Middle Bulgarian language was the

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

and the most widely spoken language of the Second Bulgarian Empire. Being descended from

Old Bulgarian Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and other ...

, Middle Bulgarian eventually developed into modern

Bulgarian language Bulgarian (, ; bg, label=none, български, bălgarski, ) is an Eastern South Slavic language spoken in Southeastern Europe, primarily in Bulgaria. It is the language of the Bulgarians. Along with the closely related Macedonian la ...

by the 16th century.

History

The use of Middle Bulgarian starts from the end of the 12th century and continues to the 17th century. This period of the language exhibits significantly different morphology from earlier periods, most notably in the complete disappearance of the locative, instrumental, and genitive cases. Analytical tools for the gradation of adjectives and adverbs appear. In most dialects ъi transformed to и, but ъi continued to be used in monumental inscriptions.

Features

In the Middle Bulgarian language there is an increased use of

prepositions Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

in the place of the

dative In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob ...

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can a ...

and

instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instrum ...

cases. There are instances of the genitive being replaced by the preposition от, and of the dative being replaced by various prepositional constructions.

References

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