Specific features of the sociolinguistic problematic in the slavic world

Abstract

By far the most interesting and significant of the questions dealt with by sociolinguistics in the Slavic world is the standard language problematic. Specifically Slavic features are evident in all the questions of the genesis of standard language (the lime and mode of formation, the choice of the dialectical basis), the processes of standardization (writing,/ortho/ graphy, intclleclualization, the acquisition of autonomy, functional polyvalence and elastic stability, the establishinenl of a norm, terminology and higher syntax and phraseology, etc.), various relations with other standard languages (inclusive of possible ctalunic relations) and Ihc physiognomy of contemporary standard language. In this, Slavic standard languages do not essentially differ from other single standard languages and/or groups of genetically related standard languages, because greater or lesser peculiarities exist in all languages and groups (one has in mind groups such as, for example, Romance, Germanic, Aryan-Indian, some Hung-Finnish groups, Turkic, Bantu, Thai, and. to a certain extent, the Indonesian language group, etc ). Slavic standard languages are distinguished by two peculiar moments, permeating all the above-listed questions, whereby they arc distinct from all or at least from the majority of other groups. In the Slavic language world the fact of genetic kinship was of ideological and practical signiticance for a longer period of time and in a more itensitive manner than anywhere else; m addition, there is the role of the homogenetic Cyrilmethodic language heritage which can only be compared whit the role of Latin and Sanskrit within the Romance and Aryan-Indian languages.