UCLA Indo European Studies Volume 2

Ronald O. Richards: The Pannonian Slavic Dialect of the Common Slavic Proto-Language: The View from Old Hungarian.

July 2003
edited by Vyacheslav V. Ivanov and Brent Vine

234 pages / ISBN 0-9742653-0-6

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“This work seeks to shed light on the Common Slavic dialect map at its center in Pannonia (located in present-day Hungary) via an investigation of the Pannonian dialect’s loanwords into the Old Hungarian lexicon. A survey of various theories regarding Slavic Pannonia is followed by a short excursus on Old Hungarian phonology and the methodologies employed to identify, and subsequently reconstruct, those Pannonian Slavic loanwords which are used to compromise a Pannonian Slavic sample lexicon.  This lexicon is then examined to determine the degree to which it can or cannot be associated with known Common Slavic dialects, with these results then applied to an analysis of the aforementioned theories concerning Slavic Pannonia, the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, and the relationships which obtained between Slavs and Hungarians, and between Slavs and Avars.”

R. O. Richards, Ph.D. (Research Associate, UCLA Program in Indo-European Studies)