Balkan Sprachbund

Versuch einer Turzismenuntersuchung in den Balkandialekten Die traditionelle Balkanologie konzentriert ihre Aufmerksamkeit vor allem auf die Fragen der turksprachigen Quellen, der Etymologie, der Chronologie, der phoneti-schen und morphologischen Anpassung, der stylistischen Wertung und der Verdrän-gung der Turzismen in den einzelnen Standardsprachen des Balkans. Dabei wird einerseits die Frage nach der Relevanz des turkstämmigen Sprachmaterials für die Balkansprachbundtheorie vernachlässigt, andererseits immer wieder nach einem Tur-zismenkorpus (" einem neuen Miklosich ") gefordert, in dem dialektale Daten nicht fehlen durften, dessen Zusammenstellung aber wie vor 40 Jahren immer noch nicht in Sicht ist. Im Artikel wird das Inventar der dialektalen Turzismen aus elf repräsentati-ven im Forschungsprojekt " Kleiner Balkansprachatlas " untersuchten Balkanmund-arten (west-und ostsüdslavisch, nord-und südalbanisch, nordgriechisch und aromu-nisch) dargestellt und seine innersprachliche und sprachgeografische Distribution analysiert. Die unikalen, nur in einer Mundart vorhandenen Turzismen werden aus-gelesen, die Unterschiede im Turzismeninventar der semantischen Wortfeldern ent-deckt, die Frage nach der innersprachlichen Motivation der Entlehnung und ihrer Derivationsvitalität in der aufnehmenden Mundart aufgeworfen und die semantischen Amplituden der weit verbreiteten Turzismen festgestellt. Von 40 Turzismen, die in mindestens drei Balkansprachen vorkommen und die man als lexikalische Balkanis-men bezeichnen kann, werden 15 auf phonetisch-morphologischen und semantischen Sprachkarten präsentiert, wodurch eine Gliederung des untersuchten Sprachareals in einen Ost-, West-und Südteil veranschaulicht wird. Zum Schluss werden einige wei-teren Aufgaben der balkanistischen Lexikologie erörtert. Der erste Teil des Artikels folgt anschließend, die Fortsetzung nebst Kartenteil in der ZfB 40 (2004) 2.

The paper presents the authorʼs individual views on the state of affairs and presents theoretical, methodological and practical results, obtained by him in the last decade in the field of the comparative-historical and comparative-contrastive Balkan linguistics and especially of (morpho-)syntax. The major theoretical issues of Balkan linguistics like principles of genetical, areal, social or contact determination or restriction in language evolution are being addressed. The historical, structuralist and functionalist methods of research in Balkan dialectology (collecting the (morpho-)syntactic data, their mapping, systemic and contrastive analysis) are being applied. In the introduction a new definition of a (Balkan) Sprachbund is being promoted, as " a language group defined by functional, not substantional properties ". Further a number of general, areal, particular and universal (morpho-)syntactic phenomena are being presented, like (1) redundancy in Balkan grammar; (2) contact-related convergent syntactic structures; (3) two-languages-in-contact induced morphosyntactic changes; (4) borrowability hierarchies in the (history of the) Balkan languages. It is claimed for ex., that Balkanisms (" the shared common Balkan features ") should be opposed to anti-Balkanisms (" features that were never shared (borrowed) despite similar conditions of contact "); that the causes of Balkan convergence are to be seen in multiple language shifts (substratum phenomena) rather than in balanced bi-or trilingualism; that although a cross-linguistic comparison of (morpho-)syntax involving Balkan languages is truly possible, the study of " comparative (morpho-)syntax of the Balkan languages " can, but should not obligatorily discover parts of the " comparative Balkan (morpho-)syntax ". In conclusion the major tasks and desiderata of contemporary Balkan linguistics are being summarized.

I aim in this chapter to provide a generalizing genetic and geolinguistic (arealtypological) analysis of Slavic dialects in the Balkan context and to offer synthetic conclusions at the present state of research. I will make statements on theory and terminology, research method and tasks, present my data and discuss divergent and convergent developments. All this will help me achieve a solid knowledge of how general mechanisms of genetic splitting and typological merging, borrowing and calquing, language shift, and language and ethnic separation interplayed to make Balkan Slavic a special language group.

The paper discusses the contacts between Albanian with Slavic in the framework of some major theoretical issues of Balkan and general contact linguistics. New field data from the zones of ongoing Albanian-Slavic contact in East Albania (Gollobordë area) and South Montenegro (Mrkovići area) will uncover special, mutual contact-induced changes in all structural levels of Albanian and South Slavic dialects (i.e. in phonetics/phonology, inflective morphology, morphosyntax, syntax, word formation, and vocabulary). Contact-induced change variation through time and space reveals the general paths of language convergence in the Balkans and the restrictions that apply to that convergence. Donor vs. recipient relations can tell us about former substrate, adstrate, and superstrate roles where written evidence is scarce or direct observation impossible. Historically changing social circumstances of contact, such as dominant vs. nondominant situations should be taken into consideration together with the roles of a high culture language vs. a language of traditional culture.

În articolul de față sunt prezentate unele aspecte ale cercetării limbilor bulgară și română în contextul apartenenței lor la uniunea lingvistică balcanică. Sunt analizate definițiile conceptului de uniune lingvistică, așa cum se întâlnesc ele în lingvistica contemporană. În lingvistica românească, conceptul este acceptat cu anumite rezerve, termenul uniune lingvistică având unele conotații politice nedorite. Acest termen ar putea fi înlocuit cu cel de arie de convergență, fiind echivalentul termenului englezesc convergence area, care reflectă cel mai bine viziunea contemporană referitoare la fenomenul de uniune lingvistică. De asemenea, în articol sunt analizate principalele caracteristici ale uniunii lingvistice balcanice. Trăsăturile comune limbilor balcanice (balcanismele) fac obiectul unor studii numeroase din lingvistica balcanică contemporană. În lingvistica românească și bulgară ar trebui ca rezultatele acestor cercetări să fie luate în considerare și dezvoltate. Credem că este utilă, în ambele limbi, cercetarea contrastivă din perspectivă balcanică a unor elemente lexicale și gramaticale, cum ar fi: formele și valorile subjonctivului, ale viitorului și prezumtivului, categoria evidențialității, frazeologia balcanică ș. a.

В статията са представени някои аспекти на изследването на българския и на румънския език в контекста на балканския езиков съюз. Разгледани са дефинициите на понятието "езиков съюз" в съвременната лингвистика. В румънското езикознание това понятие се приема с известни резерви и се счита, че румънският термин uniune lingvistică 'езиков съюз' има нежелани политически конотации. Това название би могло да се замени с рум. arie de convergență 'конвергентен ареал', като съответствие на англ. convergence area, което отразява съвременното виждане за явлението езиков съюз. Разгледани са основните характеристики на балканския езиков съюз. Редица общи за балканските езици езикови структури са обстойно изследвани в балканското езикознание. Постиженията на балканското езикознание би трябвало винаги да се вземат предвид в румънското и в българското езикознание, особено в случая на общите балкански явления. В съпоставителен план с останалите балкански езици е необходимо да се изследват теми като формите и стойностите на конюнктива, на бъдещите времена и на презумтива, изразяване на евиденциалност, балканска фразеология и др.

Balkanization, as the spread of innovative Sprachbund linguistic properties, is a process which develops diachronically in the history of every Balkan language, diatopically in their dialect continua and diastratically between their social groups. The Torlak dialect area, one of the heavily balkanized but still archaic parts of the South Slavic linguistic space, presents
a well-known challenge for descriptive and explanatory models of Slavic and Balkan language studies. Which glottonym is most appropriate for it? Which Slavic language does it belong to if it doesn't represent an individual linguistic entity? What are its ethnic composition and dialectal subdivisions, and further, does it disintegrate by  being divided by
actual political borders between Serbia, North Macedonia and Bulgaria? Does the basic traditional dialect survive until today in a kind of diglossia with the standard, or is it being replaced by regiolects in diaglottic situations? What were the mechanisms of its balkanization in history and did a substrate play any role in its formation if at all? The methods of linguistic research, such as descriptive dialectology, areal linguistics,
comparative Balkan studies, text analysis, border and migration linguistics and others, in their traditional and especially in their contemporary digital form (digital atlases, text corpora), allow us to definitely solve at least some of the problems and to develop instruments for further progress towards a deeper understanding of this part of the Slavic and Balkan space.

In the 19th century, a structural linguistics emerged in Europe based on the writings of Ferdinand de Saussere. In the twentieth century, this movement played a decisive role in the development of contemporary linguistics and introduced the theory of ğı language unity bir (Trubetskoy), in which, in the 20s and 30s, Prague linguistics was based on structural linguistics. This theory; The fact that various language groups or their families had too much contact throughout history, could change their primitive structure and create common structural similarities. This is the way the language associations. One of the most important examples of this theory is the Balkan Language Association. The languages included are Bulgarian / Macedonian, Romanian, Arumence, Albanian and Greek. These languages share many similarities in structural terms. In this thesis, we will examine the emergence and development of Balkanology as a separate branch of regional linguistics. Located language of Turkey in the Balkans were excluded from the Turkish Balkanology. The reasons for exclusion are Turkish language, which is rich in terms of structural linguistics and has a highly developed state system, and is diametrically opposed to Balkan languages because it is twisted and analytical languages in terms of structure. For this reason, the linguists dealing with the Balkan Language Association did not consider Turkish as Balkan language and de facto excluded it from linguistic Balkanology. In other words, Turkish is not only accepted as a Balkan language in terms of linguistics while it is one of the Balkan languages. The influence of Turkish on Balkan languages is limited not only in lexicology but also in structural linguistics.

The present paper outlines a diachronic typology of changes in case systems within the Indo-European linguistic family. This study is written in the genre of identification and definition of problem: I will not attempt to offer an exhaustive treatment of the subject. Rather, I would like to draw attention to the importance of extensive research in this field in a diachronic typological perspective, which, in my opinion, may shed light on reconstruction of the linguistic prehistory of Eurasia. First, I will summarize some well-known facts about the Indo-European case and the variety of reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European case system, outlining the most important tendencies – without entering into a discussion of details of the individual case systems as well as into details of the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction. In the second part of the paper I will make an attempt to explain some of the attested developments of the original case system as resulting from contacts with non-Indo-European languages. This, in turn, will enable us to make some hypotheses about the case systems and, in general, structural types of some non-documented substrate languages which could have triggered these changes.

Areal distribution of the frequency of the post-positive article in the Timok vernacular of Southeast Serbia
The post-positive article is an unstressed particle derived from demonstrative pronouns and used as a definiteness marker, while retaining its demonstrative meaning. In the Timok dialect, an eastern variant of the Prizren-Timok dialect of Serbian, it follows a noun (bratat, ženava, deteno) or a modifier (moav starac). The post-positive article is one of the most salient features of the Timok dialect, differentiating it from standard Serbian and other Serbian dialects. In contrast to Serbian, the article is used in standard Bulgarian and Bulgarian dialects that border on the Timok area, as well Macedonian to the south. The frequency of the use of the article in the Timok area varies throughout the territory where the dialect is spoken, with major differences between one village or speaker and another. This study examines the parts of the Timok area where the article is used more frequently and the reasons for this. The data samples are taken from transcripts of ethnolinguistic fieldwork interviews recorded between 2015 and 2017. The study aims at identifying the influence of surrounding languages on the use of the post-positive article in the narrative samples. Contact with these languages is expressed in geographical terms. The effect of areal and geographical factors such as the proximity of the Bulgarian border, longitude and latitude, altitude and the proximity of Knjaževac (the administrative centre of the area), were examined using standard statistical correlation tests. The results show a notable effect of altitude as an indicator of remoteness, but influence by Bulgarian has not been determined. This implies that the use of the post-positive article is affected more by contact with the culturally more highly-rated Serbian than with Bulgarian and Macedonian, which are typologically closer.

Durch länger andauernden Sprachkontakt kommt es zu Konvergenzerscheinungen geographisch benachbarter Sprachen; diese äußern sich in typologischen Mustern, d.h. „durch auffällige Übereinstimmung im [grammatikalischen] Bau“ (Gippert 2010:634); diese Muster sind einer Gruppe von Sprachen gemein, obwohl diese keine genetische Verwandtschaft aufweisen –  man spricht von einem Sprachbund (engl. linguistic area, frz. aréal linguistique). Lehiste (1988:95) definiert diesen wie folgt: „[a] language convergence area and the languages spoken within that area, in which genetic heterogeneity is gradually replaced by typological homogeneity“. Der Balkansprachbund, mit dem sich die vorliegende Arbeit auseinandersetzt, ist der „älteste bekannte, am frühesten erforschte Bund und gleichzeitig die am wenigsten umstrittene Sprachgruppierung überhaupt“ (Haarmann 1976:77). Im Folgenden sollen, nach einer kurzen Erläuterung des wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Kontexts, die strukturtypischen Parallelen der Balkansprachen kurz dargestellt und anhand von Beispielen verdeutlicht werden.

The linguistic history of Belgrade, as well as of the most parts of the Balkans in general, consists of partial and sporadic accounts of the linguistic practices of different ethnic and religious groups (Tsintsars, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Serbs, Sephardic Jews, etc.), which coexisted in these territories for centuries. (Socio)linguistic studies of the Balkans have failed so far in providing a holistic and systematic reconstruction and analysis of its linguistic history and of the long-lasting multilingualism/ bilingualism from the past and its consequences. As the language of the Sephardim was very often neglected in the above-mentioned studies, the aim of this paper is to indicate some issues related to the linguistic history of Judeo-Spanish, and, especially, the need for placing it in a broader Belgrade/Balkan context. In addition, some preliminary guidelines are suggested for sociolinguistic analysis of linguistic history of Belgrade/Balkans in the future.

The languages of the Balkans are a rich source of data on contact-induced language change. The result of a centuries long process of lexical and structural convergence has been referred to as a ‘sprachbund’. While widely applied, this notion has, however, increasingly been questioned with respect to its usefulness. Addressing the linguistic makeup of the Balkan languages, the notion of sprachbund is critically assessed. It is shown that a) the Balkan languages and the Balkan linguistic exclaves (Albanian and Greek spoken on the Italian peninsula) share similar contact-induced phenomena, and b) the principal processes underlying the development of the Balkan languages are borrowing and reanalysis, two fundamental and general mechanisms of language change.

The paper presents some observations on the first post-Yugoslav handbook of dialectology focusing on Montenegrin (Čirgić 2017), which sets criteria for identifying the diacritic features of Montenegrin Štokavian. In contrast to Yugoslav-era treatments of the Štokavian dialect (e.g. Ivić 1958, Peco 1985), the new handbook individuates Montenegrin and presents it as an organic whole, rather than examining its relationship to the broader South Slavic dialectological context. The task is challenging, given that there are two distinct dialect areas of Montenegrin. The trend towards describing former-Yugoslav dialect areas in alignment with the new state formations has been noted for Lisac’s handbook (Lisac 2003; Greenberg 2004).

In this paper I argue that the notion of genitive-dative syncretism, a phenomenon present in Romanian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Greek, has to be redimensioned in the light of its distribution within the Balkan Sprachbund and of its realization in the single languages. Genitive-dative reduction displays three tendencies: genitive > dative absorption (Romanian, Albanian), the opposite case (Greek) and the use of the dative preposition na to express genitive (Bulgarian). Besides the difficulty in identifying the source of this phenomenon, its distribution does not seem to be consistent in the Balkan languages, as it is realized differently and with variable levels of approximation.

This paper deals with Hittite parallels to Balkan clitic doubling. The structure and functions of Hittite clitic doubling are briefly described, then they are compared with the Balkan one. The small number of occurrences as well as the exclusively pragmatic conditioning of Hittite clitic doubling (not any kind of topic, but rather shift topic) testify that clitic doubling was just emerging in Hittite. The comparison with the pragmatically conditioned Balkan Sprachbund clitic doubling demonstrates that these very first steps of clitic doubling evolution in Hittite attest a very different scenario from the one in the Balkans, namely that clitic doubling need not always develop along the same cline dependent on the topical hierarchy. This Hittite -Balkan comparison contributes to the little described diachronic typology of clitic doubling.

The traditional clothing of the Mrkovići Muslim ethno-local group in Montenegro began to change at the turn of the 21st century in response to several factors. Firstly, this clothing was more and more reserved exclusively for ritual (and festive) occasions. Secondly, the group demonstrated increased interest in its own history and culture. And, thirdly, the group confronted challenges associated
with globalization processes by transforming its traditional clothing. This paper recounts the results of fieldwork conducted by the recent Russian Balkan expeditions. We briefly outline the history of the prototypical oriental female dress and provide commonly used names for its elements. We then describe a costume variant common among the Mrkovići in the 19th and 20th centuries and give the dialectal names for its elements. We have recorded the 21st century transition to a new variant of the wedding costume, dominated by the color white, which is motivated by aesthetic, pragmatic, mythological, and religious factors. Finally we describe this contemporary costume and name its details. The specific combination
of archaic and innovative, inherited and borrowed elements shapes the peculiar profile of the Mrkovići culture as a whole and their traditional wedding costume in particular.

The paper deals with the areal-typological profiling of Ukrainian among languages of Europe, constituting Standard Average European (SAE) and especially Central European (CE). Placed recently in the context of the ‘areal typology’ and the ‘dynamic taxonomy’, Ukrainian together with Russian and Belarusian appear to be mere replica languages. Such languages are capable of only borrowing surface structures migrating all over the Europe unie or imitating deep structures on the model of SAE or CE. In order to elaborate on an alternative profiling of Ukrainian among languages of (Central) Europe, the author concentrates on both phonological and morphosyntactic features treated commonly as CE Sprachbund-forming (the spirantization of *g, the dispalatalization of the palatalized consonants, the existence of medial l, the umlauting, the three-tense system, including a simple preterit from the perfect, and the periphrastic ‘ingressive’ future). As a result, the author advances another vector ...

Examined in this paper is the attitude of current Serbian dialectology towards
phenomena that are the subject matter of contact linguistics. The aim of the study is to
show which types of contact situations and their outcomes are investigated by dialectologists
and which are, by applying certain methodological procedures, excluded or
at least minimised. The survey of the scholarly production in the field reveals that the
attention has been given to the dialectal lexical and structural borrowings from the
neigh bouring languages, as well as the interdialectal interference, the contact-induced
Balkan innovations and analytic tendency in dialects (which are of particular significance
for the study of the Balkan Sprachbund), the mutual influences of standard language
and dialects, the sociolinguistic factors determining the dialectal variations that
result from language contact, urban dialects and even bilingualism. It should be noted
that not all issues have been equally addressed: some of them are well established in
the field, while the others only give hints of possible future trends within the discipline.
The observed changes in the focus as well as in methodology of its investigations make
dialectology more open to the issues contact linguistics is interested in.

This paper, from a sociolinguistic perspective, examines Albanian as a recipient language in contact situations in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, having the following structure: section 1. addresses historical and socio-political factors involved, section 2. presents examples of linguistic differences or varieties, highlighting the prescriptive approach of Albanian-speaking linguists. The last section concludes that varieties can be normative, Albanian urgently requires more work on standard varieties and needs a serious development of corpus-based studies.

To quote: Albana Muco, "Linguistic errors or varieties? Albanian and other languages in contact", in R. Muhr,  J. A. Mas Castells, J. Rueter (ed. by), European Pluricentric Languages in Contact and Conflict, Peter Lang Verlag, Berlin, 2020, pp. 185-197.

The aim of this paper is to provide an explanation of the emergence of dom in peripheral Macedonian dialects through a reevaluation of the contact hypothesis. The southern and south-western dialects in the contact zones with Greek and Aromanian use a dative-based pattern to mark specific, predominantly human and animate referents. However, the contact hypothesis cannot fully explain the origin of dom in the southernmost dialects because it overlooks the wider interlingual context within which this change occurred. Relying on the analysis of the examples from the oldest sources with dom, the author argues in favor of a multifactorial explanation of its origin: contact obscured the case marking functions of clitics and provided an analytic direct object pattern. The introduction of na-marking on direct objects satisfied both the semantic and pragmatic requirements of a successful message by discriminating between the syntactic functions and discourse prominence of the object participant.

Against the background of the widely spread contemporary approaches to language variation, which take advantages of the quantity relevant methods usual for natural sciences, the dialectology of Balkan languages employs traditional methods of humanities. The Balkan linguistic addresses qualitatively relevant representative linguistic data, studies in detail the linguistic context of phenomena, reckons systemic restrictions in distribution, looks for isosemantic, isomorph and isofunctional cross-linguistic parallels, interprets areal facts through language contacts and history. The article applies this approaches to the prepositionless nonfinite predicates governed by modal verbs – the infinitive, participle and verbal substantive of the Balkan languages.  It comes out on one side, that the relevance of variation parameters is significantly different and the inventories of forms and structures are language specific. On another side, the contact induced character of the binary isosemantic and isomorph cross-Balkan parallels under investigation is obvious. Language contact is a systemic factor which makes morphosyntactic variation in the Balkans more complex, and search for the new parallels will ever remain a promising task of the Balkan linguistics.

The paper claims, that two phonologies and two grammars coexist in the same bilingual individual in GoloBordo, no single integrated speech community emerges with no creole, no mixed language, no emergence of new types, and there is no language death or abandoning of any language observable.

The paper presents the goal, tasks and results of research supported by RSCF grant 14-18-01405. Linguistic change in selected bilingual societies in the Balkans is investigated against the background of the outcomes of the pan-Balkan convergence. The contact situations in the zones of bilingualism, linguistic evolution and contact-induced change on all structural levels give support to the theory, according to which the Balkan Sprachbund is a result of a language shift after a long period of mass bilingualism.