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The authors of the monograph had to face a complicated task. In the last six years the linguistic situation in the Republic of Belorussia has radically changed. While after the adoption of the "Law on languages in the BSSR" the work on the Belorussian literary language revival and making it a true state language began. May 1995 Referendum and 1996 Constitution, both declaring state bilingualism (which in fact already existed), have narrowed and actually badly limited the sphere of the Belorussian language use. putting it on the verge of extinction.
1.1. The Belorussian literary language appeared in the 14--15th c.c. on the basis of Church Slavonic and the live dialects of the former Dregovichi, Krivichi and Rodimichi tribes. The term "Belorussian" has been generally accepted only since the 17th century.
Old Belorussian has reached its highest point of development at the turn of the 15th c., when it became the official state language of the Great Lithuanian Principality. It was the language in which the original literature was created, diplomatic correspondence was written, books were printed, the famous three editions of the Lithuanian Statute were created. etc. But after the 1569 Lublin Union and especially after the 1696 Warsaw Sejm, the Old Belorussian language has gone out of use as an official language by conceding these functions to Polish and Latin. It was only the Belorussian spoken language that was preserved.
Modem literary Belorussian was coming into being in the 19th century, severed from old traditions, on the basis of the national dialects of central Belorussia. The literary written language was originally formed as a language of fiction. Only after 1917, with the foundation of the first national state of the BSSR and as a result of belorussification policy, Belorussian has received the status of a state language and started being used by the Belorussian people in all major spheres of their life. However, the political repressions of the 30s sharply narrowed the potentialities of the Belorussian language and resulted in a situation of forced bilingualism. which through the administrative and everyday practice paved the way for Russian to become practically the only "official" language in Belorussia. The process of restriction with respect to the Belorussian language was rapidly accelerated in the mid 90s.
1.2. About 8 million Belorussians live in the Republic of Belorussia; 3--3.5 million people reside abroad. Belorussian emigrants use the literary language based on B. Tarashkevich's orthography and grammar, with slight deviations from the norms officially adopted in the Republic of Belorussia.
With the foundation of independent Belorussia. new prospects appeared with regard to personal contacts between Belorussian speakers. The interaction and connections between the two languages - modern literary Belorussian and emigrant Belorussian - have strengthened.
1.3. The scientific research of Belorussian started only in the first third of the 19th c.. when the discussions upon the character and the place of the Belorussian language among other Slavonic languages began. It is due to the works of E. Karsky, I. Grigorovich, I. Nosovich et. al. that the perception of Belorussian as an independent and original Slavonic language was finally formed by the end of the 19th c.
The main scientific achievements of the Belorussian linguistics took place in the 20th c., when the broad research of Belorussian dialects began and national terminology, manuals, dictionaries, academic grammars, scientific monographs, etc. appeared. In the postwar period, there began an active study of the Belorussian literary language history, morphology, onomatology, phraseology, stylistics, syntax, etc.
The linguistic politics has also influenced the development of the Belorussian literary language system itself by submitting many intralinguistic processes to the general political and ideological tendencies. At the initial stage of cultural and linguistic revival, the orientation towards the use of folk language inner resources became prominent. In the 30s, due to the change of official policy towards "internationalization" (in fact -- russification), the influence of the Russian language has become dominating in the development of the Belorussian literary language for the succeeding decades.
Since the beginning of the 60s the tendency towards national individualization has reappeared as a deliberate preference for non-Russian linguistic means. However, being qualified in the official linguistics as destructive, leading to the elimination of literary norms and the language system itself, the tendency was hindered.
The events of the late 80s and the 90s. which caused the collapse of the Soviet empire. have greatly influenced the status of Belorussian. In 1990 Belorussian has become a state language of the Republic, which provided first of all for its return to the educational and official spheres. Due to the efforts of intelligentsia, the cultural and educational institutions and creative unions, the role of Belorussian in social life has considerably increased. However. the new phenomena, following the 1995 Referendum and the introduction of the state Belorussian-Russian bilingualism, contributed to preserving the former linguistic trends.
Besides the ethno-historical, structural-territorial classification of the contemporary Belorussian dialects, there also exists the cultural-historical one. which allows to distinguish several dialectal zones: north-western, eastern, western, south-western and central. The zonal dialectal groups differed, at various historical stages of the process of national language development, as to their role and significance.
In the postwar period there are two stages of linguistic situation and speech development in Belorussian. The first one covers the time from the liberation of the Republic from German fascist occupation (1944) till 1987 -- the disintegration of the USSR. The second one begins with the public movement for the revival of Belorussia and especially with the moment of the declaration of sovereignty and independence of the BSSR and the foundation of unitary state, the Republic of Belorussia. The former can be called the period of restoration, the latter - that of revival.
During the restoration of the prewar Belorussian language system - dialects and the literary language - the return of Russian to the linguistic system of the Republic takes place. Besides its literary version, the Russian colloquial spoken language became popular, which started the formation of Belorussian-Russian bilingualism as a combination of local dialects and literary Belorussian language versions, on the one hand, and the Russian literary and popular language versions, on the other.
The functional distribution of languages was correlated with the social differentiation of language speakers. In large cities, the Belorussian-Russian bilingualism was formed, in which the Russian literary language was dominant. It was internally differentiated as to the use of linguistic means of the two literary languages, but preference in choosing the means of communication was usually given to Russian.
The increasing orientation toward Russian popular speech has caused the appearance of a popular version of the Belorussian-Russian bilingualism -- "trasianka".
In the rural districts similar processes took place. Belorussian-Russian bilingualism has also become widespread here. However, in the rural communicative environment, the local inhabitants used rather widely the traditional language means.
At the restoration stage, essential changes towards Russian have taken place in the structure of the traditional speech means. However, the migration processes taking place in Belorussia at the time, including those resulting from the Chernobyl disaster, have most considerably changed the traditional dialects. Actually, Chernobyl was a factor in launching a public movement for changing the linguistic situation in the Republic: it was also the starting point of the revival of national cultural traditions. At that moment the second revival stage of the postwar linguistic development in Belorussian actually begins. It was characterized by the resolute demand of a radical part of national intelligentsia to change the status of the national literary language and make it the main means of intercourse in the Republic. The demands were also made to change its structure, semantic means and the system of oral and written usage rules. But. for many reasons, no cardinal changes occurred concerning the functional extension of the Belorussian literary language or the speech orientation of the local population. At the same time. the process of the national language revival, which remained incomplete, has considerably promoted "dialectization", or regionalization of the modern Belorussian literary language.
Despite the predominant orientation of the Belorussian population towards the Russian linguistic means, there are still some perspectives for the proper language dynamics of the local Belorussian population.
In the 50s -- 70s. Belorussian pronunciation was characterized by numerous deviations from literary norms determined by preserving some features of dialectal phonetics and influence of spelling as well as the general Belorussian-Russian bilingualism. The spoken language which does not quite follow the formulated rules of correct pronunciation is typical even of the authoritative Belorussian speakers (creative intelligentsia, actors, teachers). One can also notice that the consonant pronunciation norms are followed more strictly than those that concern vowels.
The functional clash of the Belorussian and Russian languages in Belorussia results in the reduction of genre-stylistic differentiation of the spoken literary language.
The national revival of the 90s has widened the use of the spoken Belorussian language and has resulted in the creation of a new pronunciation variant, reviving prereformation norms, coexisting with traditional ones.
The reform produced a negative response abroad. Every work in Belorussian printed abroad would use the old orthography. Thus. two versions of the Belorussian written language appeared.
After World War II the codification and standardization issue was discussed at special orthography improvement conferences in 1950 and 1952. It was concluded that it would be advisable to make some amendments to the existing norm rather than postulate a new reform.
With the political changes in the Republic at the end of the 1980s a reformist movement which tries to renew the literary language on the basis of pre-reform norms came into being. The non-governmental media use B.Tarashkevich's norms.
These trends in the literary Belorussian language are viewed as destructive by traditional linguists.
The dynamics of word formation processes in the last 50 years of the Belorussian language functioning has been closely connected to social life and greatly influenced by it. Therefore, in the postwar history, one can single out quite distinctly two periods: - 1. the 50s -- the early 80s; - 2. the late 80s -- the 90s.
Such periodization is determined by the radical changes, which took place in the life of our society at the turn of the 80s.
The first period is generally characterized by a considerable contribution of new motivated units. The following processes can be clearly noticed:
- derivation of new lexical units within the bounds of traditional (usual) ways and types of word formation;
- creation of new word formation ways (for example, non-morphemic truncation) and types (for example, in "-дром", "-смен" and the like);
- activation of loan formatives and key words used as a word formation base;
- the use of calques (mainly from Russian) and the like.
All these processes were labelled in the indicated period as internationalization of the modern Belorussian word formation, and more precisely its "russification". In relation to the linguistic norm the indicated processes can be described with the concept of "the norm as a choice". Of the two competing word formation models, preference was given to the one that coincides with the corresponding Russian model.
The main processes in Belorussian word formation in the 50s -- 80s occurred mainly within the bounds of the word formation system and can be considered as the realization of its potential.
The late 80s and the 90s are characterized, first of all, by the extreme intensification of word formation processes in the Belorussian language, which is explained, first of all. by the sharp changes in public life and thus by the use of new linguistic means of nomination.
The last ten years are also characterized by:
- derivation of new lexical units within the bounds of traditional ways and types;
- stem- and word-composition as well as abbreviation remain very active. The latter is characterized by:
- extreme mobility;
- wide attraction of proper names and loan units, which is reflected in the specific way of entry of the above units to the word formation system;
- a tendency towards deetymologization.
The intensification of the competition between the word formation types and the popularization of occasional (non-usual) word formation types and models should also be mentioned.
Thus, in the last decade the processes in Belorussian word formation were basically the same as in the previous period. However, they vary essentially as to their character and trend. Thus. besides "internatonalization". there occurs the tendency towards "nationalization" of Belorussian word formation, labelled as "Belorussification" or "derussification". It can be seen first of all in a tendency towards a full use of its own language means and to replace the motivated units coinciding with the corresponding Russian ones. Besides, there should be observed a tendency towards a movement from the periphery to the center (first of all, in the use of dialectal word formation means), and the revival of motivated units from the passive vocabulary.
The tendency towards the so-called "intellectualization" or "snobization" of the language is rather distinct in modern word formation, being characteristic of the linguistic tastes and predilections of a certain pan of a Belorussian-speaking intellectual elite. With regard to the attitude towards the norm in the last decade, prohibition comes to the foreground as a tendency to consider many motivated units coinciding with the corresponding Russian ones. as "unfit for the Belorussian language".
Generally, Belorussian speakers differ in their estimation of the main processes occurring at present in Belorussian word formation. Concerning the first period one should refer, first of all, to the estimation of the results, and concerning the second -- to the estimation of processes. The opinions on the first period range from "the system of Belorussian word formation has developed in a stable manner and was enriched by new word formation ways and means" up to "Belorussian word formation was badly russified and has largely lost its national specific character". In regard to the second period various opinions are also expressed: from "Belorussian word formation as well as the Belorussian language in general recovers its national specific character and originality" up to "in the last ten years the destructive tendencies have prevailed in Belorussian word formation, leading to the destruction ofthe word formation system". It is obvious that such polarization of opinions testifies first of all to the ambiguity of word formation processes occurring in the Belorussian language as well as to different linguistic orientations and predilections of Belorussian speakers.
The popularity of certain grammatical facts grows at the expense of functional limitation of others (prepositional case forms), the character of verbal government changes in some word collocations, the polifunctionality of separate grammatical means is fixed. The amount of analytical constructions with the adjoint determinant, expressed by a proper nonpersonal name. as well as complex composite words, one component of which tends to lose its declinability, increases: the grammatical forms of abstract nouns in plural in the meaning of singular are more and more popular.
The process of norm unification has revealed its originality determined both by the system and by the historical development circumstances (dialectal basis, direct contact with Russian under the conditions of bilingualism, changes in socio-political conditions).
The literary Belorussian language is subject to the active influence of colloquial syntax. The most significant and obvious tendency is that towards dividing a sentence into several components as reflected in the phenomena of addition, parcelling, chains of sentences without verbs, various insertional constructions etc. Insertional constructions were also very popular at the beginning of the 20th c., in all language styles. However, the punctuation in such constructions depended only upon the author's manner, while at the end of the 20th c. they were graphically differentiated depending on the insertion type (G.N. Kliusov's classification). Besides, the new feature for the insertion elements in contemporary Belorussian is their emotional expressive functions which clearly reflect the author's attitude towards the communicated information. On the other hand, parcellation, verbless sentence chains and theme nominative have developed from sporadic use in texts to a regular syntactic means. The functional capabilities and the role of such constructions in the contemporary language is diversified and weighty.
The word-composition tendencies in contemporary Belorussian are for the most part the reflection of the processes which occur in Russian syntactical system. Most often, new word combinations are direct borrowings from Russian or their calques. Simultaneously with the process of active syntactic constructions borrowing, preference for specific Belorussian combinations, when variants similar to Russian are available, is clearly displayed.
Belorussian scientific texts started to appear regularly in the 1920s, but they did not develop their own expressive devices and forms: they were created, so to speak, on the basis of fiction experience.
The use of the Belorussian language in science and education in the second half of the 20th c. has been rather limited - especially in the field of natural and pure science, philosophy and sociology, secondary and higher education. Nevertheless, some scientific works on linguistics, literature studies or history and occasionally -- on other fields of knowledge, have been created, and scientific magazines, textbooks and manuals for secondary schools have been issued, which has promoted the creation and development of the scientific style.
The dynamics of scientific style development was displayed in the increase of the coefficient of being terminological and bookish, the specialization of common words, desemantization of the verbs of general semantics, wider use of loan words and scientific language internationalization, reduction of the number of synonyms, doublets and word formation variants, increase of nominativity of the scientific texts, change of a correlation between simple and complex sentences, reduction of linear extention of sentences, change of the average size of integral sentences, predicative parts, average complexity of sentences, coefficients of complexity and complex subordination.
The journalistic style is characterized by a variety of genres, subjects and means of expression. Its main stylistic features up to the end of the 80s were conditioned by political factors. The agitation and propagandist function of journalism explains the monological character of speech, wide use of words and combinations connected with the communist ideology, high saturation of texts with words with a distinct political and philosophical content, adjectives-intensifiers, positive and negative lexicon, modal evaluation words. At the turn of the 80s, certain changes in the journalistic style lexicon took place in connection with the democratization of public life: deideologization of some words, dearchaization of separate lexical groups, new semantic links, etc. The journalism of the 90s gradually got rid of its sloganish, directive character and the dialogical character of speech increased. The range of genres and subjects of the journalistic texts became wider, the key words changed. However, in the mid 90s some linguistic expressive ways and forms typical of Soviet journalism came back to the pages of newspapers.
The official style entered a short period of revival at the turn of the 80s, but in the second half of the 90s its development was stopped again because of the limitations in the use of the Belorussian language in the sphere of administration and legislation.
The Belorussian literary language has been fully developing in fiction writing and in everyday life -- in the sphere of friendly relations and business talks among the members of Belorussian intelligentsia.
With the appearance of Holy Scripture translations into the Belorussian language, linguistic expressive modes and ways started developing in the sphere of religious life.
The Belorussian language of the second half of the 20th c. functions and develops under the conditions of a wide Belorussian-Russian bilingualism. This fact determines and will determine in the future the specific character of the processes which occur in the language system itself -- first of all, in its literary variety - as well as the character of its functioning in different spheres of social life.
With the decrease of the role of the Belorussian national language as a means of communication, the function of the Belorussian language as a symbol of national self-identification of a person becomes more and more distinct and important. This very function of the Belorussian language in a bilingual society should play the main role in preserving its status of full-function language of Belorussians.