Dutch Contributions to the Fourteenth International Congress of Slavists, Ohrid: Linguistics (SSGL 34), Amsterdam – New York, Rodopi, 293-331.

ON BURGENLAND CROATIAN ISOGLOSSES

PETER HOUTZAGERS

1. Introduction Among the Croatian dialects spoken in the Austrian province of Burgenland and the adjoining areas1 all three main dialect groups of central South Slavic2 are represented. However, the dialects have a considerable number of characteris- tics in common.3 The usual explanation for this is (1) the fact that they have been neighbours from the 16th century, when the Ot- toman invasions caused mass migrations from Croatia, Slavonia and Bos- nia; (2) the assumption that at least most of them were already neighbours before that.

Ad (1) Map 14 shows the present-day and past situation in the Burgenland. The different varieties of Burgenland Croatian (henceforth “BC groups”) that are spoken nowadays and from which linguistic material is available each have their own icon. 5

1 For the sake of brevity the term “Burgenland” in this paper will include the adjoining areas inside and outside Austria where speakers of Croatian dialects can or could be found: the prov- ince of Niederösterreich, the region around Bratislava in Slovakia, a small area in the south of Moravia (Czech Republic), the Hungarian side of the Austrian-Hungarian border and an area somewhat deeper into Hungary east of Sopron and between Bratislava and Gyǡr. As can be seen from Map 1, many locations are very far from the Burgenland in the administrative sense. 2 With this term I refer to the dialect continuum formerly known as “Serbo-Croatian”. The main dialect groups are ƀakavian, Štokavian and Kajkavian. 3 Neweklowsky mentions 13 “wichtigste Burgenland-Kroatismen”, one of which, the lexicon, forms a large set of common features by itself (1969: 99-101). For a dialectometric illustration of the linguistic closeness of the Burgenland dialects to each other see Sujoldžiǀ et al. (1990). 4 Based on Breu (1970: 220-229) and Neweklowsky (1978: 346). From the latter I also adopted the division into dialect varieties and the assignment of the individual dialects to those varieties. The dotted line represents the west boundary of the province of Burgenland. 5 The Moravian Croats are also represented by an icon, although their dialect is extinct or at least untraceable since the Second World War. There is some linguistic material from these dialects (see Neweklowsky 1978: 89-93). 294 PETER HOUTZAGERS

Map 1: present-day and former Croatian dialects in the Burgenland