Grecisms in Serbian: A review of previous and prospects for future studies

The paper deals with Grecisms which are one of the most widely studied class of loanwords in Serbian. After defining its scope as limited to lexical Grecisms (thus leaving aside semantic borrowings and semantic translations) a short review of the bibliography of the hitherto studies of the topic is given, with a particular stress on the existing classifications of Grecisms. The point is made of proposing a new classification of Grecisms (more substantial than the hitherto ones which depart from that once given by Max Vasmer) to be established, based on three criteria: chronological geographical and genetic ones which often come intertwined in one the same word. Examples illustrating the tripartite classification and all its subcategories are provided by a few dozens of well-known, indisputable Grecisms. Specially highlighted is the existence of a series of pairs (even triads) of words different in form, often meaning too, which through various mediations derive from identical Greek prototypes. In conclusion, future tasks of studding Grecisms are identified as working on completing the corpus by excerption of all the dialectal sources available and parallel going through the relevant etymological works dealing with Grecisms in Serbian (and in other Balkan languages as well), with the ultimate goal of producing a monograph to be a continuation of Die griechischen Lehnworter im Serbo-Kroatischen, written by M. Vasmer almost seven decades ago