The Conjunction 'Makar' in Bulgarian Monuments Dated Between the 15th and 17th Centuries

• Published in: Studi slavistici 2020-01, Vol.17 (1), p.15
• Main Authors: Ivanova, Elena, Dimitrova, Tsvetana
• Format: Article
• Language: eng ; rus
• Subjects: Concession Semantics; Concessive Conjunctions; Conjunction makar (макар); Damaskins; Early Modern Bulgarian Language; Vlach-Bulgarian Charters
• ISSN: 1824-761X; 1824-7601
• DOI: 10.13128/Studi_Slavis-7496

The article discusses the semantics and structure of the sentences introduced by the conjunction MaKap (although) drawing upon data excerpted from Bulgarian monuments dated between the 15th and 17th centuries. In this early period, MaKap was a newly introduced conjunction which later extended its use to become a widely used concessive conjunction in present-day Bulgarian. The study is based on data from a sample of texts that are part of the database of the Historical Corpus of the Bulgarian Language which can be consulted online (< The most frequent variant of the compound conjunction formed with the particle da had the same syntactic and grammatical properties as the conjunction MaKap (u) da in present-day Bulgarian, especially with regards to the contact position of da and the verb. By the time this conjunction was established, the formation of da-constructions was already clear: the verb immediately followed da (the two were separated mostly by pronominal clitics and negation as in present-day Bulgarian), while other clausal constituents were placed between MaKap (u) and da (in earlier texts, da and the verb could be separated by other clausal constituents as well). The study also deals with the semantics of the concessive MaKap-conjunctions. The data shows that in the period considered, the expression of concession was still at its beginning. Therefore, clauses introduced by MaKap could express not only the prototypical 'causal concession' as in the present-day language, but could also have other interpretations within the semantics of concession. We also observe that MaKap clauses had additional paratactic semantics within the hypotaxis. Keywords Damaskins; Vlach-Bulgarian Charters; Early Modern Bulgarian Language; Concessive Conjunctions; Concession Semantics; Conjunction makar (MaKap); Da-Constructions.