THE GRAMMATICAL MORPHEME -H-/-SHIN BULGARIAN (HISTORICAL NOTES)

Abstract

The article presents different undrstandings of distinguished linguists of the grammatical meaning of the morpheme -h-/sh- in Modern Bulgarian, Old Bulgarian and Proto-Slavic. The functional use of the verb forms that are marked with -h-/-sh- and express past tense and dependent taxis, is analyzed in two historical works written by H. Pavlovich (Павлович/Pavlovich 1844) and M. Drinov (Дринов/Drinov 1869). On the basis of the analysis, a conclusion is formulated: the process of grammaticalization of the evidentiality meaning, which began in the 19th century, hasn’t been completed yet; the evidentiality morpheme -h-/sh- in Modern Bulgarian is a transformed old marker of two grammatical meanings in Proto-Slavic: past tense and dependent taxis.