THE PHONEME IN THE HISTORY OF SLOVAK WRITING

The phoneme (graphically dz), which goes back to the Proto Slavic combination *dj and has almost an all-Slovak character, is one of the differ ential signs that distinguish the Slovak language from the Czech. Despite this, it took a firm place in the consonantal system of the Slovak literary language rather late. It is already recorded in the oldest texts written in Slovakia in the 14th century. Simultaneously with it, the second ʒ, which arose only in the first half of the 13th century as a result of the assibiliztion of the soft ď and characterizing only some western Slovak dialects (southern Trnavian and Zagorie, as well as the extreme northern Upper Trencin), as well as the East Slovak dialect, which did not participate in the formation of the Slovak literary language, enters written texts. Soon, how ever, the written language discards the second ʒ, substituting the original soft ď. This process also extends to the first ʒ, in place of which the z begins to be used, represent ing the Czech reflex *dj, or, much less often,— the soft ď by analogy with the second ʒ. The new penetration of the first ʒ begins only in the middle of the 18th century, al though the language as a whole is characterized by its absence before the first codifica tion of Slovak literary language by A. Bernolak. The situation fundamentally changes after the codification of A. Bernolak (1787). The forms with this phoneme now clearly predominate in the Bernolakian texts, although some texts retain a connection with the pre-Bernolakov tradition, since in them in place of the first ʒ we find both z and ď. The second ʒ remained outside the Slovak literary language.