Южнославянские проклитики и история союза или

Abstract

The paper deals with the conjunction ili ‘or’ used in some Slavic languages. I show that, despite earlier claims, the word originally had a final accent (at least in South Slavic): ilí is the only accentuation found in Middle Bulgarian manuscripts and probably was the predominant variant in Bulgarian until the mid-20th century. In Serbian, the first syllable should initially have had a rising tone due to Neo-Štokavian retraction. The word later became proclitic, hence the Bulgarian íli and BCMS ȉli found in some modern dictionaries. The original final accent is clearly compatible with the etymology we defend.

Keywords

• Etymology. Historical accentology. Middle Bulgarian. Neo-Štokavian retraction. Proclitics. Prosody. Slavic conjunctions. South Slavic languages