Българският език и другите славянски езици

With respect to some of its features, Bulgarian is considered as South Slavonic, with respect to others, as East Slavonic. The similarities with West Slavonic languages are more incidental. In phonology it shows similarities with the South and East Slavonic languages, thus forming with Ukrainian a link between the two branches. With respect to the analyticity in noun morphology it holds a place apart. Here it is to be treated under the South Slavonic languages with regard to the pronoun and the -ове ending for the plural; it has common features with the East Slavonic languages with respect to the generalization of the hard stems; common features with only Serbo-Croatian and some West Slavonic languages with respect to the k : с, etc. alternation in front of -i for the masculine plural and common features with Upper Lusatian with re99 spect to the vocative o-ending. Bulgarian holds a place apart in verb morphology. With respect to the presence of the aorist, the imperfect and pluperfect, it is marked by archaism. With respect to the complex future tenses it remains isolated. Among its distinctive features are the newly introduced citational mood and the new conditional. With respect to the bi-aspectual nature of the verbs it is the main representative of the South Slavonic languages, diametrically opposed to Czech and the other northern languages (without the Lusatian languages). In connection with analyticity, it exhibits stronger grammaticalization of prepositions. Owing to contacts with other Balkan languages (Albanian, Rumanian, Greek) several structural features have been formed in Bulgarian which do not exist even in the neighbouring Serbo-Croatian: the replacement of the infinitive by да-construction, the formation of the future, the use of the short dative pronoun as genitive (existing in Serbo-Croatian too), and the doubling of the object. The closeness between Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian confirms the dichotomy north/south and the classification in terms of geographical territory and socio-historical development. The closeness of Bulgarian with East Slavonic languages confirms the west/east dichotomy; the seconddary Bulgarian-Russian closeness is the result of ten centuries of cultural and historical relations.