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The Balkans As a Linguistic Area Provided for non-commercial research and educational use only. Not for reproduction or distribution or commercial use This article was originally published in the Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Second Edition, published by Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author's benefit and for the benefit of the author's institution, for non- commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who you know, and providing a copy to your institution’s administrator. All other uses, reproduction and distribution, including without limitation commercial reprints, selling or licensing copies or access, or posting on open internet sites, your personal or institution’s website or repository, are prohibited. For exceptions, permission may be sought for such use through Elsevier's permissions site at: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissionusematerial Friedman V A (2006), Balkans as a Linguistic Area. In: Keith Brown, (Editor-in- Chief) Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Second Edition, volume 1, pp. 657- 672. Oxford: Elsevier. Balkans as a Linguistic Area 657 Hunter T M (1988). Balinese language: historical back- Sutjaja I G M (2000). Practical Balinese-English–English- ground and contemporary state. Ph.D. diss., Michigan Balinese dictionary. Denpasar: Bali Post. University. Sutjaja I G M (2003). Kamus sinonim bahasa Bali. Kersten J (1970). Tatabahasa Bali. Flores: Arnoldus. Denpasar: Lotus Widya Suari/Universitas Udayana. Kersten J (1984). Bahasa Bali. Ende-Flores: Nusa Indah. Sutjaja I G M (2004). Kamus Indonesia-Bali-Inggris. Mbete A M (1990). Rekonstruksi protobahasa Bali-Sasak- Denpasar: Lotus Widya Suari/Universitas Udayana. Sumbawa. Ph.D. diss., Universitas Indonesia. Van Der Tuuk H N (1897). Kawi-Balineesch-Nederlansch Oka Granoka I W, Udara Naryana I B & Jendra I W (1985). Woordenboek. Batavia: Landsdrukkerij. Tata bahasa Bali. Denpasar: Proyek Pengembangan Warna I W et al. (1993). Kamus Bali-Indonesia. Denpasar: Bahasa dan Sastra Indonesia dan Daerah Departemen Dinas Pendidikan Dasar Propinsi Dati I Bali. Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. Wechsler S (1999). ‘HPSG, GB, and the Balinese Bind.’ In Pastika I W (1999). Voice selection in Balinese narrative Kathol A, Koenig J-P & Webelhuth G (eds.) Lexical and discourse. Ph.D. diss., Australian National University. constructional aspects of linguistic explanation. Stanford: Shadeg N (1977). A basic Balinese dictionary. Denpasar: CSLI. 179–195. Dharma Bhakti. Wechsler S & Arka I W (1998). ‘Syntactic ergativity in Simpen I W (1985). Kamus Bahasa Bali. Denpasar: PT Balinese: an argument structure based theory.’ Natural Mabhakti. Language and Linguistic Theory 16, 387–441. Balkans as a Linguistic Area V A Friedman, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Balkan ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The use of the term ‘Balkan’ (from Turkish, balkan ‘forested mountain’, also the name of a mountain Definitions range in Central Bulgaria) to refer to the peninsula also known as Southeastern Europe dates from the Sprachbund 19th century, when European attention turned to Among the proposed glosses for sprachbund are ‘lin- Ottoman Turkey, which then included most of what guistic league’, ‘linguistic area’, ‘convergence area’, became the Balkan states. As a geographic entity, the and ‘diffusion area’, but here I will treat sprachbund Balkan peninsula is unproblematically defined on as a loanword into English, like the French genre,so three sides as the land mass defined by the Adriatic, henceforth it will be neither capitalized nor italicized. Mediterranean, and Black Seas, but the northern geo- In modern terms, a sprachbund is understood as two graphic boundary cannot be set in any nonarbitrary or more geographically contiguous and genealogical- way that is applicable without qualifications in terms ly different languages sharing grammatical and lexi- of either politics or linguistics. In modern geopolitical cal developments that result from language contact terms, from the 1920s to 1991, the Balkans were rather than a common ancestral source. (Some lin- most frequently understood as comprising Albania, guists set the minimum number at three, but I would Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Turkey in Europe, and argue that the convergent and diffusion processes former Yugoslavia. consitutive of a sprachbund are the same for two lan- The Balkan Languages guages as for three.) In his original formulation of the concept, first in 1923 in a Russian journal article and For linguistics, the Balkan sprachbund has tradition- again in 1928 atAuthor's the first International Congress Personal of ally consisted of Albanian, Copy Greek, Balkan Romance Linguists, N. S. Trubetzkoy used Bulgarian as his (BR), and Balkan Slavic (BS). Albanian is divided into example of a language that belongs to the Slavic two dialects, Gheg north of the river Shkumbi and linguistic family and at the same time to the Balkan Tosk south of it. The modern standard is based on sprachbund. In the case of the Balkan sprachbund, northern Tosk. Mainland Greek is also divided be- the languages are in fact all Indo-European (exclud- tween northern and southern dialects at the Gulf of ing Balkan Turkic), but they belong to groups that Corinth and the northern frontier of Attica, the were separated for millennia, and thus, upon coming southern dialects of the Peloponnese being the basis back into contact, had become sufficiently distinct of the standard vernacular Dhimotiki. During the for contact phenomena to be distinguished from 19th century, Modern Greek was still called Romaic, inherited phenomena. i.e., ‘Roman’, a reference to Byzantium as the second Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (2006), vol. 1, pp. 657–672 658 Balkans as a Linguistic Area Rome. BR consists of Romanian, Aromanian, dialects of Romani take their name from the fact that Megleno-Romanian (MR), and Istro-Romanian. Dal- they took shape in Romania, but they are now dis- matian, a remnant of West Balkan Romance, whose persed all over Europe and beyond. In the Republic of last speaker died in 1898, is rather poorly attested Macedonia, a Romani standard is emerging on the and generally does not figure in Balkan linguistic basis of the Arli dialect of the Balkan group. Unless accounts. Istro-Romanian is, like Arbe¨resh (the otherwise specified, references to Romani refer to Albanian of Italy) and Asia Minor Greek (until the those dialects spoken in the Balkans. exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey in 1923), outside the Balkan geolinguistic area (see Turkish Balkan Turkish is divided into two major ‘Balkan Languages vs. Languages of the Balkans’). dialect groups: West Rumelian Turkish (WRT) and The Romanian standard is based on the Wallachian East Rumelian. The boundary between the two cor- dialects of the south, as is the standard of the Repub- responds roughly to the east-west line of Bulgarian lic of Moldova, which at various times has called its dialects. The Christian Gagauz of Bulgarian and official language Moldovan or Romanian. (At present Romanian Dobrudja and Gagauz Yeri in Moldova [31 October 2004] the official name is Moldovan.) and adjacent parts of Ukraine speak a language in Aromanian, spoken in Albania, Greece, the Republic the Oghuz group – to which Turkish also belongs – of Macedonia, and southwestern Bulgaria (with a which was recognized as official in the USSR in 1957. large diaspora in Romania, especially Dobrogea) is Although most Balkan linguistic studies treat Turkish divided into north/west dialects of Albania and west- as an adstratum, contributing lexicon and phraseol- ern Macedonia and south/east dialects of Greece and ogy but very little else (aside from evidentiality, see eastern Macedonia. A standard based primarily on ‘Evidential’ below), WRT and Gagauz also partici- the eastern dialect is in use in the Republic of Mac- pate to a certain extent in the Balkan sprachbund. edonia. MR survives in seven villages near Gevgelija Most of Gagauz, however, ended up in the former in the southeast of the Republic of Macedonia and Russian Empire, due to migration and border across the border in Greece. During the 19th century, changes. As a result, most of Gagauz is now more BR was often called Wallachian. The term ‘Vlah’ can influenced by Russian, while the dialectal Gagauz be used as a convenient cover term for BR south of the remaining in the Balkans is in need of description. Danube (Aromanian plus Megleno-Romanian). BS consists of Bulgarian, Macedonian, and the southeast Jewish Languages Judezmo, the language of the Serbian (Torlak) dialects. Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, became the major- (BCS) together with Slovene, form the West South ity language among Balkan Jews, overwhelming Slavic group, and Macedonian and Bulgarian com- Judeo-Greek (Yavanic, Yevanic), which survived in prise East South Slavic. The Bulgarian standard is the Romaniote liturgy and some enclaves in Epirus. based on its eastern dialects, the Macedonian stan- (A written version of Judezmo based on literal trans- dard on its west-central dialects. The northern and lation from Hebrew is known among scholars as western boundaries of Torlak as a Balkan dialect Ladino.) Although most speakers of both Judezmo are variously defined using phonological or mor- and Judeo-Greek were murdered in the Holocaust, phological criteria. The narrowest definition is these languages survive as endangered languages morphological, e.g.,
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