Conceptions of Church Slavonic

Abstract

In our time Church Slavonic is a “language without native speakers,” but it is not in all respects a “dead” one. It is for this reason that the Slavs have given it a great variety of names, the different use of which in philological publications heavily depends on the respective linguists’ connotative purposes (e.g., national and ideological interests and so forth). As a rule, the description of the language is based on the analysis of written or printed texts. Only recently have a few additional corpora been introduced in addition to the well-known group of “classical” Old Church Slavonic manuscripts, which, for all their merits in the history of Slavistics, can give only a vague idea of the rich language tradition of Church Slavonic as a whole, since, as a means of actual (oral) communication, it can nowadays be observed only in the liturgy. The article discusses the main linguistic conceptions applied to Church Slavonic in the past and present (root language, i.e., proto-language, common language, literary language [Schriftsprache], Ausbau language, etc.); singles out binaristic approaches in opposition to vernaculars; gives an overview of the numerous varieties to be differentiated within the language (connected to regions, chronology, functions, individuals, and groups); recalls the role of reconstruction in modern textbooks and the widely neglected construction devices used in early grammars and dictionaries; and, at the end, refers to the possibility of including Church Slavonic as a model for comparative judgments on degrees of diversity in the structural development of Slavonic languages.