Chapter 4 presents the lexical dimension to Balkan linguistic convergence, treating first loanwords from various sources, Balkan and non-Balkan, into the Balkan sprachbund languages, at successive historical periods, e.g. from Greek and Latin in ancient times, from Slavic in Byzantine times, from Romance languages during the Crusades, from Turkish in the Ottoman period, and, more recently, from West European languages. The borrowing material surveyed includes both words and affixes. A key innovative construct is introduced for the typology of loanwords by focusing on a significant group of items that must have been borrowed through the medium of conversational interaction. Such conversationally based loans, neologistically referred to as “ERIC” loans (for those “Essentially Rooted In Conversation”) are exemplified through the borrowing of various closed class items, including both grammatical forms like complementizers and pronouns and discourse markers, many of which come from Turkish. Particular attention is given as well to taboo words in the Balkans, to shared phraseology—including shared idioms and proverbs—to shared semantics (isosemy), to shared expressive forms involving reduplication and onomatopoeia. Finally, the lexical side of shared style and register is discussed.

This final chapter, Chapter 8, offers a summation of the major trends of development seen in the preceding chapters, and addresses the key question of causation, looking at the forces that led to the convergence seen across the Balkan languages. Multilateral, multigenerational, mutual, multilingualism (our “four-M” model) is argued to be the leading element in the convergence, with particular focus on the speaker-plus-dialect approach. An assessment of the construct of “sprachbund” is offered, and it is argued that the Balkan sprachbund is not a remnant of an historical state that no longer exists, but rather is very much alive, albeit in more limited contexts than in the past.

The material in this section sets the stage for the content in the subsequent chapters. Key notions, including ideology, are pointed out, and the focal geographic area, the Balkan peninsula of Southeast Europe, is identified as a hotspot for multilingualism and language contact, with specific reference to the structural and lexical parallelism seen in the Balkans and to the key construct of the “Balkanism”, i.e., a contact-induced convergent feature. Mention is made as well of the range of handbook-like presentations about the language situation in the Balkans. Finally, in light of the many works on the Balkans, a justification is provided for the present volume, and the place that it aspires to in treatments of the Balkans from a linguistic perspective.

Chapter 3 discusses the key methodological and theoretical issues relevant for Balkan linguistics as a specific manifestation of complex language contact. On the one hand, other proposed linguistic areas are discussed, such as Amazonia, Araxes-Iran, the Caucasus, Ethiopia, Mainland Southeast Asia, Meso-America, the Northwest Coast of North America, and parts of Papua New Guinea and Australia. In that regard, the Balkans represent not only the most studied such case but also the most studiable, in that of all the sprachbunds that have been discussed in the literature, the Balkans offer the greatest amount of, and the longest time-depth for, information on the linguistic history of the area, the social history of the peoples in the region, and relevant reconstructible linguistic prehistory. On the other hand, mechanisms of, and relevant factors for, contact-induced change are presented, including multilingualism, interference, accommodation, simplification, pidginization and creolization, code-switching, borrowing, calquing, and language ideology. Further, other methodologies, including the Comparative Method, linguistic geography, and typological assessments offer additional sources of information for both Balkan linguistic prehistory and Balkan dialectology.

Chapter 5 presents the facts concerning phonological convergence among the Balkan languages, focusing on shared processes affecting consonants and vowels, on prosodic units (including clitic behavior), on morphophonemic alternations, and on expressive uses of sounds. The vast majority of phonological Balkanisms are highly localized in nature, leading to the conclusion that we see here not Balkan phonology but rather Balkan phonologies. Despite the general inattentiveness on the part of scholars to phonology in the Balkan sprachbund, it is demonstrated here that there is robust convergence in this domain of grammar, albeit at local levels.

By way of recognizing the considerable scholarship that makes the Balkans the best-studied and best-understood sprachbund (contact area), and by way of establishing a baseline of knowledge about the Balkans from a linguistic perspective, Balkan linguistics as a field is surveyed here from an historical perspective, with key scholars and their important works highlighted. Attention is given to pre-modern treatments and to the early modern era of Balkan linguistics, with a particular focus on a watershed moment for the field, the publication of Kristian Sandfeld’s Linguistique Balkanique (1930) and the very rich work done in the modern era after Sandfeld. Meta-questions such as which groups to include in discussions of Balkan linguistics and the relation of the Balkans to (Western) Europe are addressed as well.

In this first full chapter readers will find a general survey of those aspects of Balkan geopolitical, cultural, and linguistic history that are most relevant for the present study, including the Balkans in relation to the Ottoman Empire. We locate the Balkans geographically, describing its physical characteristics and discussing the controversy over where its northern limits are to be located. Various other extralinguistic factors are discussed that are relevant for the linguistic situation. Most importantly, the languages of the Balkans are introduced as to their genealogical affiliation, their historical attestation, their documentation, their pertinent representation in scholarly literature, their dialectology, their social setting, and related matters, including associated writing systems. For the sake of completeness, all languages found in the Balkans, from ancient to early modern, are given some attention, creating a comprehensive account of the geographically determined languages of the Balkans; ultimately, though, the focus is narrowed to the Balkan languages, i.e. those languages in the region that significantly (or in any attested fashion) display the morphosyntactic and other convergence phenomena that are central to the concept of a contact area, i.e. to a sprachbund.

Chapter 6 treats Balkan convergence involving morphology and morphosyntax more generally, focusing particularly on inflectional morphology. Attention is given to categories and to forms, as well as the special, and often nuanced, functions and semantic range of particular items. Convergence involving nouns and noun phrases is documented, with regard to case, deixis, definiteness, gender, number, and adjectival modification. Particular attention is given to the development of analytic structures. Regarding verbs and verb phrases, convergence is discussed in the categories of tense, aspect, mood, evidential marking, voice, and valency.

Chapter 7 surveys the various Balkanisms that emerge from a consideration of the syntax of the Balkan languages. Particular attention is given to the ordering of elements in phrases and sentences, the syntax of clitics and the “little words” that play such a key role in Balkan syntax, and various types of sentence-combining, especially subordination (complementation) and coordination, but parataxis as well. Three key aspects of Balkan syntax—the loss of the infinitive and its replacement by finite verbs, impersonal constructions, and the narrative use of imperatives—are discussed at length.

We have focused in this final chapter on the lessons learned about sprachbunds in general and the Balkans in particular, as the originally identified, and still relevant, exemplar of the concept. But there are important findings having to do with contact linguistics that are worth recounting here. We have already mentioned our innovative notion of ERIC loans, and we trust that our arguments for this notion can be relevant for scholars working in other regions. Similarly, we hope that our enunciation of our “four-M model” for sprachbund formation will find echoes and applicability elsewhere.1 But especially, given the continued, if unjustifiably controversial, status of the claim that the borrowing of structure and grammar is possible, a controversy brought to the fore in the modern linguistic era through the discussion in Thomason & Kaufman 1988, we consider it important also to remind readers, in closing, that the Balkans offer numerous instances in which structure and/or grammar have clearly made their way from one grammatical system into another.