The social structure of the south-east European societies in the moddle ages – a linguistic view

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review several terms spread over a quite large area in South-East Europe. The starting point of our investigation is the Romanian language understood  as inheriting an important  Thracian vocabulary, specifically referring to the social and political structure of the Early Middle Ages. The terms discussed are not exlusively Romanian. In fact, they reflect - roughly speaking - the ancient extension of the Thracian speakers, i.e. the present-day territories of Romania, Bulgaria, Soviet Moldavia and parts of South- and South-West ·ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia.