NEW DATA ON THE HISTORY OF THE OLD BULGARIAN LANGUAGE IN THE EPIGRAPHIC WRITING OF THE FIRST BULGARIAN KINGDOM

Abstract

The article describes several rare linguistic phenomena observed in earliest Old Bulgarian inscriptions: (1) the sign for palatal consonants in the Temnić inscription which testifies to palatal accomodation of the liquid consonant l to the preceding velar k, (2) in the Bitola inscription, different rools of the use of letters for jers showing the work of two different scribes, (3) ending -i in a compound numeral дъва на десѧти ‘12’ otherwise known only in two manuscripts of the 11th c., (4) the construction въ + acc of nomen abstractum in the sence of a mode of action, and, in the Krepča inscription n° 2, (5) accusative form лѣⷮ ‘year’ indicating a specific point in the past (the form lěto ‘year’ with the same function occurs in a few eastern Slavic sources of younger date).