phonetics

The article is focused on one of the few plays for children by the Bulgarian poet and playwright Stefan Tsanev. On the basis of some poetical specifics in the text of “The most wonderful Wonder” is formulated a hypothesis about the ‘strategy’ of this work as an actualization of phoneticism of the language. In this sense the form of the play is analyzed as a demonstration of the archaic and even the paleolinguistic aspect of the language i.e. of its asemanticity. In this way are interpreted the names of the characters, which are only letters, and the poetic figures with homonymy, paronymy, onomatopoeia etc. The form of the dramatic work is analyzed in relation to the allegorical narrative of a starving primitive tribe which literally degrades to the apes. The one of the main characters – the chief and shaman called U is understood as an ambivalent figure of the speech, as a figure of the both political demagoguery and mystical poetic speech.

The aim of this research paper is to unravel some unknown sound features of the language of the disciples of St. Cyril and St. Methodius by analyzing the rhythmic structure of four Old Bulgarian canons in 12-syllable verses. Each of the verses in these works follows one of the variants of the dodecasyllable used in the three Byzantine iambic canons by St. John of Damascus, which are briefly presented in the article. The restriction of the line to exactly 12 syllables makes it possible to clarify: a) whether the vocals ъ and ь (jers) in a weak position began to disappear as early as the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century; b) whether jers positioned before [j] were syllabic; and c) whether Old Bulgarian hymnographers used contracted endings of the adjectives.