7.3 Balkanisms as an Example of Language Convergence

(Balkan Sprachbund)

TheBalkan Sprachbund is perhaps the best-known andmost widely researched convergence situation in the field of areal linguistics, its study dating back to theXIXcentury. The primary languages of the Sprachbund includeAlbanian,Greek, Romanian (aRomance language), and the Slaviс languages Bulgarian,Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian. Other languages more marginally involved include Judezmo (also known as Ladino orJudeo-Espagnol), Romany and Turkish.

The sociohistorical background to this situation involved prolonged contact among the above language groups during the period from AD 800 to 1700. Contact was due to a variety of causes, including war and conquest, trade, animal herding, etc. Invasions by different groups (Southern Slavs, Bulgars, etc.) led to a long period of migration across language boundaries, leading to the emergence ofmultilingual communities.

One important factor in the areal diffusion of linguistic features appears to have been the widespread use of Greek as a High language across these communities. Thiswas related to the spread of Byzantine civilization and in particular the unifying role played by the GreekOrthodox church.

of the diffused features. However, Greek was also the recipient in some cases, so the picture is not that clear [3].

The full details of this contact situation are still unknown.However, the linguistic consequences can be seen in various types of convergence at all linguistic levels. In phonology the Balkan languages share the absence of suprasegmental features such as length and nasalization in vowel articulation, aswell as the presence of amid-to-high central vowel /i/ or / / (not present inGreek or StandardMacedonian, though it occurs in someMacedonian dialects). Scholars also pointed out that the vowels systems of the languages had merged to some extent, all having at least the vowels i, e, a, o, u [22].

The structural features shared by the majority of contemporary Balkan languages (Balkanisms) include the following:

1) Decay of Nominal and Pronominal Inflection. All six of the main languages of the Balkan Sprachbund have experienced a reduction of the case system.Usually a constructionwith a preposition is employed instead. The following examples are fromBulgarian, in which the decay of the nominal inflection has gone farthest. In these examples the preposition na, originally with locative meaning, is used to introduce nominal attributes, indirect objects, and direct objects.

Attribute: knigata na bašta mi ‘my father’s book’

Indirect object: toj kaza na majka ‘he says to the mother’

Direct object: palento na ogъn zabraneno ‘lighting fire is forbidden’

Locative: na koja ulica živeete ‘on which street do you live’.

2) Pleonastic Use of Personal Pronouns. This feature is likewise found in all six of themain Balkan languages.AModern Greek example would be emena me fainetai ‘it seems to me’; compare Macedonian jas nego go poznavam ‘I know him’ (literally, ‘I him him know’), Albanian mua mё kunё sjellё kёtu ‘they brought me here’.

3) Loss of the Infinitive and Its Replacement by a Personal Construction. This is again one of the common features. Compare Bulgarian daj mi da pija ‘give me to drink’ (literally, ‘give me that I drink’), Modern Greek dos mou na pio ‘give me to drink’, Albanian a-mё tё pi ‘give me to drink’.

4) Use of Postpositive Arlicle. This feature is shared by five of the six languages (theModern Greek article precedes its noun). It should be noted that each language has used linguisticmaterial present in the language itself for the development of the postpositive article: we are dealing not with the borrowing of morphemes but with the spread of a pattern. Compare Romanian elev, elevul ‘pupil, the pupil’, floare, floarea ‘flower, the flower’;Macedonian zgrada, zgradata ‘building, the building’, utro, utroto ‘morning, the morning’ [3, p. 123].

A number of additional Balkanisms are shared by different subsets of the six main Balkan languages. For example, the analytic formation of comparatives is shared by the Šopluk dialects of Serbocroatian, Bulgarian, and Modern Greek: ‘pretty’ and ‘prettier’ appear as ubav – po-ubav in the Šopluk dialects, as xubav – poxubav in Bulgarian, and as kalos – pio kalos in Modern Greek. The numbers 11 through 19

are formed with the translation equivalents of ‘one on ten’ in the three Slavic languages, in Romanian, and Albanian: compare jedanaest (*jedan + na + deset) in Serbocroatian, unsprezece (un + spre + zece) in Romanian, and njёmbёdhjetё (njё + mbё + dhjetё) in Albanian for ‘eleven’ [ibid., p. 124].

In addition, the core Balkan languages share many phonological features, such as reduction of unstressed vowels (especially in southeastern Serbocroatian dialects, Macedonian, and Bulgarian): loss of tone and quantity and development of an expiratory accent (particularly noticeable in southeastern Serbocroatian dialects as compared to the standard language and those dialects that are not part of the Sprachbund); development of a central vowel (Bulgarian anu Romanian); and development of a special intonation pattern for yes-no questions (Serbocroatian, Romanian, andAlbanian).There is also a large collection of shared vocabulary, particularly loanwords from Greek and Turkish, and shared loan translations. The impression of similarity is enhanced by an abundance of habitual sayings, phrases, and idioms that follow the same pattern; for example, ‘at a good time’ appears in Serbocroatian as u dobri čas, in Bulgarian as dobъr čas, in Greek as hora kale, in

Romanian as ceas bun, and in Albanian as orё e mbarё [3, p. 124].

Albanian, Bulgarian,Macedonian, and Romanian share the largest number of Balkanisms. Modern Greek and Serbocroatian lack several of the features characteristic of the Balkan Sprachbund; in Serbocroatian frequently only the Torlak and Šopluk dialects appear to be involved in the linguistic alliance.

In trying to establish the causes of the observed linguistic convergence, scholars have attempted to identify one of the languages spoken in the Balkans as the source of the Balkanisms. Substratum and superstratumlanguages are fairlywell known, with the exception of some of the ancient Indo-European languages (Thracian, lilyrian) spoken in Ihe interior of Ihe peninsula while Greek and Latin spread outward from the cities and along the coast. There exists, however, no single language that contains all the features characteristic of the Balkan Sprachbund; attempts to explain them on the basis of a particular substratum or superstratum have been unsuccessful.

The adstratumtheoryis relativelymore plausible.By the fourth century A.D. Latin was spoken extensively in the northern half of the peninsula, andGreekwas spoken in the southern half; both languages continued to bespoken andwere available as adstratum. The invasions of the ancestors of southern Slavs in the fifth and sixth centuries created the preconditions for the development of linguistic convergence [ibid., p. 125].

The appearance of the various Balkanisms in the Balkan languages can be followed in written records that were continuous in Greek and began at a relatively early date in Bulgarian. Greek provides the earliest examples: the avoidance of the infinitive is already attested in New Testament Greek, and the analytical comparison of adjectives can be found in eighth- and ninth-century manuscripts. This feature is found in Bulgarian in the twelfth century. The merger of the dative and genitive appears in Greek in the tenth century: the use of prepositions to indicate syntactic relationships seems to have begun in Bulgarian in Ihe twelfth eentmy. Greek had always had a delinite article; Bulgarian begins to show the development of the article in the eleventh century, and its use becomes regular in the seventeenth century. Because of the lack ofwritten records, Balkanisms cannot be dated any earlier than the XVI centuries in Alhanian and Romanian. The Balkan Sprachbund appears to have been established by the XVII century [18].

Even the adstratumtheory cannot fully explain the shared features of the Balkan Sprachbund, and for the same reason that the superstratum and substratum theories were found wanting: there exists no Ianguage that contains all the features that characterize the Sprachbund. Civ’jan [4] has suggested that the Balkanisms can be explained not by reconstructing an earlier stage but by constructing a future stage in the development of the Balkan languages. To represent this future stage toward which the Balkan languages are converging, Civ’jan sets up a syntactic model for sentences in the various languages. The sentence model consists of the same syntactic slots for all languages; the syntactic slotsmay be filled by lexical items drawn fromany one of the languages constituting the Sprachbund. According to this theory, the defining characteristics of the Balkan Sprachbund are similarities in syntax.