Ivan Iliev

The object of the article is the Latin translation of the Vita of St. Petka of Tărnovo made by Rafael Levaković from the version in Zbornik za Putnike published by Vicenzo Vuković in 1547 in Venice. This translation is precise, although the translator tends to use most eloquent style when writing in Latin. An interesting peculiarity of Levaković’s translation is probably the intentional aspiration to adhere to the gender of the words in Patriarch Euthymius’s original, to find a Latin word of the same gender as its counterpart in the original. Out of approximately 320 nouns translated, 180 have complete concurrence of gender. Moreover, there is a tendency to render consistently nouns which are of feminine gender and end in -ица with Latin nouns of feminine gender ending in -trix, -tricis, i.е. there is some consistency on the level of declension. Examples: застѫпьница f. – protectrix, cis f. In a similar way masculine nouns ending in –ьць (nomina auctoris) are translated with Latin words of masculine gender ending in –tor, -toris, for example самодрьжьць m. – imperator, oris m. In the translation there is no need of calques, because both the Slavonic and Latin were Christian literary languages in the 17th c. with a long tradition and well developed system of abstract nouns denoting Christian concepts. Rafael Levaković’s translation of the Vita of St. Petka is a precious source for the cultural connections in Europe in the 17th c. A rare attempt such as a translation from Slavonic into Latin undoubtedly is not only of interest for scholars, dealing with this material, but also a cultural fact of the Late Medieval times.

This article is part of forthcoming research on the history of Bulgarian relative pronouns. The question of their nature, origin, and evolution is inextricably bound up with the repeatedly discussed problem of the so-called replacement of their initial anaphoric stem by an ‘interrogative’ one. The relativization is a process of transformation of mutually dependent sentences (interrogative: who will…?; conditional: if someone…) into relative clauses, through changing their initial meaning, and transforming the noun, or the pronoun, which unifies them semantically, into a relative conjunction, which, usually has gender, number, and case. The acquirement of relative function by the *kw- stem is a result of a choice between several alternatives (*Ч-, *t- и *kw- root). Several possible causes and ways for the course of this process, mentioned in this article, can be supposed. The process of replacement of the old stem was catalyzed by several factors, which acted with different force, with different types of generated relative clauses, and with different relative pronouns. Probably, the relative *kw- stem was established lastly in the developing (commenting, procentential) clauses, under the influence of other relative clauses.