatical category of number. The plural is formed through adding an inflectional suffix to the singular form of the word. There are several plural inflections in Bulgarian: ove, i, e, a, ishta, eta, ena, esa, and a few others, whose occurrence is governed by grammatical rules. For example, the ending ove is used to form the plural of monosyllabic words.

Feature 6. I have assigned Bulgarian a minus (-) for this feature, as the personal pronouns in Bulgarian distinguish between the grammatical categories of number, person, case and gender, the latter being only observed with the third person singular pronouns. (Stoyanov, 1964, p. 275). According to Stoyanov (p. 277) the third person singular of the personal pronoun was absent in Old Bulgarian. It developed later in the 12th century from the demonstrative pronoun which had forms for the masculine (tui), feminine (ta) and neuter (to).

Feature 7. Bulgarian should definitely be assigned a plus for this feature. As discussed earlier in this paper it has undergone a process of simplification in its historical development, which has resulted in the complete loss of the otherwise heavy case system.

Feature 8. In Old Bulgarian the comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives were formed in a synthetic way, through suffixes. In Modern Bulgarian the opposite phenomenon is observed, that is, the degrees of comparison of adjectives are formed in an analytical way, where a particle placed before the positive form indicates the comparative and superlative degrees (see Stoyanov,1964, p. 263). For example, the particle for the comparative is po and the particle used in the superlative is nai.

As the degrees of comparison in Bulgarian are formed in a totally analytical way, it has been assigned a plus (+) for this feature.

Feature 9. In the process of its historic development Bulgarian lost its infinitive form and replaced it by a subordinate clause with da + the present tense form of the verb (irrespective of the tense in the preceding clause).

With regard the da-construction Moneva-Dolapchieva (1976) writes:

The other non-finite verb forms, that is, the present participle and the past participle, are present in Bulgarian and are inflected for gender, number, voice, and aspect (the latter is only observed in the active past participle). For example, the verb cheta [read] has the following nonfinite forms:

In addition, there is an invariable nonfinite verb form, called "deeprichastie", which in Bulgarian grammar books (for example, Pashov, 1989, pp.168-170) is defined as a "glagolno narechie" [verbal adverb]. In meaning and function it is very similar to the present participle in English. For example,

In summary, it can be said that with regard this feature Bulgarian belongs to the group of "more or less", due to the complexity of its system of nonfinite verb forms (lack of infinitive, infleted and noninflected forms). For this reason, it has been assigned a more or less ().

Feature 10. According to Stoyanov (1964 pp. 314-315), the passive voice in the Bulgarian language developed under the influence of Greek and Latin. However, he thinks that as Bulgarian does not have verb forms for activum and passivum, like Greek and Latin, the category of voice in Bulgarian can not be considered a fully developed category. Despite this observation, linguists agree that Bulgarian has active, passive and middle voice, the latter being questioned by some grammarians. The passive voice in Bulgarian is formed in the same way as in English, that is,

Sum + Past Participle

To be + Past Participle

Thus, for this feature Bulgarian has been assigned a minus.

Feature 11. I have assigned a minus for this feature, as in Bulgarian the copular verb sum = to be, is used both in the meaning of existence and location (as the verb to be in English}.

Feature 12. Pashov (1989) describes NEGATION in Bulgarian as follows:

Therefore, with regards NEG. Bulgarian totally resembles a creole language. Accordingly, I have written a plus for this feature.

My initial hypothesis that the checklist approach, applied to Bulgarian would reveal a relatively low percentage of creole-positive features has proved right. Out of the 12-highest possible value, Bulgarian has shown a value of 4.5. Despite the presence of some creole-like features, that is, double-negation, analytical forms for the degrees of comparison of adjectives, lack of nominal case inflections, and some other partially present creole-like elements, as the obligatory copular, and the preference for the SVO wordorder, Bulgarian can not be classified as a creole, nor as a semi-creole language.

Yet, more important remains the fact that throughout its existence the Bulgarian language has had influence from a number of other languages due to political or geographic factors. As discussed earlier in this paper, the Bulgarian people has been under foreign rule several times in its history, that is, the Byzantine conquest in 1018 A.D., the Turkish occupation in 1393, and also the Russian political influence, extremely strong in our recent history, during the years of communism. Besides, the influence of the neighboring Slavic countries, as well as the influence of nonSlavic languages like Greek and Latin should also be taken into consideration.

However, these factors and their eventual reflection on the changes that the Bulgarian language has undergone have been very poorly (if at all) investigated due to two main reasons: insufficient access to resources and conscious misinterpretation of those that were available in order to comply with the communist censorship.

In Linguistics, descriptivism was adopted as the "safest" way of approaching linguistic issues. External factors, social and historical, that may have been the cause of a linguistic variation or change were completely ignored as inconsistent with the socialist principle of "equality".

The foreign contribution in this respect seems to surpass the national, and yet it is insufficient. A question which may present an interesting topic for further research refers to the process of simplification that the Bulgarian language went through, differently from the other Slavic languages, and particularly from Russian which has always been the language of power among the other Slavic languages. Besides, the question about the genesis of the Bulgarian language has not been thoroughly investigated. As discussed earlier in this paper, the language of the Proto-Bulgarians and its share in the formation of the Old Bulgarian Language has not been given due attention. The fact that the Bulgarian state was named after the Proto-Bulgarians, and the newly found evidence about their ancient culture and traditions, suggests that they must have had a much bigger part in the formation of the Bulgarian language and culture. Which of the two languages, then, Slavic or Proto-bulgarian served as a superstartum in the newly established contact language? And besides, what other ingredients could there have been mixed in the phonological, lexical and structural contents of the Bulgarian language? I hope future sociolinguistic research will provide the answer.

Dobrev, P. (1994). Svetut na prabulgarite: Istini i zabludi. Sofia: Slavika - R M.

Gilbert, G. (1993). Popular Brazilian Portuguese: A convergence creole, derived from a dual source. Unpublished manuscript, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Gulabov, I. (1980). Starobulgarski ezik s uvod v slavjanskoto ezikoznanjie. Sofia: Nauka i Izkustvo.

Gyllin, R. (1991). The genesis of the modern Bulgarian literary language. Published doctoral dissertation, Uppsala University, Sweden, Stockholm.

Moneva-Dolapchieva, R. (1976). Transformational treatment of some problems in Bulgarian syntax. Doctoral dissertation. State University of New York at Buffalo (Microfilm International, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.)

Pashov, P. (1989). Prakticheska Bulgarska gramatika. Sofia: Narodna Prosveta.

Stoyanov, S. (1964). Gramatika na Bulgarskjia knizhoven ezik. Sofia: Nauka i Izkustvo.

Thomason, S. G. and Kaufman, T. (1988). Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkely and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

^1. Thomason and Kaufman define contact -induced language change as foreign interference in grammar as well as in lexicon.

^2. Slavonic = Slavic (Webster's New World Dictionary, 1970). The word Slavic will be used in this paper; Slavonic appears in direct quotations from Gyllin.

^3. The difference between Old Bulgarian and Church Slavonic was first mentioned by Vasil Aprilov in Misli za Segashnoto Bulgarsko Uchenjie (1847).

^4. Damascenes were translations from Greek, written in the Bulgarian vernaculars of the 17th century.

^5. In Russian the preference for the SVO word order can be explained by the presence of nominal case inflections, which often require the subject to be in first position.

^6.For details on middle voice in Bulgarian, see Moneva-Dolapchieva (1976, pp. 55-88)

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