THE IDIOLECT OF REVEREND ECONOMOS DIMITAR POPNIKOLOV PETKANOV

Abstract

A less studied talented author and brother of the popular fiction writer Konstantin Petkanov, priest Dimitar wrote in the 1950s. This publication analyzes several parameters of his idiolect: phonetic peculiarities (reflex of ѣ, ѫ, ъ; epenthetic [l]; reflexes of the [tʃ] [dʒ] groups; phonetic dialectisms; phonetic doublets); morphological paradigm (case inflections; noun form for number; dualis; nomina collectiva; extended Church Slavonic suffix for adjectives; dialectal and contracted pronoun forms; a temporal system characterized by high frequency of the verbs in terms of origin, distribution and stylistic differentiation); lexical specifics (in terms of origin, distribution and stylistic differentiation). Emphasis is placed on those lexical layers that constitute and ditinguish the author’s language. Hapaxes (produced using morphological and nonmorphological methods), rare words, semantic transponents, dialectisms, colloquial vocabulary and foreign words are studied. All linguistic phenomena are examined retrospectively and in comparison with the synchronous linguistic situation before and after the orthographic reform of 1945 in order to highlight the innovative contribution and the mechanisms through which the author enriched the contemporary Bulgarian vocabulary. Occasionalisms, dialectal and archaic units occur more often in Petkanov’s poetic works than in his fiction. The source material has been excerpted from Volume 1 (January – March) and Volume 2 (April – June) of the hagiographic tetralogy “The Year of Our Lord“ and the memoir “A Book about My Brother – the Writer Konstantin N. Petkanov“, which were published a few years ago by Dimitar Petkanov’s heirs.