Old Church Slavonic

Effektiver Einsatz von NLP-Methoden am Beispiel des Codex Suprasliensis Scripta & e-Scripta vol. 25, 2025 floyd Tue, 08/19/2025 - 17:07
Ефективно използване на методите на NLP въз основа на пример от Codex Suprasliensis

The integration of computational methods in historical philology is becoming increasingly essential, yet challenges persist in harmonizing linguistic and technical aspects of text analysis. This study presents a comprehensive and methodologically transparent use case that documents the entire computational philological workflow– from data acquisition and modeling to analysis and visualization–in a structured and reproducible manner. Using the Codex Suprasliensis, one of the most significant Old Slavic manuscripts, as a case study, we demonstrate how modern Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, particularly the Stanza library for morphosyntactic annotation and DataFrame-based corpus structuring, can facilitate the exploration of historical textual corpora. A special emphasis is placed on benchmarking Stanza’s performance in processing Old Church Slavonic, evaluating its segmentation, tagging, and parsing accuracy against existing Gold Standard datasets. Additionally, we discuss the role of DataFrame-based modeling in ensuring an efficient and transparent structuring of linguistic data, allowing for flexible transformations and reproducible analyses. To support further research and methodological validation, all functional and extensively annotated scripts–including the complete NLP pipeline–are permanently provided via the GitHub platform of the Berlin State Library. The findings highlight the importance of structured corpus processing in computational philology and contribute to the ongoing refinement of NLP methodologies for historical languages.

Subject: e-Scripta Keywords: Computational Philology natural language processing Old Church Slavonic Stanza and Corpus Annotation DataFrame-Based Text Structuring
Submitted on Tue, 08/19/2025 - 16:53

Zur Pragmatik transzendentaler Sprechakte. Am Beispiel von altkirchenslavisch тако ми

Върху прагматиката на трансцендентните речеви актове: въз основа на староцърковнославянското „тако ми“

  • Summary/Abstract

    Speech acts like to pray, to swear or to make a prophecy include a transcendental participant to be felicitous. In a prayer the transcendental participant is included as interlocutor, in an oath as witness and, if necessary, punishing force, in a blessing as guarantor, and prophecy consists either in reporting the statements of a transcendental actor or a human speaker is making statements on his behalf. The illocution of a transcendental speech act is highly depend on introductory assumptions, especially sincerity. Accordingly, the linguistic classification of oath shifts between assertive and commissive speech acts. Our paper firstly discusses problems of the pragmatic classification of oaths in general; in a second step it is demonstrated, that the use of the Old Church Slavonic oath-formula „tako mi‟ and its descendants in Church Slavonic and in today’s oral speech are located within a pragmatic continuum between (transcendental) oath – extreme assertion – appellative request – emphatic salutation. The pragmatic classification of the formula is highly depend on register and substitution of the original 1st person pronoun (mi) by 2nd person pronoun (ti). Additionally, the paper offers a linguistic explanation about the original shape of the Old Church Slavonic formula in comparison with corresponding Greek utterances.

    Subject: Scripta
Submitted on Tue, 08/19/2025 - 15:14

Komposita im Sbornik des Pop Punčo (NBKM 693)

Сложни съществителни и прилагателни имена в сборника на поп Пунчо (НБКМ 693)

  • Summary/Abstract

    This work is a slightly modified version of my master’s thesis of the same title (Mihova 2024) and deals with the nominal compounds of a selected early New Bulgarian text from the genre of Damascenes, the Sbornik of Pop Punčo (1796). The compounds of the 18th-century Damascenes will be examined, using the Sbornik as an example. Their greater independence from Greek (as opposed to the Old Church Slavonic texts) will be used to gain insights into the origins of the compound types and to determine whether, in addition to compounds borrowed from Greek, they also include compound types inherited from Proto-Indo-European. All compounds found in the Sbornik are collected, translated, and assigned to a compound type from a morpho- semantic perspective.

Submitted on Thu, 10/03/2024 - 16:22

On the Reception of the Dionysian Corpus in Early Slavic Literature

  • Summary/Abstract

    The Corpus Dionysiacum, possibly authored in the 6th century by an enigmatic figure, stands as a pivotal work within the Byzantine oikumene, yet its reception in the Slavic context has been underexplored. This paper provides an overview of both direct and indirect receptions of the Corpus Dionysiacum, highlighted by direct quotations from a newly discovered cycle of original Slavic homilies from the late 9th century, a discovery that potentially shifts the paradigm of our understanding. We will examine the breadth, philological nuances, and theological applications of these quotations, employing a comparative analysis to contextualize our findings within a broader scholarly conversation. Through this examination, we shed light on the intricate web of cultural and theological exchanges between the Byzantine and Slavic worlds.

    Subject: Scripta
The Greek Modality Adverb ἴσως in the First Old Church Slavonic Translation of Gregory of Nazianzus’ Homily 38 Scripta & e-Scripta vol. 24, 2024 floyd Thu, 10/03/2024 - 16:14

This paper provides novel, relevant data to study the translation technique of the First Old Church Slavonic Version of Gregory of Nazianzus’ Homily 38 “On the Theophany” (Εἰς τὰ Θεοφάνια, CPG 3010.38; BHG, 1921-1921b; PG 36, 312A-333A). This work was rendered from Greek into Old Church Slavonic by an anonymous Bulgarian translator, presumably between the late 9th and the early 10th century. The text is transmitted by two testimonies, one of East Slavic (St Petersburg, Russian National Library, Q.п.I.16, late 11th century), the other of South Slavic origin (Sofia, SS Cyril and Methodius National Library, № 674, mid-14th century). The translation’s archaic morphological and lexical features reveal a marked analogy with the language of the Old Bulgarian Ecclesiastical Writer, Constantine, Bishop of Preslav. By investigating hitherto unexplored aspects of the translation technique the author offers further compelling evidence of a connection between Homily 38 and Constantine’s Didactic Gospel. The focus is on a very peculiar rendering of the Greek modality adverb ἴσως (“possibly, perhaps”), which is translated by means of the verb “мьнѣти” (“to mean”, “to think”, “to assume”, “to consider”), conjugated in the first-person singular present indicative.

Subject: Scripta Keywords: Old Church Slavonic Translations MANUSCRIPTS Greek Patristics Gregory of Nazianzus Constantine of Preslav translation techniques modality adverbs
Submitted on Thu, 10/03/2024 - 16:12

Emphase in altkirchenslavischen Konstruktionen mit l-Partizip

Emphasis in Old Church Slavonic constructions with l-participle

  • Summary/Abstract

    The paper analyses the different ways, lexical information can be positioned relative to the two parts of the Old Church Slavonic periphrastic perfect tense, formed by auxiliary быти + l-participle. We find that positioning of information before or behind the construction is most open to rhetoric-stylistic shaping of the utterances in a given context. Positioning of information within the periphrastic construction leads to focus steering; insertion of information of different kind into the periphrastic construction can be interpreted not so much as focus steering towards rhematic, but towards emphasized information. Complex forms of information positioning are a sign of written conceptuality.

    Subject: Scripta
The annotation of verbal aspect in diachrony: parameters, algorithms and problems Scripta & e-Scripta vol. 21, 2021 floyd Sat, 11/20/2021 - 07:28
Анотиране на глаголния вид в диахрония: параметри, алго- ритми и проблеми

Digital annotation of verbal aspect in Old Russian and Church Slavonic texts is a challenging and quite complicated task that requires a complex approach. While studying Slavic aspect systems synchronically, we always know whether the verb is perfective, imperfective or biaspectual, however, this is often not the case for the research of aspect in a diachronic perspective. The determination of the aspectual status of a particular verb for earlier stages is possible only after considering together different parameters such as: actionality, lexical semantic, morphology, functional distribution, syntactic restrictions, collocations, statistics etc. All essential parameters should be annotated sufficiently for an effective use of a corpora. That would enable a researcher to collect quickly the information necessary to build aspectual profile of a verb. It is also important to understand the hierarchy of the parameters, as they might have different degrees of importance, and for this purpose a special algorithm should be developed. The preliminary results, related to the parameters of annotation and the algorithm for aspect determination (using ‘Morphy’, the System for digital morphological annotation of Old Russian and Church Slavonic manuscripts, developed in Vinogradov Russian Language Institute RAS), are discussed in the paper.

Subject: Digital humanities Keywords: verbal aspect digital annotation Old Russian Old Church Slavonic
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