A Word from the Publisher


This issue of Balkanistica, like its predecessor volume 9 (Bulgaria Past and Present: Transitions and Turning Points), is a special edition of collected papers. Although it is possible that occasional future volumes of Balkanistica will also be special editions, volume 11 (due out in late 1997 or early 1998) and forthcoming volumes for the foreseeable future will be collections of articles originally submitted to Balkanistica and published after passing a double-blind refereeing process. We expect Balkanistica to function primarily in this mode, as do most refereed scholarly journals, and we encourage our readers to submit articles for consideration.

Future volumes of Balkanistica will not be as large as this one. The unusually large number of articles in this volume is a tribute to the scholar in whose memory they have been published. We honor in this volume the achievements of one of the finest scholars our profession has produced and one of the best human beings ever to walk the face of this earth - Zbigniew Golab. I write these lines with the benefit of personal experience: He was my teacher.

Donald L. Dyer January 1, 1997 Oxford, Mississippi

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Notes and Acknowledgments


The Eighth Biennial Conference on Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature and Folklore (9-12 April 1992), organized by Profs. Howard I. Aronson and Bill J. Darden at the University of Chicago, was dedicated to Prof. Zbigniew Golab's seventieth birthday, which he celebrated on 16 March 1993. The papers from that conference, together with papers solicited from friends and colleagues in the Republic of Macedonia and Poland, were to have been published as a Festschrift in honor of the occasion. Unfortunately, Professor Golab died in his sleep the night of 24 March 1994, before publication could be completed. And so, what was to have been a Festschrift is instead a Gedenkschrift honoring the memory of a great scholar, an inspiring teacher, and a compassionate human being.

The editors and publisher gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Division of Humanities and from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures of the University of Chicago as well as from the Bulgarian Studies Association. These funds facilitated the preparation of the manuscript and enabled these papers to be published in a single volume.

Due to illness, Prof. Kenneth E. Naylor of the Department of Slavic and East European Languages at The Ohio State University was unable to prepare a paper for this collection. Only a month before the Conference was held, he passed away, a loss deeply felt by the entire community of Slavists. Prof. Golab counted Prof. Naylor among his best students, and we who are left behind mourn the loss of them both. Neka im e lesna zemjata.

Prof. Kostas Kazazis of the University of Chicago's Linguistics Department was unable to contribute his paper from the Conference to this volume, but he provided invaluable service in the editing and transcription of the Greek text in Prof. Jasar-Nasteva's article. His help is acknowledged with sincere gratitude.

At the time the papers in this volume were written, the terrible Yugoslav War had begun but was less than a year old. A consequence of that war has been the political division of the former Yugoslavia and of its main national language, the former Serbo-Croatian. Nonetheless, the terminological usage in this volume reflects the pre-War status of that language. The first paper in this volume is an English-language summary of Prof. Golab's Etnicka pozadina i vnatresen lingvisticki mehanizam na takanarecenata "balkanizacija" na makedonskiot jazik (Ann Arbor,1995). The original English-language version was read at the Eighth Biennial Conference on Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature and Folklore by Dr. David Testen for Prof. Golab, who was recovering from a stroke at that time.

The final paper in this collection is actually the text of the talk given by Prof. Bill J. Darden in his capacity as chairman of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures of the University of Chicago at the party held in honor of Zbigniew Golab's retirement. The party was a celebration of Prof. Golab's many achievements and also an occasion of good-natured mirth. The paper is included here as a memory of a happy time. Caveat lector!

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In Memoriam: Zbigniew Golab


Victor A. Friedman

University of Chicago

Born in Novi Targ, Poland on 16 March 1923, Zbigniew Golab received his M.A. in 1947 from the Polish University, Wroclaw and his Ph.D. in 1958 from the Jagellonian University in Cracow. His education was interrupted by both World War Two and the Communists. During the War he was active in the Polish underground and was captured by the Nazis. Fortunately, he escaped by jumping off the train that was taking him to a concentration camp. After the War he was imprisoned for a year (1948-49) by the Communist authorities. During the Nazi occupation he studied with Prof. Mieczyslaw Malecki at the Underground University and was drawn to South Slavic languages. His doctoral dissertation, published in Makedonski jazik (1960-63), was a linguistic analysis of the Macedonian texts and lexicon collected before the War by Malecki in the villages of Suho and Visoka in Greek Macedonia near Salonica. After the War and Communist prison, Golab taught at the Catholic University of Lublin (1952-61) and was an adjunct at the Slavic Institute of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (1955-61). It was during this period that he met Prof. Blaze Koneski, Macedonia's leading linguist. Thanks to an invitation from Koneski, Golab received a stipend from the Macedonian government which enabled him to spend seven months in 1958 conducting research in Macedonia. He was able to return there for research in 1960. Among the results of that research was his habilitation, published in 1964 (Conditionalis typu balkanskiego w jezykach poludniowo-slowianskich, Cracow). In 1961, Golab came to the University of Chicago at the invitation of Prof. Edward Stankiewicz, then chairman of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. In 1962 Golab joined the Department, where he remained as Professor until his retirement in 1993, when he became Professor Emeritus.

The broad range of historical-comparative Slavic, Balkan, and general linguistic topics covered by Zbigniew Golab's scholarly work is too great to be detailed in a short essay, but a few highlights can be touched upon here, and his bibliography is included in this volume. Prof. Golab's description of the Arumanian dialect of Krusevo (Skopje, 1984) is one of the very few works describing an Arumanian dialect spoken in Macedonia and is a model of structuralist analysis. He also co-edited a dictionary of linguistic terminology (Warsaw, 1968) and was the author of numerous articles and reviews on topics ranging from Polish dialectology to syntactic connotation. His works on Slavic verbal moods, the problem of defining the notion of "subject," on Slavic linguistic history and its cultural implications, on Slavo-Romance and Turko-Slavic linguistic contact have all been of seminal importance in the advancement of Slavic and Balkan linguistics. His last book - The Origins of the Slavs: A Linguist's View (Columbus, 1992) - brought together the fruits of a lifetime of research in Slavic historical linguistics.

Professor Golab was chairman of the Midwest branch of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Commission on Linguistic Contacts of the International Committee of Slavists, and served on the editorial board of Slavic and East European Journal, to which journal he contributed both articles and reviews. He was elected to the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972 and was reinstated in the Polish Academy of Arts (Polska Akademia Umiejetnosci) after the fall of Communism.

Zbigniew Golab, in addition to being a great scholar, was an extraordinarily kind human being. His was a brilliant mind that was utterly without guile. His foremost care was the honest search for truth and knowledge. His passing on the night of 24 March 1994 was a loss deeply felt by all who knew him. He will be greatly missed by his many friends, colleagues, and students both in the U.S. and in Europe. It is to his memory that this collection of articles is gratefully dedicated.



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