Why the Slovak language has three dialects: a case study in historical perceptual dialectology

LINGUITS HAVE LONG BEEN AWARE that the ubiquitous distinction between "languages" and "dialects" has more to do with political and social forces, typically nationalism, than with objective linguistic distance. (1) This article, an exercise in the history of (linguistic) science, examines political and social factors operating on other levels of linguistic classification than the "language-dialect" dichotomy. Nationalism and linguistic thought are mutually interactive throughout a linguistic classification system: political and social history not only affects a list of "languages," but also a list of "dialects."

Specifically, this article takes as a case study the processes through which Slovak linguists came to divide the Slovak language into Western, Central, and Eastern dialects. This tripartite division presently enjoys a hegemonic status, but a variety of historical sources suggest that observers classifying Slovak speech before the mid nineteenth century showed no awareness of it. Instead, they employed other classification systems, which reflected ideas about the Slovak linguistic zone that have since fallen out of favor. This essay derives the emergence of the tripartite division of Slovak dialects from a specific historical situation: the polemical needs of Ludovit Stur, an important Slovak politician and language reformer.

This article takes linguistics as an object of historical analysis, bur also seeks to engage with the discipline from a historian's perspective. I have found much common ground in sociolinguistics, the branch of linguistics devoted to the intersection of linguistic and social phenomena. Sociolinguists have long been aware that linguistic classification has a history, despite the popular perception that linguistic phenomena are timeless. Joshua Fishman, a giant in the field, once made the following remarks about the emergence of "national languages":

Both of these excellent questions apply not only to the well-studied creation of a "language" from a set of "dialects," but also to the emergence of a "dialect" from a continuum of spoken language. This article will attempt to answer them both for the case of the tripartite division.

Conceptually, a list of "dialects" within a given language resembles a list of "languages" within a given language family: both classification schemes divide a dialect continuum into implicitly homogenous regions. However, the political factors that establish a "dialect" are less dramatic than those that elevate a "language" from a "dialect," since the political stakes are usually lower. The political and social issues at stake in disputed dialect classifications have, in consequence, attracted less attention. In consequence, the truth claims of a dialect classification are less frequently called into question. Nevertheless, the classification of dialects, no less than that of languages, has a cultural history and should be viewed skeptically.

If both "dialects" and "languages" are socially constructed, we would expect that the classification of a large language family, such as the Slavic language family, would differ considerably over time and between different observers. This is indeed the case. British Slavist Paul Selver, for example, noted that "in 1822 Dobrovsky, the practical father of Slav philology, divided [the Slavic zone] into nine tongues, Safarik in 1842 proposed six languages with thirteen dialects, Schleicher in 1865 proposed eight, Miklosich, a prominent Slovene scholar, decided on nine, Jagic, a Croat authority of European reputation, is in favor of eight. The reason for this diversity is that some philologists designate as a language what others will admit only as a dialect." (3) Selver's passage is interesting not least because his figure for Dobrovsky ("nine tongues") differs from that of Endre Arato: "F. Pelcl, professor of Czech language and literature at the University of Prague, spoke of five main dialects (Russian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian and Czech), while J. Dobrovsky, the most outstanding scholar of Slavic linguistics of his age, spoke only of four (Czech, Polish, Russian and Illyrian)." (4) My own count, from the opening pages of Dobrovsky's Lehrgebaeude der Boehmischen Sprache, yields neither four, nor nine, but ten languages, with three subcategories of Slovenian. (5)

Most linguists and historians agree that a linguistic collective achieves the status of a "language" through extralinguistic factors. The famous bon mot that "a language is a dialect with an army and navy" usually credited to Max Weinreich, (6) correctly leaves linguistic "facts" behind, yet this memorable formula does not accurately describe the allocation of linguistic status. After the partitions of Poland, Polish retained its recognition as a distinct "language," even without a Polish army; neither Austrian German nor American English was proclaimed a distinct "language" despite significant military forces. The battle for the Slovak language had mostly been won before the 1938 Slovak state was founded; the existence of a Czechoslovak army, furthermore, did not noticeably assist the cause of the Czechoslovak language.

Historians of nationalism have focused on language codification as the decisive factor separating "languages" from "dialects." Benedict Anderson, for example, focused on the invention of printing technology, (7) while Miroslav Hroch developed a schematic five-part stage theory, stage three of which has six subdivisions. (8) Sociolinguists have also done theoretical work on the processes through which "dialects" become elevated to "languages." Einar Haugen, in his famous study of Norwegian, (9) described a four-stage theory of language codification and systematization, which he then repackaged as a "Matrix of Language Planning Processes." (Hudson later reprinted this matrix in his sociolinguistics textbook.) (10) These various stage theories reflect scholarly understanding that the classification of languages and dialects is based on more than objective linguistic facts. Any attempt to explain "how it became so" must examine historical events: the writing of dictionaries and grammars, the emergence of newspapers or best-selling authors, the development of school systems and government administrations, and so on.

How and why a dialect gains popular acceptance, by contrast, is a question that has gone almost wholly unexamined. The main scholar working in this field, sociolinguist Dennis Preston, calls his stimulating work "perceptual dialectology." (11) Preston studied how Americans classify the dialects of American English by asking informants to sketch dialect zones on a map of the United States.

Linguists often take a dismissive attitude toward popular perceptions of linguistic phenomena. As Preston put it, "folk linguistics has generally been reported anecdotally and serves usually as a foil to the 'correct' linguistics professionals want to present to neophytes." (12) Popular perceptions, however, constitute an important object of study in their own right, particularly for social scientists examining popular mentalities. Preston is right to make them a focus of research.

Preston's interview-based techniques, however, can only be applied in person, and therefore are only applicable to the present. Applying Preston's research techniques to the nineteenth century would require time machines. This inability to discuss change over time prevents any historical discussion of cause and effect: the sociology of language, true to its name, generally draws on the methodology of sociologists. I believe, however, that historical techniques allow a historical perceptual dialectology. Drawing on research in Slovak intellectual history, this article examines texts by amateur linguists and language planners to show how Slovak perceptual dialectology has evolved over time. Historical perceptual dialectology, as practiced in this article, has nothing to do with the field of historical linguistics, which aims to discover how linguistic phenomena have changed over time. Historical perceptual dialectology, however, can still make a significant contribution to the social understanding of language by linking changes in dialect perception to political and intellectual history. It can also provide new perspectives on Slovak history.

Situated methodologically between history and sociolinguistics, two disciplines not noted for their close collaboration, this essay shows some of the inherent weaknesses of a first attempt--that is, of a pioneering study. Historians, emphasizing depth over breadth, are less inclined to comparison than sociologists and sociolinguists. This article only examines a single case and may be influenced by the eccentricities of that case. Since historians analyze texts, their discussions rely on the perceptions of literate intellectuals, a social class that may have disproportionate influence but nevertheless remains unrepresentative for an illiterate and agricultural society. Nevertheless, the sources adduced below tell a coherent story. Both historians and sociolinguists would benefit from discussion across disciplinary boundaries. This essay, therefore, attempts to start a conversation.

The Tripartite Division of Slovak Dialects

Let us begin by examining how dialectologists look at linguistic diversity. One common technique is to draw a map of isogloss lines, that is, lines showing where a given linguistic transition takes place (examples will be given below). Linguist Ulrich Ammon suggests that dialects, here understood as geographically defined speech varieties, could be objectively defined in terms of "isogloss bunching." (13) Representing a distinct linguistic variety in a linguistic space as a dot on a line, Ammon drew a diagram to illustrate his argument. I have reproduced Ammon's diagram as figure 1. Isogloss lines might be imagined as an invisible line lying in space between the dots.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

In the first case (a), the four varieties on the center-right are close to each other and separated from other varieties: one might group them as a distinct "dialect." In the second case (b), the linguistic change is gradual and mostly continuous: here, Ammon concedes, one cannot meaningfully divide the varieties into "dialects" and must instead speak of a dialect continuum.

Ammon's diagrams, of course, are schematic and simplified, not least because they only allow for one dimension of geographic diversity. A one-dimensional study of geographical diversity, however, might be an acceptable simplification in the Slovak case. The Slovak territory is an elongated shape stretching in a west-east direction; a hypothetical division into "Northern" and "Southern" dialect zones, for example, would seem implausible. The tripartite division of Slovak dialects suggests that Slovak isogloss lines should bunch into two bands: one separating the Western and Central dialects, another separating the Central and Eastern dialects. In other words, the tripartite model suggests a figure quite similar to (a), though the far left dot, representing "Western Slovak" would have to be replaced with a clump of dots representing the internal diversity of Western Slovakia.

Several dialectologists, notably Jozef Stolc, Jaromir Belic, and Anton Habovstiak, have carefully studied the linguistic features of that section of the Slavic dialect continuum congruent with the Slovak Republic. (14) Their research has uncovered a huge wealth of isogloss lines distributed mostly at random, implying a huge number of varieties, each virtually identical to those immediately adjacent. If linguistic uniqueness defines a unique "dialect," then a distinct dialect would have to be assigned to each town in Slovakia, or perhaps even to each individual speaker of Slovak.

Slovakia's linguistic diversity is theoretically unsurprising. Sociolinguists Jack Chambers and Peter Trudgill suggest that "any region that has a long settlement history" will have "criss-crossing isoglosses separating even contiguous villages from one another and apparently describing a bewildering variety of dialect feature combinations." (15) Slovakia is such a region, and it follows Chambers and Trudgill's rule. In any event, the number of distinct dialects is several orders of magnitude greater than "three."

The complexity of an isogloss map depends primarily on the effort expended by dialectologists in gathering data. If all the various isogloss lines printed in the works of Stolc, Belic, and Habovstiak were drawn on a single map, the result would resemble a plate of spaghetti. The Slovak case, then, resembles neither (a) nor (b); linguistic diversity does not clump, as in (a), but is too dense for (b). The Ammon-style diagram corresponding to the Slovak case would be (c), reproduced in figure 2.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Nevertheless, the results of dialectological research can still be used to support one or another classification scheme: One simply selects those isogloss lines which support one's favored classification. Line (d) in figure 2 shows, for example, the varieties one would wish to highlight to reproduce Ammon's "varieties classifiable in terms of distance" line (a). The empty circles of line (d) represent varieties whose distinctiveness a dialectologist chooses not to highlight, the consequence of unexamined isogloss lines.

Playing with Ammon diagrams shows how the appropriate selection and omission of isogloss lines could support either a tripartite or four-fold division of the Slovak language continuum (figure 3).

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

Isogloss maps corresponding to these revised Ammon diagrams are easily constructed. Figure 4 shows isogloss lines in support of the tripartite West-Central-East division, corresponding to line (e). Figure 5 supports the four-fold Far East--Near East--Near West--Far West division corresponding to line (f). The problem with such maps lies not in the information that they display, but in the information they omit. The white spaces between isogloss lines create the illusion of relative homogeneity, when in actuality, linguistic diversity is continuous throughout the entire zone. Figure 6 provides a more accurate, if less clear, picture of the diversity of the Slovak linguistic zone. Note that the isogloss lines neither group naturally into any tripartite division nor, indeed, display any obvious bunching or internal cleavages.

[FIGURES 4-6 OMITTED]

Note also that gradual linguistic change extends beyond the borders of Slovakia. Slovak dialectologists generally define their research zone in terms of Slovakia's political frontiers. This presumably reflects how the Slovak Academy of Science, the organization that funds and publishes most Slovak dialectological research, defined its zone of competence. Belic, a Czech scholar, has examined isogloss lines that cross the Slovak-Czech frontier in Communist Czechoslovakia, (16) but to the best of my knowledge, no scholars have ever studied the transition between Slovak and Polish. Appropriate research might uncover isogloss lines that cross the Slovak-Polish or Slovak-Ukrainian (Slovak-Rusyn) frontier.

The main point of figure 6, however, is that linguistic change is continuous within the Slovak zone: isogloss lines do not bunch together. Tne chaos of figure 6 is best described as a dialect continuum. Various simplifying interpretations, whether tripartite, binary ("Eastern-Western"), four-fold, or anything else, are all equally (in)defensible.

I am not aware of any twentieth-century scholar of Slovak dialects who has so much as considered any classification scheme other than the tripartite (West-Central-East) division, much less gathered evidence in its defense. Miroslav Stepanek, in the Mala ceskoslovenska encyclopedie (Small Czechoslovak encyclopedia), listed the West-Central-East dialects, as did American Slavist R. G. A. de Bray, British Slavist David Short, and linguists C. E and E M. Voegelin. In 1934, furthermore, Vaclav Vazny, similarly posited West, Central, and East subdialects of the Slovak dialect of the "Czechoslovak language." (17) Citing other tripartite classifications of the "Slovak language" would be trivial. Whether as dialects of the Slovak language, or even as subdialects of the Czechoslovak language, "Eastern Slovak," "Central Slovak," and "Western Slovak" have a firm hold in the mental landscape of twentieth-century Slavists. At present, the tripartite structure is essentially taken for granted.

Contemporary Slovak linguists also project the tripartite linguistic division back in time. In 1980, L'ubomir Durovic divided written texts from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Slovakia into cultural West Slovak" and "cultural Central Slovak'; in 1996, Mark Lauersdorf added "cultural East Slovak" to the list. (18) In 1997, Rudolf KrajCoviC described the "basic division in West Slovak, Central Slovak and East Slovak" as "pre-historic inheritance:' In 1999, Pavol Zigo and Rudolf Krajcovic classified texts from the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries into "Cultural East Slovak" "Cultural Central Slovak," and "Cultural West Slovak," though they felt the need to subdivide the latter into northern and southern halves. (19)

Curiously, Slovak dialectologists even reproduce the tripartite classification scheme when discussing linguistic features that fail to conform to it. Jozef Stolc's Atlas slovenskeho jazyka (Atlas of the Slovak language) reproduced the East-Central-West divisions, but found the sub-subdivisions of Slovak more useful analytic terms: at least, those are the divisions numbered and discussed in the text. (20) Ivor Ripka's Slovnik slovenskych nareci (Dictionary of Slovak dialects) confusingly subdivides the West, Central, and Eastern narecia (dialects) into eighteen, twenty-six, and fifteen county-level narecia, thus using the word narecia for two distinct levels of its classification system. Ripka showed that the word grajciarka, "a long-necked bottle for spirits," crosses the dialectical frontiers: the word is used in both the "West Slovak" counties of Trencin and Hlohovec, and the "Central Slovak" county of Nitra. (21) Since Ripka describes the extent of individual lexical items in terms of Slovak counties, his reproduction of the tripartite division is doubly puzzling: Why not stick with county-level narecia? The tripartite division served no apparent analytical purpose.

Given that Slovak dialectologists understand the complexity of the Slovak linguistic reality, why are they so extraordinarily attached to the tripartite division? The answer to this question lies in the history of how the Slovak dialects have been classified. The lively nineteenth-century debate about whether Slovak was a "language" or a mere dialect of Czech--or of Slavic--provides abundant sources that discuss and classify the "dialects" of Slovak. Historical research easily traces Slovak historical perceptual dialectology back to the late eighteenth century.

Several early classifications of the Slavic speech in northern Hungary, the territory which subsequently became the Slovak Republic, were not tripartite, but dual: the territory was divided into Czech and Polish spheres. For example, the seventeenth-century Neue und Kurze Beschreibung des Koenigreichs Ungarn described the Slavic language spoken in Kosice (in eastern Slovakia) as "Polish" but claimed that many inhabitants of the Hungarian kingdom could speak "the Bohemian language ... pretty fluently" (22) This implicitly divided Slavs in the north of Hungary into Bohemian speakers and Polish speakers. Strictly speaking, this classified "languages," not "dialects," but the main point is that the territory of the future Slovakia was divided into two main linguistic regions, not three.

Grellman's 1795 Statistische Aufklarung uber Wichtige Theile und Gegenstande der Osterreischischen Monarchie listed Hungary's "Slavic" languages as "Bohemian, Moravian, Croatian, Serbian [Serbisch oder Raizisch], Wendic, Dalmatian, Russian, and quasi-half Polish." (23) To interpret this list for the Slovak linguistic zone, we must first discount the non-Slovak territories: Grellman's Wendic, Croatian, and Serbian languages are South Slavic; Russian refers to the Ukrainians (Rusyns) of Transcarpathia; and "Moravian" probably refers to communities of Moravian Brethren. (24) This leaves the territory of modern Slovakia divided into Czech and "quasi-half Polish" linguistic zone, much as in the Neue und kurze Beschreibung.

This Polish-Bohemian schema survived into the nineteenth century. Therese Pulszky, the Viennese-born wife of a Hungarian nobleman, divided the Slovak zone into Czech and Polish halves in her Tagebuch einer ungarischen Darne: "[T]he Slavic population dominates; in the west, these belong to the Czech-Moravian race.... The Slavs in the districts of Zips, Saros, Abauj, Zemplin, and Torna are much more closely related to the Poles than the Moravians in language and customs; they are more indolent and their schools are worse equipped than those of their western brothers.... Just as in the northwest, individual Slavs, in their language and customs, resemble the Bohemians, and in the north the Poles, so in the northeast all are of the Ruthenian race" (25)

Pulszky divided northern Hungary's Slavs into Czechs, Poles, and Ruthenians. Assuming that Pulszky's Ruthenians are the Ukrainians (Rusyns) of Transcarpathia, it seems that she divided the ancestors of today's Slovaks into Czechs and Poles, yielding two linguistic zones. (26) This classification differs from modern perceptions not just in the failure to divide Slovak into three dialects, but in the failure to acknowledge a Slovak nation or, indeed, a Slovak "tribe" or any other Slovak ethnographic collective. The recurring perception that Eastern Slovaks were "Polish" is also striking, though modern scholarship has frequently discussed the nineteenth-century tendency to classify the Slovaks as a variety of Czechs. (27)

The three sources cited above come from non-Slavs. Outsider perceptions are relevant, particularly given the influence of German ideas on Slavic thought in Central Europe. However, the self-perceptions of Slovaks prove more important for the history of the tripartite division. Slovaks themselves, at least the educated Slovaks who have left behind texts to analyze, tend not to favor the dual classification schemes popular among non-Slavic outsiders.

Slavs, however, show no awareness of the tripartite division of Slovak dialects until the middle of the nineteenth century. Indeed, most lack any conception of "the Slovak language" preferring instead to see all Slavdom as a single linguistic collective. Any subdivisions within Slovak under this interpretation would not be "dialectical" but "subdialectical." I have not found any Slovak authors who divided northern Hungary into Polish-speaking and Czech-speaking zones, as the German observers cited above did, but several Slovak literati replicated the Polish and Czech subdivision in subdialectical terms.

The most famous of these is Jan Kollar, the greatest of Slovakia's All-Slav (28) poets. Jan Kollar, in the edited volume Hlasowe o potrebe jednoty spisowneho jazyka pro Cechy, Morawany a Slowaky (Voices on the need for a unitary literary language for Czechs, Moravians, and Slovaks), divided the Slovak linguistic region into seven zones. The original text rambles considerably; the following quotation gives only Kollar's numbering system and geographic designations, all of which refer to Hungarian counties:

1) Slovacko-Czech, that is, literary language ... on the Moravian border in Skalice, Holic, as well as some villages in Malohont and Gemer counties.

2) The Slovak dialect proper, or, as foreigners prefer, Slovack [Slowacke] ... Martin, Liptov, and parts of Orava, Trencin, Nitra, and Zvolen counties.

3) The Polno-Slovak dialect.... Saris, Spis, and Orava counties.

4) The Russian- or Ruthenian-Slovak dialect.... Abaujvar (including Kosice), Zemplin, and Berecke counties.

5) The Serbo-Slovak dialect of the border of Serbia, mainly in the Bacske county and in many other Serbian-Slovak towns and villages, for example in Buda, in Szentendre, etc.

6) The German-Slovak dialect, mostly in mining towns and cities, in Sfavnica, in Kremenica, and other areas ...

7) The Hungaro-Slovak dialect, mainly in lower Hungary ... in Novohrad, Pest, and Bekes. (29)

Note that this "Slovak" ethnolinguistic territory covers most of the Kingdom of Hungary, including Slovak colonies in the so-called dolna zem, now part of Yugoslavia. One contemporary British scholar, David Short, mocked the "hybrid dialects" of this "pseudo-classification." (30) Why Short feels so strongly about the subject is unclear, but Kollar's division of the Slovak dialects certainly contradicts the modern tripartite consensus: ignoring regions outside the territory of modern Slovakia, Kollar posits five dialects.

Kollar's habit of creating dialect names by combining two ethnonyms was not an original contribution. Pavol Safarik's Pjsne swetske Lidu slawenskeho u Uhrach (Secular sons of the Slavic people in Hungary) contained no formal classification of Slovak dialects, but it did include songs in the "German-Slovak," "Polish-Slovak," and "Moravo-Slovak" dialects. One of the "Polish-Slovak" songs is worth reproducing:

The All-Slavic sentiments in this song suggest that the frequently ascribed "Polish" character of what modern linguists would probably designate the "Eastern Slovak dialect" had no impact on the national affiliation of the people speaking it. Proponents of a "language" usually posit a nation bearing the same name, but this link does not hold for "dialects."

In 1847, M. M. Hodza divided Slovak into four dual-ethnonymic dialects: Czechoslovak, spoken in Moravia, Bratislava, (32) Nitra, and Trencin; Polnoslovak, in Spis, Saris, and parts of Zemplin; Rusynoslovak, in Gemer; and Slovak proper--also known as New Slovak--in Martin, Liptov, Zvolen, and Novohrad. (33) Note that Hodza's geographical descriptions differed from Kollar's: Hodza assigned Nitra and Trencin to "Czechoslovak," while Kollar considered them "Slovak proper" Note also that Hodza's implicit Slovak geography differed from Kollar's: Hodza neglected Buda, Pest, and the dolna zem.

Other Slovaks dispensed with dual-ethnonymic collectives and identified Slovak dialects by place names. Such a system, perhaps, comes closest to the linguistic reality: it grants unique linguistic properties to every point on the dialect continuum; the number of dialects increases with the number of places one is prepared to list. An open-ended list of this sort need not contradict the tripartite division: modern dialectologists Stolc and Ripka combined a county-level classification system with the tripartite division. However, place name classification, like linguistic reality, is compatible with nontripartite classifications, as Kollar and Hodza showed by combining their four- and five-fold divisions with county-level classification.

Ignac Bajza classified Slovak dialects by place names in his 1789 pamphlet, "Anti-Fandly" which attacked the proposals of Juraj Fandly and was published anonymously. Bajza attacked Anton Bernolak's 1790 standardization on the grounds that no standard literary language could capture the diversity of Slovak colloquial speech. Significantly, Bajza's argument applies not only to Bernolak's standardized language, but to any standardization of Slovak. In the following quotation, all the Slavic words can be translated as "speak": "You have another practical difference between pronunciations. We hovorime differently around Trnava, they rikaju or mluva differently in the White Mountains, they vrava differently in Orava, they hutora differently in Saris and in Spis, and elsewhere they rospravaju differently. And in Nahac.... you never hovorite, never rikate, nor mluvite, nor vravite, nor rozpravate." (34) This open-ended list, naming the various dialects after Hungarian counties, does not result in a formal classification scheme, but the implicit division of Slovak "dialects" is clearly not tripartite.

A few decades later, similar arguments appeared in opposition to Eudovit Stur's standardized grammar. Jonas Zaborsky, in Kollar's Hlasowe, posited at least a four-fold classification: "Now, well, you want Slovaks to turn away from the Czech language and write in Slovak; but which of the Slovak dialects do you want to elevate to a written language? Perhaps Liptovish? Trencinish? Sarisish? Gemerish? Or God-knows-what-else-ish [buh zna jaka jeste-cina] ?" (35) In the same volume, J. Pavel Tomasek listed six dialects, defined by county names: "Here one must consider that the Zvolen-Liptov dialect [the basis of Stur's codification] is not general for Slovaks; certainly for Bratislavans, Nitrans, Gemerians, Spisaks, and Sarisans, and their neighbors, it is less easy to understand than Czech." (36) Tomasek and Zaborsky have similar lists: both posit Gemer, Saris, and Liptov, for example. However, their lists are not compatible. Tomasek combined Liptov and Zvolen into a single collective; Zaborsky treated Liptov as a free-standing unit. Nevertheless, neither Zaborsky, with four dialects, nor Tomasek, with five, replicated the tripartite division.

Bajza, Tomasek, and Zaborsky shared a similar political stance: all three wrote to oppose an attempt at codifying a standard written language for Slovaks. Fishman has pointed out that the argument "its internal diversity makes it inherently unstandardizable" is frequently used "against anguages whose opponents would prefer to see them dead and unstandadized," (37) but Fishmans observation taust be qualified in this instance. Bajza, Tomasek, and Zaborsky saw Slovak as part of a larger linguistic collective extending to Moravia and Bohemia. They believed that Slovaks already had a standardized script: Biblictina (often confusingly described as Biblical Czech). (38) These Czechoslovak-minded Slovaks did not wish to see Slovak "dead" any more than Bavarians who accept High German as a standard language nurture a death wish against Bavarian. Most Americans see themselves as speakers of "English" but this does not make them any less loyal to their accents or spelling. Czechoslovak-minded Slovaks should be presumed equally loyal to their distinctive linguistic characteristics. Nevertheless, Fishman would be right to observe that Bajza, Tomasek, and Zaborsky had political--that is, extralinguistic--motives for emphasizing the internal diversity of the Slovak dialect continuum. Their diversity-emphasizing classifications of the Slovak linguistic zone clearly reflected a political stance.

Nevertheless, in 1861, Daniel Lichard, who used and campaigned for a standardized Slovak literary language, gave an open-ended, county-based list of Slovak dialects: "This enormous [Slavic] nation is divided according to dialects more or less into tribes, or nations, such as the Russians, who are the biggest, and then the Poles, Czechs, Croats, Serbs, we Slovaks [my Slowaci], etc.... However, with the passage of time.... their language changed, but they all speak one and the same language; there are only sundry variations just as exist among us Slovaks, insofar as in Trnava and Skalica they speak differently than in Liptov, and differently again in Saris and Spis--but everybody understands each other tine." (39) Lichard, like Kollar, posited a single Slavic language, thus implicitly downgrading standardized written Slovak to a "dialectical" status. Trnava, Skalica, Liptov, Saris, and Spis refer to subdialects of the Slovak "dialect," not the dialects of the Slovak "language" The important point, however, is that despite promoting a codified Slovak literary language, Lichard gives an open-ended, county-based classification without showing any awareness of a tripartite division.

These sources suggest that the overwhelming hegemony of the tripartite division in the twentieth century is a historical development. We can confidently answer the first of Fishman's questions in the negative: no, the tripartite division was not always so. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, some observers classified the Slovak zone as half Czech, half Polish. Others posited four- or five-fold classifications defined by dual-ethnonymic dialects ("Polno-Slovak" "Rusyno-Slovak," "Czecho-Slovak," etc.), and still others used open-ended county-name systems (Liptov, Saris, Zvolen, etc.). Of these, only the open-ended scheme is still in use today, and that only as a system of subclassification within the tripartite system. The tripartite division did not acquire its hegemony until the twentieth century.

But what of Fishman's second question: why, when, and how did it become so? Why did Slovaks begin to propagate the tripartite division? When did it become hegemonic? How did it supplant its rivals? Historical linguists can never tell us when the West, Central, and East Slovak dialects were differentiated, nor when the Gemer, Liptov, and Saris dialects disappeared: the various points on the Slovak dialect continuum have always retained their individual peculiarities. The sudden emergence of the tripartite classification does not reflect changes in Slovak speech patterns, bur rather a change in how those speech patterns were perceived. In short, this problem does not belong to historical dialectology, but to historical perceptual dialectology. The next section provides an explanation for the success of the tripartite division.

A Brief History of Slovak National Language Planning

Modern Slovaks differ from their ancestors in the way they subdivide the Slovak speech collective, but they also differed in their ideas about the relationship of Slovak to other linguistic collectives in the Slavic world. While modern Slovaks argue that Slovak is a "language," distinct from other Slavic languages, Kollar, Tomasek, and Zaborsky posited a special relationship between Czechs and Slovaks. Kollar, Lichard, and M. M. Hodza, furthermore, believed in the existence of a "Slavic language." This is not a coincidence: the acceptance of the tripartite division was part of the struggle to establish the Slovak "language" in the taxonomy of the Slavic languages.

The tripartite division was devised for a specific historical situation, namely, L'udovit Stur's attempt to introduce a panconfessional Slovak literary language. It gained acceptance as Slovaks adapted Stur's legacy to their political needs. Stur, a Lutheran, justified his script as the "Central Slovak dialect," dismissing the script of his Catholic rival Anton Bernolak as "Western Slovak" and the Calvinist "Hungaro-Slovak" or "Polno-Slavic" script as "Eastern Slovak." The tripartite division was a claim to geographic centrality that justified panconfessional orthographic unity without challenging confessional pride. The tripartite division is Stur's most enduring linguistic legacy. This account, it should be noted, fundamentally contradicts the traditional narrative of Slovak language planning.

The traditional account of Slovak language planning has two heroes and one important footnote. The traditional narrative begins in 1787, when the seminary student Anton Bernolak wrote a grammar book based on "Western Slovak," Dissertatio Philologico-Critica de Literis Slavorum, which was the basis of a 1790 textbook, Grammatica Slavica. Three generations of authors used Bernolak's script, the so-called Bernolakovcina, as their standard language, though Lutherans stuck with Biblictina, based on the Reformation-era Kralice Bible used in Lutheran church services. Increasing national tensions between Slovaks and Hungarians during the early nineteenth century eventually inspired Stur to codify the "Central Slovak" dialect in 1846. Stur's standardization attracted panconfessional support, but encountered some resistance on technical grounds, so it fell to Martin Hattala, with some assistance from the above-cited M. M. Hodza, to revise Stur's work. Hattala's standard was also based on "Central Slovak" hut took a more etymological approach to spelling. Modern Slovaks write in Hattala's standard, hut they honor Stur as the founder of the national language.

In the Slovak national linguistic faith, Bernolak plays John the Baptist to Stur the savior, while Hattala plays, perhaps, the perpetually underappreciated role of Saint Peter. This dogma has long satisfied the faithful. This story, however, takes the objective existence of "Western" and "Central" Slovak dialects for granted. It further assumes that nineteenth-century Slovaks understood and used these concepts as analytical terms. This story requires substantial reworking if it is to be reconciled with the nontripartite perceptions of Slovak dialects that dominated the early nineteenth century.

Let us begin with Bernolak. Today, the speech Bernolak codified is classified as "Western Slovak" and therefore as a variety of "Slovak"; several scholars treat Bernolak as "the first codifier of the Slovak language." (40) Problematically assuming that Bernolak possessed a specifically Slovak linguistic consciousness, several scholars then conclude that he and his followers wrote from specifically Slovak nationalist motives. Dusan Kovac, for example, has written that "Slovak Catholics, from the very beginning, had the concept of an independent Slovak people" Peter Petro similarly wrote that Bernolak's followers "did not suffer from the 'Czech complex" (41) transforming any resistance to Bernolak's standardization into pathological Czechophilia.

Insofar as Bernolak's patriotic feelings come through in his linguistic work, however, his loyalty adhered to a multiethnic vision of Hungary. Historians call this the "Hungarus concept." (42) Bernolak described the Dissertatio as a grammar not for the Slovaks, but for the "Slavs of Hungary [Hungaria Slavorum]," alternatively the "Pannonian Slavs [pannonii Slavi]." (43) He described the language he codified neither as "Western Slovak" nor as "Slovak" but as "Pannonian Slavic [Pannonia Slavorum]" "the Slavic language in Hungary [linguae slavonicae in Hungaria]," or simply, "the Slavic language [slavicae linguae, linguam slavonicam]" Bernolak lived in an age when the concepts "Slovak" and "Slavic" were essentially conflated, (44) which means that he may weil have understood his efforts at organizing a Slovak Learned Society, the Slovensky ucene tovarisstvo, as an expression of Slavic feeling. Even his rejection of Czech--he left "fully to his own will he who wishes to write in the Czech fashion" (45)--could be read as a rejection of Lutheran Biblictina, not as anti-Czech feeling. His language planning stemmed from Enlightenment pedagogical motives, not Slovak nationalism. In short, Bernolak did not believe himself to have codified the "Western Slovak dialect," nor indeed "Slovak," but rather "Hungarian Slavic."

Most Slovak scholars, both historians and linguists, argue that the choice of the Central Slovak dialect explains the success of the Stur and Hattala codifications and the failure of Bernolak's standardization. The geographic centrality of "the Central Slovak dialect" supposedly made Stur's standard more representative of average Slovak speech and thus attractive to the broadest spectrum of Slovaks. Historian James Felak, for example, argued that "[t]wo obstacles, however, prevented Bernolak's Slovak from becoming the basis for the Slovak national movement. First, because it was based on Western Slovak dialects, it found little resonance in Central and Eastern Slovakia. Second, the Slovak Protestant clergy 'regarded it contemptuously as a peasant jargon unbecoming persons with any pretensions to refinement." (46) Historian Joseph Mikus gave a similar explanation: "While Bernolak had based the written language on the spoken idiom of Western Slovakia, Stur corrected this by basing it on that of Central Slovakia. It is actually through Stur's work that Slovak adopted its definitive form in which it continues today." (47) Linguist Krajcovic even indulged in grandiose language: "Stur's generation, unhumbled by pitfalls, did not hesitate: they beheld and obeyed the pulse of history and decided to elevate Central Slovak in its cultural form to the level of a literary language.... Stur's generation remained unyielding in this struggle." (48) All these scholars take the factual existence of the tripartite division for granted. Mikus and Krajcovic, furthermore, treat its three components as implicitly homogenous; only Felak acknowledges that "western dialects" are plural. Nevertheless, the fact that nineteenth-century Slovaks showed no awareness of the tripartite division throws doubt upon the causal relationship: "Selection of Central Dialect" [right arrow] "Successful Codification of Slovak Literary Language" By pointing to confessional tension, however, Felak points toward a more profitable line of analysis.

Bernolak, recall, was a Catholic priest, and so were almost all the authors who wrote according to his orthographic conventions. Of the 105 authors who used Bernolak's script, as listed in Imrich Kotvan's exhaustive bibliography, a full 100 (95 percent) had religious training. Books published in Bernolakovcina were overwhelmingly clerical: of 326 authored books, 257 (around 75 percent) were clearly religious texts, such as sermons, catechisms, and hymnals. (49) The Catholic associations of this script alienated the influential Lutheran intelligentsia.

Stur, unlike Bernolak, was a conscious patriot and was part of this Lutheran intelligentsia. He had been educated in Biblictina, written poetry in Biblictina, and actively participated in Czecho-Slovak patriotic societies in his youth. In the 1840s, however, he reassessed his Czechoslovakism for two reasons. The first was that Czech language reformers showed so little interest in accepting Slovakisms in their revised literary language. The second and decisive reason was the growing threat of Magyarization in Hungary. In 1843, Hungarian officials interrogated Stur on suspicion of treason. No evidence was found against him, but Stur was forced from his teaching post despite strong support from his students. The inability of Slovak Lutherans to resist Magyarizing Hungarians led Stur to seek allies inside Hungary. He feared that orthographic divisions would prevent Slovaks from resisting Magyarization, so Stur made Catholic-Lutheran rapprochement his top priority. This meant, in Brock's words, that "the ancient and close connection between Slovaks of the Protestant persuasion and the Czechs would have to be sacrificed. To sever this connection would certainly be painful. It was contemplated only because the alternative seemed worse: the ultimate dissolution of the Slav culture of north Hungary in the rising tide of Magyardom." (50)Theodore Locher correctly concluded that Stur's plan for a single Slovak orthography was "a concession to the spirit of Magyarism," and "a means to unify and strengthen his people and to strike a weapon (accusations of disloyalty) from the hands of its enemies." While Locher believed that "Stur in everything only concerned himself with the well-being of the Slovak people," he also emphasized that Stur and his collaborators attempted to win Magyar trust and friendship, since "denying this would mean to come into conflict with Stur and Hurban themselves." (51)

How could the linguistic-confessional division between Bernolak Catholics and Biblictina Protestants be overcome? Lutherans would not accept Bernolakovcina: it was too Catholic. But how could Stur, a Lutheran, reject Catholic script without arousing the very confessional divisions he sought to overcome? In 1846, after consulting widely with Catholic Slovaks--notably Jan Holly, a Bernolakovcina poet and Catholic priest--Stur unveiled his new literary language and began publishing a newspaper in it. Whatever the objective merits of Stur's standardized literary language--or of Hattala's revision thereof--over Biblictina or Bernolakovcina, one can be certain that they were irrelevant to Stur's success; failed attempts at rationalized or improved orthography litter the history of dozens of languages. As Sinologist John DeFrancis so eloquently put it, "the success of an orthographic scheme is a function less of its quality than of the extent to which it is promoted"' (52) How, then, did Stur promote his script?

Stur's essay "Narecja slovenskuo alebo potreba plsanje v tomto narecje" (The Slovak dialect, or the necessity of writing in this dialect), like most polemics on script reform, praised the new system on as many grounds as possible. Stur described it as the "purest" dialect of Slovak, the speech of the primeval Slavic homeland, the Tatras, and so on. (53) Concerning the questions raised in this article, however, Stur's most important argument was that his script represented "the Central Slovak dialect," whereas Bernolak's script was "Western Slovak," and thus geographically marginal. To the best of my knowledge, Stur was the first to classify Slovak dialects along tripartite "West-Central-East" lines.

The "centrality" of Stur's "Central Slovak dialect" was directed primarily against Bernolakovcina. The same line of reasoning, however, could also be invoked against the Calvinist orthographic tradition, since the Calvinist script could be reclassified as "Eastern Slovak." (54) No linguist ever wrote a grammar for the Calvinist orthography; this nascent script tradition posed less of a threat to Stur's project than Bernolak's codification. Nevertheless, Stur's plan to create a panconfessional orthography in non-Cyrillic northern Hungary--and only in non-Cyrillic northern Hungary--benefited from a pseudo-objective linguistic reason to supercede the Calvinist orthography, particularly a reason that bypassed confessional differences.

Apart from the tripartite division, Stur's national arguments concerning "the necessity of writing in the Slovak dialect" have not proved particularly attractive to subsequent generations. Despite popular perception to the contrary, Stur's national concept bears little resemblance to subsequent Slovak national ideas. Stur divided his "national" loyalties into a Hungarian legal-political half and a Slavic cultural-linguistic half, seeking to win Slovak cultural rights within the Hungarian legal context. Where modern Slovaks reject the Hungarian legacy as a thousand-year nightmare in which Slovaks were a "nationally and socially oppressed ethnic community, subject to systematic and forceful assimilation" (55) and repression, Stur sought equal citizenship inside Hungary: "We Slavs form a special nationality [Volkerschaft] in Hungary, we are devoted to our country, and have rendered service to our fatherland from the earliest times up until today.... We always fulfilled our obligations to the fatherland as Slavs, even because of this, we must possess full and equal rights with others, for obligations without rights is bondage." (56) Even more surprisingly, Stur did not even claim Slovak "nationhood" within a limited cultural-linguistic sphere. Stur's thoughts about Slovakia's place within the Slavic world varied with time, (57) but "Narecja slovenskuo" claimed only a "tribal" and "dialectical" distinctiveness: "We Slovaks are a tribe and asa tribe, we have our own dialect, which is different and distinct from Czech." (58)

This quotation deserves special attention, Stur's essay is frequently described, in Emil Horak's words, as having "scientifically proven the independence of Slovak and justified the need to codify a Slovak literary language as an integral attribute of the Slovak nation" (59) Samuel Cambel's Dejiny Slovenska (History of Slovakia) even dared to quote Stur as having claimed "that Slovaks are an independent nation and as a nation have their own language," adding only parenthetically that Stur in fact had used the terms "tribe" and "dialect" since that was "the terminology of the day" (60) Historian Peter Brock translated Stur's passage as "we Slovaks are a tribe and as a tribe we have our own language" a curious oversight, given that Brock himself notes that the word dialect is a "more exact" translation of Stur's original narecja. (61) I suggest Stur meant what he said: he did not believe in a Slovak "language" but rather a "Slovak dialect" of the Slavic language.

This unusual concept has its roots in Jan Kollar's theory of Slavic Reciprocity: Stur and Kollar, despite their bitter polemic over the status of Slovak, had more in common than is popularly believed. Kollar saw the Slavs as one single nation speaking a single language, in which Russians, Poles, etc. formed distinct "tribes" speaking distinct "dialects" (62) Kollar classified Slovaks as part of the Czech "tribe:' Stur broke with Kollar only in assigning the Slovaks a unique tribal/dialectical status. But Stur continued to accept Kollar's belief in a single Slavic nation and language with component tribes and dialects: as Stur put it, "the nation is one, but one with varieties." (63)

In short, Stur saw Slovaks as Hungarian citizens who spoke the Slovak dialect of the Slavic language. In an ill-tempered polemic against Kollar's Hlasowe, Stur's collaborator Jozef Miroslav Hurban expressed a similar dualism: "We are a tribe in Slavdom, but we are also a tribe of the Hungarian state." (64) By emphasizing Slovak autochthony in the kingdom, Stur and Hurban hoped to convince Hungarian patriots of Slovak loyalty, thus making the policy of Magyarization unnecessary.

Such ideas have no following whatsoever among contemporary Slovaks, not least because they proved so ineffective. Even when Slovaks had switched to Hattala's literary language, the Hungarian government continued its attempts to assimilate the Slovaks linguistically, along with all the other nationalities of Hungary. (65) Modern Slovak nationalism justifies an independent Slovak state and proclaims the existence of a distinct Slovak language.

Indeed, several Slovaks became disillusioned with Stur's anti-Czech Hungaro-Slavism in the nineteenth century. When Slovaks realized that Hungarians would never accept a Slavic culture in Hungary, many returned to Czechoslovak linguistic practices. In 1876/77, just after Kalman Tisza came to power as prime minister, Hurban publicly returned to an openly Czechoslovak linguistic conception: "The nation is one from the Tatras to the Elbe. The philological quarrels are melting away." (66) Stur had died twenty years previously, and one can only speculate about his reaction to the Tisza government, but it is notable that Stur himself published a book in Czech only six years after proclaiming "the necessity" of writing in Slovak. (67) Slovak Czechoslovakism found organizational structure in the so-called Hlasist movement at the turn of the century. Many Hlasists played important roles in the first Czechoslovak republic, (68) though they used Hattala's script.

Stur did not enjoy much more success as a language codifier than he had as a Hungaro-Slavic nationalist. His script used a highly phonetic spelling and several new diphthongs; most Slovak literati preferred Bernolak's more etymological spelling. (69) In 1851, recognizing that his script conventions only enjoyed limited support, Stur organized a meeting in the hope of achieving orthographic consensus. Several Slovak literati attended, including Radlinsky, a Biblictina convert from Bernolakovcina; Jan Palarik, a Catholic priest and proponent of Bernolakovcina; and the Lutheran patriots who had organized the Slovak volunteers: Hurban and Hodza, both advocates of Sturovcina. Hattala dominated the discussion. Hattala accepted Stur's "Central Slovak" grammar and pronunciation, but suggested an entomological orthography resembling Bernolakovcina. When Stur accepted this compromise, the Catholic clergy agreed to abandon Bernolakovcina. (70) Hattala's 1851 Kratka Mluvnica slovenska (A short Slovak grammar) marks the end of both Bernolakovcina and Sturovcina as distinct literary traditions, though Hattala's Slovak successfully claimed the inheritance of both.

This leaves the tripartite division as the most enduring legacy of Stur's linguistic thought, though several modern Slovak intellectuals, as discussed above, praise Stur's groundbreaking innovation of linguistic beliefs that Stur never actually espoused. The primacy of the Central Slovak dialect justified what Ammon calls "authorities of proscription," (71) an essential element in the creation of a literary standard. Slovak literati acquired the ability to stigmatize other literati for nonstandard writing without arousing confessional divisions. For example, in 1887, Samo Czambel could attack Viliam Pauliny-Toth's prose as "Trnavian" and "Western dialect." (72) The creation of a Slovak script, in turn, eventually brought about a sense of Slovak "language-hood," with all the political consequences implied by the establishment of a national language. Belief in a Slovak language became both a cause of and justification for Slovak nationalism.

The tripartite division, in short, took on a life of its own. It outlived the Hungaro-Slavic context for which Stur devised it, legitimizing the aims of the Slovak national movement in unforeseen political contexts. It helped establish loyalties to a Slovak literary language and thus made an important contribution to the Slovak national movement. Its association with Stur, whose extralinguistic political activity during the Revolution of 1848 cemented his reputation as a Slovak national hero, only enhances its legitimacy. The tripartite classification scheme, therefore, is a central feature of modern Slovak national mythology.

The true importance of Stur's language reform, then, lies in the arguments used to justify it. Stur was the first Slovak grammarian to subdivide the Slovak section of the Slavic dialect continuum into western, central, and eastern collectives. Stur devised the tripartite division to justify a script imagined as a "written dialect" of the Slavic language, to be used by the Slavs of Hungary. The subsequent success of this script as the Slovak "national language," used by members of the "Slovak nation" then retroactively legitimized the tripartite division. The items in Stur's classification scheme have changed their status: once subdialects of the Slovak dialect of the Slavic language, they are now dialects of the Slovak language in the Slavic family of languages. Nevertheless, this classification system is supported by such a powerful political

Conclusion: Politics and Dialect Classification

Many scholars have noticed that nationalism and linguistic questions have an unusually close relationship in Slovak history, but they tend to ascribe a unidirectional causality. Tibor Pichler, for example, has written that Slovak nationalism "was determined through language and culture." Indeed, Pichler has claimed an extraordinarily categorical Slovak exceptionalism: "All nationalisms in the Habsburg Empire had a very strong linguistic ingredient, but Slovak nationalism was entirely language-based." (73) Hugh Seton-Watson similarly wrote that "the creation of a Slovak nation in the nineteenth century is essentially the emergence of a language group into national consciousness." He described Slovakia as a sort of ideal type: "[T]here is no more striking example than the Slovak case of the role of language in nation-forming. (74) But while historians argue that the Slovak language created the Slovak nation, linguists have reversed the causality. Belic derived "the contemporary linguistic border" flora "the decisive age when modern nations crystallized." In his essay on the Slovak language, Durovic was even more categorical: "[T]he formation of a literary language was the most evident symptom of the formation of their nation as a separate Slavic national entity." (75)

The disciplinary division between linguistics and history explains these diametrically opposed conclusions. Historians, such as Pichler and Seton-Watson, understand that the development of a national movement depends on the actions and decisions of individual nationalists, but they take on faith the linguistic "fact" of a Slovak language with its three dialects. Sociolinguists, on the other hand, understand that the standardization of a national language depends on the idiosyncrasies of individual grammarians and that subdivisions of a dialect continuum are arbitrary conventions, but take on faith the historical "fact" of a Slovak national movement. In reality, language planning and nationalism affect each other, and causality flows in both directions. Furthermore, linguistic and political concepts interact in several ways, not just through the frequently asserted and oft-studied link between "language" and "nation" Linguists and historians must read each other's work and consider each other's evidence if either ate to understand the complex causal relationships between nationalist language planning and national politics.

The unanimity with which modern Slovaks--both linguists and nonlinguists--proclaim the tripartite division derives from its importance to Slovak national mythology. The legitimacy of Stur's codification, and thus of Hattala's codification, and therefore of Slovakia's "national language," rests on the tripartite division. The universal acceptance it enjoys among the Slovak public reflects its political utility, not its scholarly merit.

Most linguists would accept that social and historical factors affect perceptions of language, particularly regarding the "language-dialect" dichotomy. In practice, however, they show little interest in investigating nonlinguistic data. Understanding the classification of dialects, at the very least, calls for a more robust analysis of extralinguistic causes than a black box labeled "social and historical factors." This approach offers significant potential gains. Does the importance of the "Southern" dialect in American perceptual dialectology, for example, derive from memories of the Confederate States of America? Does "Western Ukrainian" derive from Habsburg Galicia? Historical perceptual dialectology might provide evidence one way or another, enabling scholars to date a dialect's emergence as an intellectual artifact. Similar questions may prove important in Yugoslavia, Turkic Central Asia, and other cases unfamiliar to this author.

The tripartite division first appeared in Slovak thought not in an impartial or "scientific" study of dialectological diversity, but as part of a polemic about script reform. This fact has consequences for the study of Slovak dialects, since preconceived ideas about a dialect continuum pose the danger of self-fulfilling research. Slovak linguists seem alarmingly uninterested in the danger that conventional wisdom may structure the interpretation of linguistic data. Anton Habovstiak, for example, presented his Slovak isogloss lines on a series of maps bearing the names of the tripartite division. (76) Having been born and educated in twentieth-century Slovakia, Habovstiak had been taught the tripartite division from his early youth. If he had been taught some other classification, might he have structured his maps differently? What would his data suggest if presented in a nontripartite fashion? I cannot help but think that the unquestioning acceptance of the tripartite model should be re-examined, even if, in the end, Slovak dialectologists conclude that the tripartite division remains a useful shorthand.

The essential step in understanding the history of linguistic classification, whether of "languages" "dialects," or other levels of classification, is the recognition that linguistic classification is part of intellectual history. The narrative proposed in this article has little to do with the reality of spoken language, which linguists, even sociolinguists, usually define as their primary object of study. Historical perceptual dialectology is not a branch of linguistics but a subfield of the history of science: it constitutes the history of linguistic thought. The history of science has demonstrated that the analytical concepts used in physics, biology, and chemistry have social and political histories, and this insight also applies to linguistics.

Historians, unfortunately, appear to have been intimidated by the technical jargon of linguistics, leaving the study of linguistic classification to linguists. Linguists tend to evaluate linguistic classification schemes either as useful or not useful, as corrector incorrect. I cannot contain my skepticism about the analytic value of dialect classification, but I must also admit my ignorance of dialectology as a discipline: as a historian, not a linguist, I have little to contribute to the study of linguistic diversity. The history of Slovak dialectology, however, is more than the relentless uncovering of objective linguistic truth. Dialectology, like physics, chemistry, or biology, has a social and political history, not least because different conceptual frameworks legitimate different social and political claims. The study of linguistic concepts in their political and social contexts has much to offer.

Specifically, my research explains the codification of the Slovak literary language in a way that explains several otherwise curious statements in the documentary record. It is consistent with Stur's Hungaro-Slavism and explains nineteenth-century observers' ignorance of the tripartite division. It also provides an alternative to the increasingly unsatisfying "national awakening" metaphor of Slovak history, which has too frequently derived Slovak nationalism from the "fact" of a Slovak language. Slovak historian Joseph Kirschbaum once wrote that "the claim that the Slovak language was never a part of the Czech or the so-called 'Czechoslovak' language was proven correct by scholarly research beyond any doubt." (77) Linguistic status, however, is by its very nature a convention that scholarly research does not prove but manufactures. Scholars of linguistic nationalism would do better to define their object of study as how, when, and why such a consensus comes to be manufactured.

(1) Heinz Kloss, "Abstandsprache und Ausbausprache," in Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik, ed. Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, and Klaus Mattheier, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1987), 1:302-7; R. A. Hudson, Sociolinguistics (Cambridge, 1980), 31-36; Peter Trudgill, Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society (London, 1995), 45; Ulrich Ammon, "Language--Variety/Standard Variety--Dialect," in Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik, ed. Ammon, Dittmar, and Mattheier, 1:316-34.

(2) Joshua Fishman, The Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revirai (Amsterdam, 1985), 77.

(3) P. Selver, Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse (London, 1919), x.

(4) Endre Arato, "The Slavic Thought: Its Varieties with the Slavonic Peoples in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century," in Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 22 (1976): 74.

(5) Dubrovsky's languages were Bohemian, Slovak, Croatian, Slovene, "Serbian (Illyrian)" Russian, Polish, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Slovene, and Old Church Slavonic. Perhaps Selver decided that Old Church Slavonic did not count since it is no longer spoken? See Joseph Dobrovsky, Lehrgebaeude der boehmischen Sprache (Prague, 1819), 4-5.

(6) Noam Chomsky, Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use (New York, 1986), 15, says that the quote is "attributed to Max Weinreich," but scholars have had difficulty finding a citation from Weinreich himself. Joshua Fishman cites "Der yivo un di problemen fun undzer tsayt," in Yivo-bleter, 25.1.13, 1945 (Mendele list, 28 October 1996). Yiddish-speaker Victor Friedman, suspecting that the quote is apocryphal, reports that some Scandinavian scholars attribute the quotation to Otto Jespersen; see his "Language in Macedonia as an Identity Construction Site," in When Languages Collide: Perspectives on Language Conflict, Language Competition, and Language Coexistence, ed. B. D. Joseph et al. (Columbus, 2002), 260. I am unable to find a proper citation either way. See "Sum: Weinreich quote," and "Disc: Army and Navy Quote" in LINGUIST List (2 and 9 March 1997), available at http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/8/8-306.html and http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/8/8-340.html, respectively (accessed on 2 Match 2005).

(7) Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London, 1987), 45-48, 78.

(8) Miroslav Hroch, "The Social Interpretation of Linguistic Demands in European National Movements" European University Institute Working Paper, EUF no. 94/1 (Florence, 1994), 12-17.

(9) Einar Haugen, Language Conflict and Language Planning: The Case of Modern Norwegian (Cambridge, MA, 1966).

(10) Einar Haugen, "Language Planning," in Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik, ed. Ammon, Dittmar, and Mattheier, 1:624. Hudson, Sociolinguistics, 33.

(11) Dennis Preston, "Folk Dialectology," in American Dialect Research, ed. Dennis Preston (Amsterdam, 1993), 333-77; Dennis Preston and Nancy Niedzielski, Folk Linguistics (Berlin, 2000), 333-77.

(12) Preston, "Folk Dialectology," 333-34.

(13) Ammon, "Language--Variety/Standard Variety--Dialect," 320.

(14) See Jozef Stolc, Atlas slovenskeho jazyka [Atlas of the Slovak language] (Bratislava, 1986); Jaromir Belic, Nastin ceske dialektologie [Outline of Czech dialectology] (Prague, 1972); Anton Habovstiak, Atlas slovenskeho jayzka [Atlas of the Slovak language] (Bratislava, 1984). Another forty-one maps comparing west Slovak isoglosses to rivers, political borders, and mountain watersheds can be found in Vaclav Vazny, "Nareci slovenska' [Slovak dialects], in Ceskoslovenska vlastiveda [Czechoslovak homeland studies], ed. Vaclav Dedina (Prague, 1934), 3:234, 252, 266, 272, 282.

(15) J. K. Chambers and Peter Trudgill, Dialectology, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1998), 93.

(16) Belic, Nastin Ceske dialektologie.

(17) Miroslav Stepanek, ed., Mala Ceskoslovenska encyclopedie [Small Czechoslovak encyclopedia] (Prague, 1987), 695; R. G. A. de Bray, Guide to the West Slavonic Languages, 3rd ed. (Chelsea, 1951), 146-48; David Short, "Slovak" in The Slavonic Languages, ed. Bernard Comrie and Greville Corbett (London, 1993), 588-89; C. F. Voegelin and F. M. Voegelin, Classification and Index of the World's Languages (New York, 1977), 311-14; Vazny, "Nareci slovenska," 223.

(18) Eubomir Durovic, "Slovak," in The Slavic Literary Languages: Formation and Development, ed. Alexander Schanker and Edward Stankiewicz (New Haven, 1980), 211-28; Mark Lauersdorf, The Question of 'Cultural Language' and Interdialectical Norm in 16th Century Slovakia: A Phonological Analysis of the 16th Century Slovak Administrative-Legal Texts (Munich, 1996).

(19) Rudolf Krajcovic, Svedectvo dejin o slovencine [History's evidence about Slovak] (Martin, 1997), 252; Rudolf Krajcovic and Pavol Zigo, Prirucka k dejinam spisovnej slovenciny [Handbook for the history of written Slovak] (Bratislava: 1999), 93-101.

(20) Stolc, Atlas slovenskeho jazyka, frontispiece.

(21) Ivor Ripka, ed., Slovnik slovenskych nareci [Dictionary of Slovak dialects] (Bratislava, 1994), 505.

(22) Anonymous, Neue und Kurze Beschreibung des Koenigreichs Ungarn (Nuremburg, 1664), 21, 15.

(23) Grellman, Statistische Aufklarungen uber Wichtige Theile und Gegenstande der osterreichischen Monarchie (Gottingen, 1795), 1:380.

(24) Grellman may very well have seen Czech and Moravian as separate languages, but it is difficult to see how this would affect the classification of Slavs living in Hungary. Alternatively, Grellmen might have seen Slovaks as "Moravians" and referred to a community of immigrants when speaking of "Czechs:" Either way, this divides Slovaks into two categories.

(25) Therese Pulszky, Aus dem Tagebuche einer Ungarischen Dame, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1850), 1:84-86, 91.

(26) A few nineteenth-century Slovaks counted the Ruthenians of Transcarpathia as Slovaks. Today the main dispute is whether the Rusyns in the Slovak Republic should be classified as Ukrainians or as an independent nation. See Johann Thomasek (writing under the pen name Thomas Vilagosvary), Der Sprachkampf in Ungarn (Zagreb, 1841), 32; Jan Moravcik, Pestbudinske Vedernosti [Budapest news] 1, no. 2 (20 March 1861). On modern Rusyn as a distinct language, see Paul Robert Magocsi, A New Slavic Language is Born: The Rusyn Literary Language of Slovakia (New York, 1996).

(27) See especially Robert Pynsent, Questions of Identity: Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality (Budapest, 1994), 46; Theodore Locher, Die Nationale Differenzierung und Integrierung der Slovaken und Tschechen in ihrem Geschichtlichen Verlauf bis 1848 (Haarlem, 1931).

(28) Many readers may prefer the more familiar term Pan-Slav to All-Slav, but I believe that the former has come to imply Russian political domination on the model of Hitlerian Pan-Germanism. I suggest that "All-Slavism" better captures the idea that all Slavs belong to a single nationality for contemporary readers. Kollar himself, however, felt perfectly comfortable with the terra Panslav, a word he used in the sense intended by Jan Herkel, the Protestant pastor who originally coined the word. Herkel defined it as "the unity in literature among all Slavs" Emphasis in original. Jan Herkel (Joanne Herkel), Elementa Universalis Linguae Slavicae (Buda, 1826), 4.

(29) Jan Kollar, Hlasowe o potrebe jednoty spisowneho jazyka pro Cechy, Morawany a Slowaky [Voices about the need for a unified literary language for Czechs, Moravians and Slovaks] (Prague, 1844), 102-4.

(30) David Short, "The Use and Abuse of the Language Argument in Mid-nineteenth Century 'Czechoslovakism,' An Appraisal of a Propaganda Milestone," in The Literature of Nationalism: Essays on East European Identity, ed. Robert Pynsent (London, 1996), 54.

(31) Pawel Josef SafaHk (Pavel Jozef Safarik), Pjsne swetske Lidu slawenskeho u Uhrach [Secular songs of the Slavic people in Hungary] (Pest, 1827), 164. The word Slovak was used to mean both "Slovak" and "Slav" in the early nineteenth century. Ibid.

(32) In the nineteenth century, this city had several names: Pozsony, Pressburg, Pregpork, and Pregporok. Some Anglophone historians prefer Pressburg when referring to the pre-Czechoslovak period. My use of the name Bratislava in this article is anachronistic: routine Slovak usage of this name dates back only to 1919, though variants of the name Bratislav date back to Safarik's Slovanse starozitnosti. The various national claims to the city are, however, beyond the scope of this article, so I have decided to use the name that readers would be able to find in a current atlas. See Peter Bugge, "The Making of a Slovak City: The Czechoslovak Renaming of Pressburg/Pozsony/Presporok, 1918-1919," Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 205-27.

(33) "New Slovak" was new because L'udovit Stur had recently codified a literary language based on it. M. M. Hodza, Dobruo slovo Slovakom [A good word with a Slovak] (Levoca, 1847), 91. See also Vazny, "Nareci slovenska" 223.

(34) Quoted from Imrich Kotvan, Bernolakovske polemiky [Bernolak's polemics] (Bratislava, 1966), 33.

(35) Kollar, Hlasowe, 89.

(36) Ibid., 199.

(37) Joshua Fishman, "Languages Late to Literacy: Finding a Place in the Sun on a Crowded Beach" in When Languages Collide, ed. Joseph et al., 101.

(38) I believe that the terms Czech and Biblical Czech are misleading and analytically harmful, since they imply that authors who wrote texts in this standard had some sort of Czech consciousness, whether national or linguistic. The many contributors to Hlasowe, the most influential Slovak defense of Biblictina, variously described the script as "the Biblical language," "our beautiful pure Biblical Slovak" "Czech," "Slavo-Bohemian," "the Czechoslovak dialect" "the Biblical or Czechoslovak language," and "the Czechoslovak Biblical language ... the true language of our forefathers." This diversity of terminology suggests that Slovaks of many national affiliations--Slovak, Czechoslovak, and Czech--used this script. Biblictina makes a neutral analytical term. See Kollar, Hlasowe, 184, 190, 7, 90, 112, 222, 197; respectively, A. W. Sembera's 26 February 1846 letter to Kollar, Jan Stehlo, Matei Bel's 1746 introduction to Dolezal's grammar, Jonas Zaborsky's 1845 letter to K. Fejerpataky, Kollar's O Ceskoslowenske jednote w reci a w literature, Jiri Sekcik, Michal Linder.

(39) Daniel Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum naroda slowenskeho [Discussion of the Slovak Memorandum] (Buda, 1861), 20-21.

(40) Gilbert Oddo, Slovakia (New York, 1960), 102-3; Michal Sebik, Strucne dejiny Slovakov [A brief history of the Slovaks] (Pittsburgh, 1940), 61; Josef M. Kirschbaum, Anton Bernolak: The First Codifier of the Slovak Language (1762-1812) (Cleveland, 1962).

(41) Peter Petro, A History of Slovak Literature (Montreal, 1995), 67; Dusan Kovac, "Die Geschichte des Tschechoslowakismus" Ethnos-Nation 1, no. 1 (1993): 23-32. Available online at http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/soeg/ethnos/english.htm.

(42) Note that the Hungarus concept was class inclusive, while the natio Hungarica was restricted to Hungary's nobility. On Bernolak's Hungarism, see Daniel Rapant, Madaronstvo Bernolakovo [Bernolak's Magyaronism] (Bratislava, 1930), 13; Ludwig Gogolak, Beitrage zur Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, vol. 1, Die Nationswerdern der Slowaken und die Anfange der tschechoslowakischen Frage (1526-1790) (Munich, 1963), 215. On the Hungarus concept generally, see Moritz Csaky, "Die Hungarus-Konzeption: eine 'realpolitische' Alternative zur magyarischen Nationalstaatsidee?" in Ungarn und Osterreich unter Maria Theresia und Joseph II, ed. Adam Wandruszka (Vienna, 1982). On Slovak versions of the Hungarus concept, see Alexander Maxwell, "Hungaro-Slavism: Territorial and National Identity in Nineteenth Century Slovakia," East Central Europe/l'Europe du Centre-Est 29, no. 1 (2002): 45-58.

(43) Anton Bernolak, Dissertatio Philologico-Critica de Literis Slavorum, translated into Slovak by Juraj Pavelek (Bratislava, 1964 [1787]); 22.

(44) Eubomir Durovic dated the term Slovak to 1485; Theodore Locher suggests it may have originally been a term of abuse. Bernolak's 1825 dictionary gives the word Slowak two main meanings: "ein Slave, Slavack, toth" and "ein Slavonier (schlavonier), toth, Horvath" In other words, Bernolak includes ethnonyms whose modern meanings include "Slovak," "Slav," "Slavonian," and "Croat" but no unambiguously "Slovak" meaning. The terms Slovak and Slav, as well as Slovene, and Slavonian, share the same root; their common origin is clear in the modern Slovak terms slovensky, slovansky, slovinski, and slavonsky. The distinction between them remained ambiguous until the 1840s. In 1845, for example, Michael Godra quoted a text claiming that "Slavjani or slovanja and Slavjanki or Slovanki [live] from the wide sea to Kamchatka, Slavonci and Slavonki in Slavonia, Slovenci and Slovenki in the area around Triglav [i.e., in Slovenia], Slovaci and Slovacki from the Tatras to the Danube" and then disagreed, proclaiming that "near Triglav live the slovenci and slovenki, but they normally call themselves slovinci and slovinki, and in the Tatras ... live Slovaci and slovenki" Jozef Ambrus, after discussing difficulties of this sort, correctly concluded that scholars "have not paid enough attention to the coherent expressions slavsky, slovensky, Slovensko, Slovencina." See Durovic, "Slovak," 211; Locher, Nationale Differenzierung und Integrierung, 86; Anton Bernolak, Slowar Slowenska= Cesko= Latinsko= Nemecko= Uherski seu Lexicon Slavicum [Slovak-Czech-Latin-German-Hungarian dictionary], vol. 4 (Buda, 1825), 3010; Michal Godra, "Vonavje Dordinki" [Fragrant Georgina], Orol tatransky [Eagle of the Tatras] 1, no. 12 (1845): 95; Jozef Ambrus, "Die Slawische Idee bei Jan Holly," in Ludovit Stur und die Slawische Wechselseitigkeit, ed. Eudovit Holotik (Bratislava, 1969).

(45) Bernolak. Dissertatio, 22-23. On the Slovak Learned Society, see Jozef Butvin, Slovenske narodno-zjednocovacie hnutie (1780-1848) [The movement for Slovak national unity] (Bratislava, 1965).

(46) James Ramon Felak, At the Price of the Republic": Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, 1929-1938 (Pittsburgh, 1994), 5; the final quotation is from Peter Brock, The Slovak National Awakening: An Essay in the Intellectual History of East Central Europe (Toronto, 1976), 13.

(47) Note that Mikus erased Hattala from his narrative. Joseph Mikus, Slovakia and the Slovaks (Washington, DC, 1977), 76.

(48) Krajcovic, Svedectvo dejin o slovencine, 205.

(49) Kotvan, Bibliografia Bernolakovcov. These figures were gathered by the author and should be treated as approximations.

(50) Peter Brock, The Slovak National Awakening: An Essay in the Intellectual History of East Central Europe (Toronto, 1976), 45.

(51) Locher, Nationale Differenzierung und Integrierung, 163-64.

(52) John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu, 1984), 255.

(53) The Tatras have become the main geographical symbol of Slovakia. Ladislas Sziklay even speaks of Slovaks' "Tatrologia" and dates "the mystic cult of the Tatras" at least back to Holly. Gogolak, however, claims that the Tatra myth originated with the Zips Germans and was only introduced to Slovak poetry through Palkovics writings. Gogolak credits Stur with "recoining the Tatra idea to a concept of Slovak independence opposed to both Magyars and Czechs" See Ladislas Sziklay, Hviezdoslav (Budapest, 1941), 24; Gogolak, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Slowakischen Volkes, 2:46.

(54) Hodza reproduced an example of Calvinist "Hungaro-Polish-Slavic" in his Epigenes Slovenicus. Its conventions were used mostly in Calvinist liturgical works printed in Debrecen; its orthography shows a marked Hungarian influence, notably {cs} in place of/t[integral]/{c}, {s} for/[integral]/{s} and {sz} for/s/{s}. M. M. Hodza, Epigenes Slovenicus [Slavic descendants] (Levoca, 1847), 63. A sample text in a similar orthography, described as "Eastern Slovak," is available in Krajcovic and Zigo, Prirucka k dejinam spisovnej slovenciny, 102-3.

(55) Vladimir Matula, "The Conception and the Development of Slovak National Culture in the Period of National Revival" Studia historica slovaca [Studies in Slovak history] 17 (1990): 153.

(56) Eudovit Stur, Beschwerden und Klagen der Slaven in Ungarn uber die gesetzwidrigen Uebergriffe der Magyaren (Leipzig, 1843), 35.

(57) Stur's Slavic and Slovak loyalties are difficult to distinguish. Sometimes, Stur's Slovak feeling predominates: "We are Slovaks and as Slovaks we stand before the world and before Slavdom" Elsewhere, Stur suggested that Slovak feeling merely serves Slavdom: "If the Slovak language did not exist, then my capacity for Slavdom would also not stand, and that would be to despair. One supports the other" Eudovit Stur, Narecja slovenskuo alebo potreba pisanje v torero narecje [The Slovak dialect, of the necessity of writing in this dialect] (Bratislava, 1846) 13, 79; Samuel Cambel, ed. Dejiny Slovenska [History of Slovakia], vol. 2 (Bratislava, 1987), 719.

(58) Stur, Narecja slovenskuo, 51.

(59) Emil Horak, "Sturov spis Naredja slovenskuo alebo potreba pisanja v tomto nareci v aktualnom slovanskom kontexte" [Stur's essay Narecja slovenskuo alebo potreba pisanja v tomto nareci in the Slovak context of its day], Slavica Slovaca [Slavic Slovak] 38, no. 2 (2003): 97.

(60) Stur's original text reads, "Mi slovaci sme kmen a jako kmen mame vlastnuo Narecja, ktoruo je od ceskjeho odchodnuo a rozdjelno" Cambel gave this as "Slovaci su osobitny narod a ako narod maju svoj vlastny jazyk (v dobovej terminologii ,,Kmen" a ,,narecie")" Compare Stur, "Narecja slovenskuo" 51; and Cambel, ed., Dejiny Slovenska, 721.

(61) Emphasis added. Brock, The Slovak National Awakening, 48, 80.

(62) Jan Kollar (Johann Kollar), Ueber die Wechselseitigkeit zwischen den verschiedenen Stammen und Mundarten der slawischen Nation (Leipzig, 1844 [1837]).

(63) Stur, Narecja slovenskuo, 13.

(64) Jozef Miroslav Hurban, Ceskje hlasi proti Slovencine [Czech voices against Slovak] (Skalice, 1846), 26.

(65) See Peter F. Sugar, "The More It Changes, the More Hungarian Nationalism Remains the Same," Austrian History Yearbook 31 (2000): 127-56.

(66) Quoted from Prazak, "Slovenska otazka v dobe J. M. Hurbana" [The Slovak Question in the age of J. M. Hurban], 530/202. Hurban's motives are the subject of debate among Slovak historians. Prazak interpreted it as Czechoslovakism, Francisci as a demonstration against Kalman Tisza, Skultety as the result of "anger," and Zechenter as a gambit for Czech support in the struggle against Magyarization. Most of these explanations are compatible with each other. On Slovak attitudes toward Hurban's transformation, see Samuel Osudsky, Filosofia Sturovov [The philosophy of the Sturites], vol. 2, Hurbanova Filosofia [Hurban's philosophy] (Myjava, 1928), 320.

(67) Stur was unable to find a Slovak publisher and felt his work would reach a wider audience in a more established script. Note that even when Stur discussed Slovak folk songs, he did not use his version of Slovak spelling; his quotations followed Hattala's standardization. While Hattala based his work on Stur's codification, it would be a mistake to equate Hattala's Slovak with Stur's Slovak. Zlatko Klatik, Sturovci a Juhoslovania [The Sturites and South Slavia] (Bratislava, 1965), 34; Ludevit Stur, O narodnich pisnich a povestech plemen slovanskych [On the national songs and legends of the Slavic tribes] (Prague, 1852), 24.

(68) In English, see Paul Vysny, Neo-Slavism and the Czechs, 1898-1914 (Cambridge, 1977); Suzanna Mikula, "Milan Hodza and the Slovak National Movement, 1898-1918" (PhD diss., Syracuse University, 1974).

(69) The biggest problem was Stur's use of {j} for diphthongs. Biblictina, Bernolakovcina, modern Czech, and modern Slovak all have a rule allowing the palatalized consonants {d} {n} {f} to be written as unpalatalized {d} {n} {t} when followed by the letter {i}; {i} self-evidently palatalizes the preceding consonant, Stur's preference for {j} thus led to great consensus that Slovak linguists have come to treat it as an objective "fact." confusion over the palatalization of consonants. Stur himself spelled the modern Slovak nie (no, not) as both nje and nje, though Stur was consistent about the {d} in djela.

(70) No original titles appeared in Bernolakovcina after 1851, but Bernolakovcina catechisms were reprinted as late as 1867. Parishioner demand, apparently, did not always follow the guidance of Catholic leaders. See Kotvan, Bibliografia Bernolakovcov.

(71) Ammon parenthetically defines such authorities as "teachers, administrative superiors" However, the term applies just as well to journalists, literati, and similar cultural figures. Ammon, "Language--Variety/Standard Variety--Dialect," 328-29.

(72) Samo Czambel, Prispevky k dejinam jazyka slovenskeho [Contributions to the history of the Slovak language] (Budapest, 1887), 69.

(73) Tibor Pichler, "1848 und das slowakische politische Denken," in 1848 Revolution in Europa, ed. Heiner Timmermann (Berlin, 1999), 167; Pichler, "The Idea of Slovak Language-Based Nationalism" in Language, Values and the Slovak Nation, ed. Tibor Pichler and Jana Gasparikova (Washington, DC, 1994), 37.

(74) Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (London, 1977), 169.

(75) Be1ic, Nastin ceske dialektologie, 16; Durovic, "Slovak," 211; emphasis added.

(76) Habovstiak, Atlas slovenskeho jayzka.

(77) Josef Kirschbaum, Slovakia: Nation at the Crossroads of Central Europe (New York, 1960), 49.

ALEXANDER MAXWELL is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Nevada, Reno.