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12 results

The Balkan Languages
  • Victor A. Friedman, Brian D. Joseph
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2025
    Print publication:
    31 May 2025
  • Southeast Europe's Balkan peninsula is home to numerous languages that have come to converge structurally and lexically, due to complex social factors involving contact among speakers of these languages, constituting a 'sprachbund'. This volume provides the first comprehensive, book-length survey of the Balkan languages in English. It covers the full range of languages involved in the Balkan convergence zone, including Albanian, Aromanian, Bulgarian, Gagauz, Greek, Judezmo, Macedonian, Meglenoromanian, Romani, Romanian, Torlak, and West Rumelian Turkish. Balkan convergences - 'Balkanisms' - are presented, considering the grammatical domains of phonetics, phonology, morphology, morphosyntax, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and lexicon. It gives attention to relevant notions of contact linguistics and to the history of the field, while also introducing key conceptual innovations. Providing fresh data and perspectives on the most studied intense contact situation, this work is essential reading for anyone interested in Balkan languages. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

  • 7 - The Balkans

  • from Part Two - Linguistic Areas
  • Edited by Salikoko S. Mufwene, University of Chicago, Anna María Escobar, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact
    Published online:
    02 June 2022
    Print publication:
    30 June 2022, pp 189-231

  • Summary

    The Balkans were the first sprachbund (linguistic league, area, etc.) identified as a locus of contact-induced change owing to multi-lateral, multi-directional, mutual multilingualism to be identified as such. In this model, multilingualism is shared by speakers of the various languages, it is stable across generations, and it involves varied social groups. While no linguistic situation is unchanging, the combination of the factors mentioned here differentiates the sprachbund from other contact situations such as a diaspora, a colony, or that of endangered indigenous languages. Owing to the complexity of a sprachbund, the directionality of contact-induced change is not always discernible, nor is such directionality necessarily relevant, the point being the fact of convergence itself. This chapter defines the basic linguistic features relevant to the study of the Balkans as a linguistic area and also gives an overview of the linguistic study of the region. An important conclusion is the fact that the Balkan sprachbund continues to be a relevant lens through which language contact – both historical and ongoing – can be viewed.

  • Introduction

  • Victor A. Friedman
  • Journal:
    Slavic Review / Volume 69 / Issue 4 / Winter 2010
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    27 January 2017, pp. 811-815
    Print publication:
    Winter 2010

  • Almost every country in Eurasia and Africa has been labeled a "cross-roads" at one time or another. In the Balkans, every country on the Via Egnatia and the Via Militaris was a crossroads simply by virtue of being on the route. In fact, when applied metaphorically, a crossroads need only involve two directions rather than the literal four, and the metaphor often invokes problematic dichotomies—for example, Christian/Muslim, east/west, center/periphery, tradition/modernity—rather than enlight-ening complexities. Still, as crossroads go, the territory of the Republic of Macedonia has seen quite a bit of traffic over the millennia, and the presence of seven different language groups with eight centuries or more residence—Slavic, Romance, Albanian, Hellenic, Indie, Armenian, and Turkic—gives it the same linguistic complexity as Greece, although the latter country pays considerably less attention to its multilingual and multi-ethnic heritage. The illustration on the cover of this issue, with signs in two alphabets and four languages (Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish, and English), taken in a busy commercial district in the capital, Skopje, is intended both to illustrate the everyday nature of this complexity in Mace-donia and to acknowledge the global processes of which Macedonia is now a specific part.