Language Contact in the Balkan Sprachbund a Study Of

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Language Contact in the Balkan Sprachbund

A study of transparency in Italian, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek

Abstract

When communicating speakers map meaning onto form. It would thus seem obvious for languages to show a one-to-one correspondence between meaning and form, but this is often not the case. This perfect mapping, i.e. transparency, is indeed continuously violated in natural languages, giving rise to zero-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-one opaque correspondences between meaning and form. However, transparency is a mutating feature, which can be influenced by language contact. In this scenario languages tend to evolve and lose some of their opaque features, becoming more transparent. This study investigates transparency in a very specific contact situation, the Balkan Sprachbund (BS), by researching five different languages: Italian, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek. We considered two separate theories: convergence and diglossia. Following the first theory we hypothesized that convergence is the cause behind the feature sharing typical of the BS, thus predicting that Bulgarian and Romanian would be more transparent than the other two languages of the same families not belonging to the BS, Russian and Italian. Our second hypothesis, on the contrary, considered Greek to be the source language behind the existence of the BS and therefore predicting that the BS languages, Romanian, Bulgarian and Greek, would share the same features. We investigated twenty-five opacity features, divided into five categories, Redundancy (one-to-many), Fusion (many-to-one), Discontinuity (one meaning is split in two or more forms), Form-based Form (forms with no semantic counterpart: zero-to-one) and a group of typical BS features. The results prove our second hypothesis to be borne out. Romanian, Bulgarian and Greek present the same features, which points into the direction of diglossia as the underlying cause of the BS.

Keywords: transparency, FDG, language contact, Balkan Sprachbund, diglossia

1. Introduction

The function of human languages is first and foremost communication. And, in order to achieve this goal, language users must constantly transform meaning into form and form into meaning. This leads to a tight relation between two separate levels of linguistic organization: a content level and a formal level. It would, therefore, be normal to expect a perfect and transparent one-to-one correspondence between these two levels, namely the existence of one

1 form for every meaning and vice versa. This is however not the case. To our knowledge, no perfectly transparent language exists. All languages allow to some degree discontinuity, fusion and redundancies, to mention a few ways in which transparency can be violated. This introductory chapter will outline in detail the concept of transparency, comparing it to other linguistic notions such as simplicity, ease of acquisition, iconicity and regularity (1.1) and its relation to language contact (1.2).

1.1 Transparency

The term transparency has been interpreted in various ways over the years. For the sake of this research, we will adopt Hengeveld’s (2011) definition, according to which transparency in a one-to-one correspondence between meaning and form. It is nonetheless important to outline other concepts with which transparency can easily be confused: simplicity, ease of acquisition, iconicity and regularity. Within simplicity, we can make a distinction between absolute and relative simplicity. Absolute simplicity is the simplicity of a language system as such and can be calculated by looking at the amount of surface form (surface simplicity) a language has and at the levels of embedding (structural simplicity), it needs it order to communicate a certain content (Miestamo, 2006). In these respects, the more linguistic material and layers of embedding a language needs, the more complex it is. Relative simplicity is also known as ease of acquisition. According to Miestamo (2006) and Kusters (2003), the easier it is for L2 learners to learn a language, the simpler that language must be. The term iconicity, on the other hand, refers to the predictability of a word’s meaning from its form (McWorther, 1998). In spoken languages, however, the relation between word meaning and form is much more arbitrary (Leufkens, 2013). Finally, another notion which is often confused with transparency is regularity. Regularity can refer to the predictability of paradigms, such as verbal conjugations and nominal declensions for instance, as well as to the formation of compounds (Leufkens, 2013). Yet, predictability of paradigms does not mean transparency. All these notions have something in common with transparency as defined by Hengeveld (2011), but differ conceptually from the latter. Transparency is, in fact, an interface property between the conceptual and the formal levels, and not an intrinsic property of the language itself.

1.2. Transparency in language contact

As any other language property, transparency is dynamic and hence subject to influences and changes. The most interesting evolutions are witnessed in situations of isolation and in those of language contact. In the absence of language contact, languages evolve in one specific direction, namely from simple to complex (Lupyan & Dale, 2010) and from transparent to opaque (Hengeveld, 2011b; Seuren & Wekker, 1986). In such a context, certain formal units can change or lose their meaning completely and thus become opaque by undergoing a process also known as ‘maturation phenomenon’ (Dahl, 2004). Nominal expletives are the ultimate example of such a phenomenon. Often defined as ‘historical junk’ and ‘male nipples’ (Lass, 1997), they had a semantic meaning which was lost over time making the way to an empty and opaque placeholder. Just like isolation causes a language to become more opaque, language contact, on the contrary, may push it towards transparency. This shift might be due to a competition between different factors, such as economy and transparency. In contact situations, the need for intelligibility is extremely high, which in turn forces speakers to choose more transparent forms. As demonstrated by Kusters (2003), the more L2 learners a language has, the more transparent it becomes over time. Similar results are found by Olthof (2015) for Norwegian and Leufkens (2013) and Seguin (2015) for creole languages. Creole languages are exemplary in this respect, as they originate in very peculiar contact situations between much older languages. The results of both Leufkens (2013) and Seguin (2015) clearly show that creoles are significantly more transparent than their source languages. The evolution of a language towards opacity or transparency is not random. Based on a transparency study of four natural languages, Hengeveld (2011b) shows that opaque features are not randomly distributed across languages but that the existence of certain features imply the existence of others, forming an implicational hierarchy. The latter can often be interpreted as a diachronic pathway (Greenberg, 1978). It thus follows that languages start out relatively transparent, acquiring over time opaque features following the order of the implicational hierarchy. This is in agreement with the finding of several typological studies, such as Leufkens (2013 & 2015), Olthof (2015) and Seguin (2015). After investigating 25 languages, Leufkens (2015) drew up an implicational hierarchy mirroring the diachronic changes in (1). This hierarchy is implicational in the sense that the existence in a language of a certain feature implies the existence of all features lower in this hierarchy.

(1) nominal expletives, clausal agreement → grammatical gender, tense copying →

suppletion → phrasal agreement, irregular stem formation → predominant head-marking → morphophonologically conditioned stem alternation → morphologically and morphophonologically conditioned affix alternation → redundant referential marking, phonologically conditioned stem and affix alternation, grammatical relations

Every contact situation is different, just like every language born in such a context is unique. In the present study, we focus on one particular contact situation: the Balkan Sprachbund. The following chapter will introduce the features of this special linguistic league and outline its implications for this research.

2. The Balkan Sprachbund

A sprachbund is “understood as two or more geographically contiguous and genealogically different languages sharing grammatical and lexical developments that result from language contact rather than a common ancestral source” (Friedman, 2006). The Balkan Sprachbund is a linguistic league of languages from the Balkan area. These languages are genealogically far from one another and yet share peculiar features only present within the league, which are believed to have developed thanks to constant contact. This chapter will introduce the

4 geography and history of the Balkans, the languages involved and their features and finally the theories behind the birth of the Balkan Sprachbund.

2.1. The Balkans and their history

The Balkans can be geographically defined quite easily. They are bordered by the Ionian, Mediterranean and Aegean Seas on the south, by the Adriatic Sea on the west and the Black Sea on the east. The Sava river and the Danube define its northern borders (Tomić, 2006). Politically speaking, on the other hand, with the term Balkans one usually refers to Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, “European” Turkey and the countries formerly known as Yugoslavia, namely Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Balkans, source https://www.balkanpeace.org/

Among the historic events concerning the Balkan area in the last two millennia, there are some that had severe linguistic consequences. First, the Balkans witnessed Greek influence and domination, starting as early as in the Late Bronze age (Tomić, 2006) and later with Alexander the Great. Short before AD, Rome started to become stronger and expand. Its domination in the Balkans was strong and lasted for several centuries. In the 4th century, however, the Roman Empire was split between an Old Rome, centralised, and a New Rome

5 in the east. Two centuries later the Slavs invaded the Balkans. The invasion split the area in two, drawing a line from the Sava river on the Serbo-Croatian border to the Montenegrin- Albanian border. This imaginary line divided the Catholic (west) from the Orthodox (east) sphere of influence (Tomić, 2006). When in the 14th century the Ottoman empire expanded and conquered the Balkans, it also shaped their borders as we know them today, leading the way to six centuries of Turkish domination.

2.2. The Languages

While defining the Balkans is quite simple, the definition of the Balkan Sprachbund is more difficult, as not all the languages from this area belong to this linguistic league. The Balkan Sprachbund is a group of languages in the Balkans sharing a significant amount of contact-induced features extending to all linguistic levels (Friedman, 2011). Even though these languages are all Indo-European, they belong to different subgroups. Traditionally the Balkan Linguistic Area (BLA) is associated with four groups: Balkan Slavic (BS), Balkan Romance (BR), Hellenic and Albanian.

Table 1: Languages of the BLA Language group Languages

Balkan Slavic (BS) -Bulgarian -Macedonian -Torlak dialects

Balkan Romance (BR) -Aromanian -Istro-Romanian -Megleno Romanian -Romanian (based on the Wallachian dialects)

Hellenic -Northern dialects -Southern dialects

Albanian -Gheg -Tosk

Romani -Balkan -Vlax

Balkan Turkish -West Rumalian Turkish -Gagauz (to a certain extent)

Jewish Languages -Judezmo

BS consists of Bulgarian, Macedonian and the Torlak dialects from south-east Serbia. BR consists of Romanian (based on the Wallachian dialects), Aromanian, Istro-Romanian and Megleno Romanian. Albanian consists of two dialects, Gheg spoken in the north of Shkumbi river and Tosk south of it. The Hellenic group also includes two separate subgroups: dialects spoken in the north of Greece and those spoken in the Peloponnese. There are also four other languages that are considered to belong to the BLA status. Romani, whose Balkan and Vlax dialects are part of the BLA (Boretzky & Igla 2004), Judezmo (Altbaev 2003), West Rumelian Turkish (WRT) and Gagauz (Dombrowski 2011, Friedman, 2003b, 2006) were all excluded or ignored by one of the first experts on the matter, Sandfeld (1930), even though they all rightfully belong to the Sprachbund (Friedman 2006). Table 1 lists all BLA languages Figure 2 shows where they are spoken.

Figure 2: A map of the languages of the Sprachbund1

1 Adapted from Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Southeast_Europe.svg)

2.3. The Features

The features typical of the BLA are also known under the name Balkanisms. The first ever witnessed and reported feature was the postponed definite article (Kopitar, 1829). As of today, we know of several features, both phonological and morphosyntactic. Not all experts agree on the number of features and not all features are present in all languages. We propose here a short summary of the most important ones, following Friedman (2006) and Tomić (2006). As far as phonology is concerned, the most relevant ones are the reduction of unstressed vowels to schwa or to non-syllabic elements, the existence of stressed schwa and the raising of unstressed mid-vowels /e/ and /o/ to high vowels, /i/ and /u/ respectively. Most BLA languages also lack front rounded vowels, such as /y/, and show an alternation of /l/ and /ł/ before front vowels (Friedman, 2006, and Tomić, 2006). Concerning the suprasegmental features, we notice the absence of length and tone and the inability of a stress accent to move further into the word than the antepenultimate syllable (Friedman, 2006). Among the morphosyntactic features, the lack of an infinitival form seems to be the most peculiar one, as well as the most characteristic (Friedman, 2006). As far as the nominal domain is concerned, we find grammaticalized definiteness, namely demonstrative pronouns having been encliticized or suffixed to nominals to become definite articles, resumptive clitic pronouns, also known as object pronoun reduplication or doubling, a genitive and dative merger and very poor case morphology (or complete lack thereof). Concerning the predicative domain, the most relevant features are the analytic subjunctive, the future formation with an auxiliary derived from “want/will” and the combination of a future and a past tense marker to form the conditional. Finally, on the sentence level, we find sentence- initial clitics and a relatively free word order in unmarked contexts. Table 2 below summarises all the features and the languages they are found in (Friedman, 2006).

Table 2: Summary of the features and the languages they are present in (Friedman, 2006): Feature Present in unstressed vowel reduction to schwa or to non-syllabic elements -Albanian -BR the existence of stressed schwa -Albanian -Bulgarian -Gheg -Macedonian -Romani

-WRT raising of unstressed mid-vowels -BR -Bulgarian -Gheg -Greek -Macedonian the absence of front rounded vowels All but Albanian and Central Gheg alternation of /l/ and /ł/ before front vowels -BS -Greek -Romani the absence of length and tone and the inability of a stress accent to move further All but Gheg and Tosk into the word than the antepenultimate syllable. grammaticalized definiteness -Albanian -BS -BR resumptive clitic pronouns -Albanian -BS -BR -Greek -Romani genitive and dative merger -Albanian -BS -BR -Greek poor case morphology All lack of infinitive All analytic subjunctive All the future formation with an auxiliary derived from “want/will” -Bulgarian -Gheg -MR -Romanian the combination of a future and a past tense marker to form the conditional All but BS and Romanian clitic order -Albanian -BR -Greek -Macedonian free word order All

2.4. The Theories

The Balkans saw several foreign dominations over the centuries. Every dominant population also brought new cultures and languages, which play a role in the different theories concerning the creation of the BLA.

2.4.1 Theories on the Balkan Sprachbund

The first theory by Leake (1814) attributes the cause to a superstrate language, Slavic. Later in the 19th century, Kopitar (1829) and Miklosich (1861) claimed that the balkanisms developed under the influence of ancient substrate languages spoken by the inhabitants on the Balkans, namely Thracian, Dacian and Illyrian. This theory became very popular in the beginning of the 20th century thanks to Weigand (1928), but is nevertheless unfounded. The material left of these languages is in fact too limited to prove any such relations (Tomić, 2006). Almost a century later, Sandfeld (1930) a.o. suggested the source of the Sprachbund to be Byzantine Greek. According to him (1930:165), the Greek influence is “the most natural explanation”, if not the only one, for all the general concordances within the BLA. Solta (1980) and Gołąb (1984) also claimed BLA to have originated from a substrate language, Latin and Aromanian respectively. Nevertheless, both theories are not borne out: the BLA features are not found in Latin nor in other Romance Languages. In the second half of the 20th century, linguists started to look at the Balkan Sprachbund in a different light. Civjan (1965, 1979) was the first to propose a convergence model. The term ‘convergence’ refers to the general acquisition of structural similarities between languages (Silva-Corvalán, 1994: 4-5). According to this model, the BLA is the result of languages used as a means of communication, namely the convergence of one idiom towards the other. Civjan (1965) indeed states that the cause had always been sought in the past, namely in a substrate language. The trigger is though in the contact situation and thereby to be found not only in the past but also in the present and future. A convergence model was also proposed by Lindstedt (2000), defining this specific contact situation as a shared drift, parallel changes and not transfers from one language to another. Lindstedt also sought the cause in the multilingual environment of the Balkans. These last two theories are both supported by the fact that the Sprachbund features are more numerous in the area where there is the highest number of co-territorial languages, namely south of lakes Ohrid and Prespa. This area sees five languages intersect: Albanian,

Aromanian, Balkan Romani, Greek and Macedonian (Tomić, 2006). Table 3 summarises the various theories.

Table 3: A summary of the theories on the BLA

Main Proponents Theory Supported?

1 Kopitar (1829) Ancient substrate languages: Thracian, Dacian and Illyrian. No Miklosich (1861) Weigand (1928)

2 Sandfeld (1930) Byzantine Greek as source language No

3 Solta (1980) Latin as substrate language No

4 Gołąb (1984) Aromanian as substrate language No

5 Civjan (1965, 1979) Convergence model: languages used as communication means Yes (contact)

6 Lindstedt (2000) Shared drift: parallel changes due to a multilingual setting Yes (contact)

2.4.1 Kortmann’s Theory

In his study on adverbial constructions in the languages of Europe, Kortmann (1998) witnessed a clear split among European languages on the basis of their religious sphere of influence (Fig. 3). Languages that were under the Greek Orthodox sphere of influence, on the one hand, and those under the Roman Catholic sphere, on the other, show a clearly different behaviour with regard to adverbial clauses. Thus Kortmann, as well as Décsy (1973) and Blatt (1957) before him, inferred that the official languages used by the Church, Latin and Greek respectively, must have influenced the development of the vernaculars spoken in these regions. The Roman Catholic Church, and thus the Latin language, prevails in most of Western and Central Europe, as well as in Poland. Latin remains the official language of the clergy in all these countries until the 15th and 16th centuries (Kortmann, 1998). On the other hand, the Orthodox Church’s influence, with Koine Greek as its official language, extends to most of Eastern Europe, including of course the whole Balkan Peninsula. Koine Greek remains thus the official language of the Orthodox Church in Greece up until the 15th century,

Fig. 3: Kortmann’s (1998: 534) representation of the language division between Central al Eastern Europe (indicated by the dotted line) having then been replaced with modern Greek. As far as Eastern Europe is concerned, in the 9th century, a new liturgical language is introduced by Saints Cyril and Methodius: Old Church Slavonic (OCS) (Cizevskij, 2000). The latter, also known as the first Slavic literary language, was canonised based on a dialect spoken by Byzantine Slavs living in the Province of Thessalonica (Waldman & Mason, 2006). In the early 12th century, OCS evolved into Church Slavonic (Cizevskij, 2000). While Church Slavonic (CS) is still nowadays the liturgical language is the Russian Federation, every other East-European country went along a different linguistic path. Two very interesting countries in this respect are Bulgaria and Romania. In Bulgaria, there are continuous alternations between Koine Greek and CS until the 18th century. It is only in the 19th century that Bulgarian, together with CS, is finally used during liturgy (Kalkandjieva, 2014). Romania is another very interesting case, as it is the only country where a Romance language and the Greek Orthodox Church fully coexist. CS has been the official language of the Romanian clergy until the 18th century when it finally made way for Romanian (Sava, 2013).

This specific contact phenomenon is known with the term diglossia. Only witnessed in multilingual communities (Fishman, 1967), diglossia describes a peculiar sociolinguistic situation in which there is a clear differentiation in function between the language varieties used within the community (Matras, 2009). In such a situation there are thus two varieties: a high or prestige variety (e.g. Koine Greek), generally reserved for official functions, and a low variety (e.g. Romanian), confined to informal contexts. According to Kortmann’s theory, the reason behind the morphosyntactic development of European languages was highly influences by diglossia.

2.5. Hypothesis and Predictions

Many different theories have been proposed in order to explain the nature of the Balkan Sprachbund. They can, however, be synthesised into two main groups: the convergence theories and the superstrate or diglossia theories. According to the first group of theories, the reason behind the phenomenon known as Balkanism is the convergence among the languages of the BLA. If this is correct, we may hypothesize that languages pertaining to the Balkan Sprachbund will be more transparent than related languages not belonging to the Balkan Sprachbund. After all, as argued above, language contact increases transparency. We will thus investigate transparency in two languages of the BLA, Romanian and Bulgarian, and in two languages belonging to the same families (Romance and Slavic) but not to the BLA, namely Italian and Russian. If this hypothesis is correct, then Romanian and Bulgarian will be more transparent than Italian and Russian. The second group of theories on the BLA, however, proposes that a superstrate language, or diglossia, has influenced the linguistic development of the languages of the Balkan Sprachbund. As Kortmann (1998) shows, the prestige language could very well be the one used by the Greek Orthodox Church, namely Koine Greek and its successors, OCS and CS. Therefore, our second hypothesis will be that the language of the clergy is the underlying cause of Balkanism. We will thus add to the investigation another language, namely Modern Greek. If our second hypothesis is borne out and Koine Greek is the underlying cause, then its modern counterpart, Modern Greek, Romanian and Bulgarian will share the same features.

Hypothesis 1: Convergence forced the languages of the BS to become more transparent Prediction 1: Romanian will be more transparent than Italian Bulgarian will be more transparent than Russian Hypothesis 2: The language of the Orthodox Church, Koine Greek, and later OCS and CS, had an influence on the linguistic development of the languages of the BS Prediction 2: Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek possess the same features

The following section will outline the methodology.

3. Methodology

This chapter will outline the methodology used in this study. Section 2.1 will introduce the Functional Discourse Grammar framework, while Sections 2.2 and 2.3 will present the features and the methods and materials.

3.1 FDG

Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) is a linguistic theory developed by Hengeveld & Mackenzie (2008) following Dik's (1978) model of Functional Grammar. While the latter is a predominantly functional model of language, FDG is a structural-functional framework, the goal of which is to find explanations for the structure of human language, while keeping in mind its communicative and functional nature. In FDG, the speaker’s communicative intention is considered the starting point of the construction of a discourse act. It is, therefore, a top-down model of the linguistic organisation following the whole process of speech formation: from conceptualization to phonetic (or orthographic) form. The FDG model includes a Grammatical Component interacting with three non- grammatical components. These are the Contextual, Conceptual and Output Components. The Contextual Component contains information about the speech context, the Conceptual Component is the place where the intention is conceived, while the Output Component is where the message is articulated. The Grammatical Component is itself divided into several layers subject to a hierarchical order. The speaker's intention must first go through a Formulation process, where it is translated into pragmatic (at the Interpersonal Level) and semantic (at the Representational Level) units. Afterwards, both units go through a Morphosyntactic Encoding process, which transforms them into morphosyntactic units. The

14 last transformation is through Phonological Encoding, a process that converts the morphosyntactic units into phonological units landing at the Phonological Level. At this point, all units are grammatically complete and only need to be written, signed or spelled out. This process happens in the Output Component. Even though there is a hierarchy between levels, it is not obligatory to go through all of them. Certain intentions go directly from the Conceptual Component to the IL and then on to the PL, as in the case of Ouch!, which has no semantic or morphosyntactic counterpart. In other words, all four levels are independent but constantly interacting with each other. Fig. 3 below represents the general architecture of FDG. Processes are pictured in ovals and levels in rectangles.

Fig. 3: General architecture of FDG

Just like the components, every level has its own internal hierarchical structure. We refer the reader to Hengeveld & Mackenzie (2008) for an in-depth presentation of the framework.

3.1.1 Transparency in FDG

As outlined in 1.1 above, transparency can be defined as a one-to-one correspondence between meaning and form. This definition is however quite general and the FDG framework can help us make it more precise. In FDG, a unit of meaning is a unit, i.e. a primitive, at either the RL or IL, while a unit of form is a primitive at the two lower levels, ML or PL. Given these premises, we could reformulate our transparency definition as follows (Leufkens, 2013:13):

a) Transparency is obtained when one unit at one of the upper two levels of linguistic organisation (IL, RL) corresponds to one unit at one of the lower two levels of linguistic organisation (ML, PL)

It is important to note once again that transparency is not a property of one level, but rather an interface property between levels. From this perspective, the definition in (a) is not precise enough. Within the Grammatical Component, there are four distinct levels. (a) above, however, only considers the relations between the two upper and lower levels (IL/RL – ML/PL), whereas there are also relations between IL and RL and ML and PL. There are in fact six interfaces in total, namely between IL-RL, IL-ML, IL-PL, RL-ML, RL- PL, ML-PL. Transparency should thus be defined as a one-to-one correspondence between linguistic units between all four levels (Leufkens, 2013:13):

b) Transparency is obtained when one unit at one level of linguistic organisation corresponds to one unit at all other levels of organisation

Although, at first sight, definition (b) may seem less specific than the one in (a) above, it is more precise as it reflects the complexity of the interfaces between the grammatical components. As outlined in section 1, all languages are opaque to some extent and only differ from one another with regard to their degree of transparency. Nevertheless, the latter must not be seen as a binary feature, but rather as a spectrum: a language can be more or less

16 transparent and its transparency degree may be different for the six different interfaces. The next section will present and explain the features investigated in this study.

3.2 The Features

For the present research, we follow the methodology proposed by Leufkens (2013 and 2015), namely the investigation of nineteen transparency features to which we added five typical of the Balkan Sprachbund. The features are in turn divided into four subgroups, namely Redundancy, Discontinuity, Fusion, Form-based Form and BS Features. This section will introduce and explain each feature.

3.2.1 Redundancy

This subgroup includes all one-to-many relations between levels, as when one pragmatic, semantic or morphosyntactic unit corresponds to more than one semantic, morphosyntactic or phonological units. The redundant opacity features investigated in this study are the following: Clausal Agreement and Cross-Reference, Phrasal Agreement, Concord and Tense Copying.

3.2.1.1 Clausal Agreement and Cross-Reference

Agreement is a morphosyntactic operation in which a semantic or grammatical property of one unit, i.e. the controller, is marked on another unit, i.e. the target. Agreement is found in several contexts, but the phrase is definitely the most common (Corbett, 2006). FDG defines Clausal Agreement as a purely morphosyntactic operation internal to the ML, which copies some features of one unit onto another. The copy is thus semantically empty. FDG, however, also distinguishes another type of agreement operation, namely Cross-Reference, which is the multiple expression of one semantic unit. Hengeveld & Mackenzie (2008) propose a rule of thumb: if an element can occur on its own, it cannot be a copy. There is Clausal Agreement only when both units at ML are obligatory, as in English. We find Cross-Reference in the so-called pro-drop languages, where the subject can be omitted. Both types of agreement are highly opaque, as they create redundancy.

3.2.1.2 Phrasal Agreement

By Phrasal Agreement, we refer to the agreement between the noun and its modifiers, determiners and demonstratives. In some languages, the latter must agree with the noun in number, gender, case and definiteness, as we witness in the French noun phrase in (2) below. The need to mark gender and number on all elements is redundant and therefore opaque.

2 la bell-e fille the.F.SG beautiful-F.SG girl

The beautiful girl

3.2.1.3 Concord

The term Concord refers to the situation in which there are a morphosyntactic and a lexical unit expressing one single semantic meaning. There are three types of Concord: Plural, Negative and Temporal. As far as the former is concerned, in some languages number can be marked both morphosyntactically and lexically. In the English noun phrase two cars, for example, the plural is expressed twice, namely by two and by the morpheme -s, which clearly leads to opacity. Negative Concord is the coexistence of two negative elements in the same clause. The English Negative Polarity Item anyone is not semantically independent and thus needs to be supported by another negation, as in (3) below, which leads to opacity.

3 I haven’t seen anyone.

Finally, Temporal Concord is the co-occurrence of a morphosyntactic tense marker and a temporal adverb, as in (4). Concord is nearly universal (Leufkens, 2015) but will still be investigated for the sake of completeness.

4 Yesterday I called Mary.

3.2.1.4 Tense Copying

The last redundancy feature is Tense Copying, namely the multiple marking of time reference in a main and subordinate clauses. This copying mechanism is a morphosyntactic process that copies the tense value, for instance, past (said), of the main clause to its subordinates (was):

5 Mary said that she was studying Latin.

Being purely morphosyntactic and not semantically or pragmatically motivated, tense copying is to be considered opaque.

3.2.2 Discontinuity

Discontinuity is another one-to-many correspondence. This group includes all phenomena where one pragmatic or semantic unit is split-up into two or more morphological or phonological units. The discontinuity features investigated in this study are the following: Extraposition and Extraction, Raising, Circumfixes and Circumpositions, Infixes and Non- Parallel Alignment.

3.2.2.1 Extraposition and Extraction

At the IL and RL, modifiers and the nouns they modify belong together. However, at the ML they can sometimes be separated, with the modifier being moved to the right hand-side of the sentence, Extraction, or to the left periphery, Extraposition. The former is often recurred to when an element is too complex and heavy or when it is topicalized (6a). Extraposition (6b), on the other hand, is usually the result of focalization. Both phenomena are highly opaque.

6a [About dogs] we have several books in stock. Extraction

6b We have several books in stock [about dogs]. Extraposition

3.2.2.2 Raising

Certain verbs allow an argument semantically belonging to an embedded sentence to syntactically behave as an argument of the main clause (Leufkens 2015). This is the case of the English verbs seem and appear. In the example (7a) below, John is the subject of the embedded clause. In its semantically equivalent (7b), on the other hand, John behaves as the subject of the main clause. Raising is to be considered non-transparent.

7a It seems that John is smart 7b John seems smart

3.2.2.3 Circumfixes and Circumpositions

Circumfixes are particular kinds of affixes. They are one unit at IL and RL but are realised in two separate units at ML, such as the morphological marker of the past participle in German, e.g. ge-wuss-t 'known'. Circumpositions are freestanding words, therefore one unit at IL and RL, that are separated at ML, like the French negation ne...pas. Extremely rare, they are very opaque.

3.2.2.4 Infixes

As opposed to Circumfixes, an Infix is an affix inserted into a morphological unit. They are not discontinuous per se but they create discontinuity in the unit they are inserted in. The causative marker <[(o)ʔ]> or <[(o)ʔb]> in Kharia is an example of infix. The word botoŋ ‘fear’ is made causative, boʔtoŋ ‘scare’, by inserting the causative marker into it (Peterson, 2011: 231).

3.2.2.5 Non-Parallel Alignment

Units that belong together at higher levels can sometimes be merged at PL, causing a non- parallelism between the levels. This phenomenon is defined as Non-Parallel Alignment, as in the Dutch example (8) below, where ik and wou correspond to a single unit at PL and so do dat and hij. This non-parallelism is clearly opaque.

8 [ik wou] [dat hij] kwam. Non-Parallel Alignment /kʋɑu dɑti kʋɑm/ I want.PST COMP he come.PST

‘I wish he would come.’

3.2.3 Fusion

Languages also show many-to-one correspondences, namely when two or more units on one level correspond to one single unit at another level. These correspondences are called Fusion. The Fusion features investigated in this research are the following: Cumulation of TAME and Case and Person and Case, Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: Suppletion and Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: Irregular Stem Formation.

3.2.3.1 Cumulation of TAME and Case and Person plus Case

With the word Cumulation, we refer to the expression of multiple meanings in a single grammatical unit. These are usually Affixes or Grammatical Words (Hengeveld, 2007), also known as ‘portmanteau morphs’ (Bauer, 2003). In fusional languages, like Italian, Cumulation is very common. In (9) below, for example, the morpheme -o encodes tense, aspect, mood, person and number. In this case, we have Cumulation of TAME (Tense, Aspect, Mood and Evidentiality) and Person.

9 parler-ò

talk-IND.FUT.3.SG ‘I will talk’

Other semantic categories which are very commonly expressed by portmanteau morphs are gender, number, and, when present, case. An example of Cumulation of Case and Person is the genitive plural morpheme (for nouns) of the second declension in Latin, -orum. Both types of Cumulation are of course non-transparent.

3.2.3.2 Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: Suppletion

Grammatical information is very often expressed through affixation, a process during which an affix is added to the stem. Another strategy it to make changes in the stem itself. One possible change is Suppletion, a morphological process during which the marking of specific information requires a stem which is not derivable from other stem forms of the same Lexeme (Bauer, 2003:48 & Hengeveld, 2007:39). An example of Suppletion is the paradigm of the English verb to go: go, went, gone.

3.2.3.3 Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: Irregular Stem Formation

Grammatical information can also be expressed by Irregular Stem Formation, namely a modification in the stem. This type of alternation, however, is purely morphological and must be distinguished from the morphophonologically driven ones which will be discussed in 3.2.4 below. According to Bauer (2003), we can distinguish between four different kinds of Irregular Stem Formation. The first two are vowel and consonant mutations, like in the English paradigm begin-began-begun. The third kind is a modification of the segmental structure of the word, as in thief-thieve, where voicing defines if the word refers to an Individual or an action (State-of-Affairs in FDG terminology). Finally, we also witness suprasegmental modifications, namely in the stress pattern, e.g. INsult (noun) and inSULT (verb). Nevertheless, only irregular modifications, i.e. only applying to some stems, will be considered opaque. Regular ones are to be considered transparent.

3.2.4 Form-based Form

The last subgroup of opacity features groups together all zero-to-one correspondences between meaning and form. They are labelled Form-based Form because these formal units have no pragmatic or semantic counterparts. They are empty formal shells. The Form-based Form features investigated in this research are the following: Grammatical Gender, Syntactic Alignment, Nominal Expletives, Influence of Complexity on Word Order or Heavy Shift, Predominantly Head Marking, Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation, Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation and Conjugation/Declension.

3.2.4.1 Grammatical Gender

Languages tend to divide nouns into classes. And the classification can be of two kinds: lexical or semantic. An example of the former, also called Grammatical Gender, is noun classification in Dutch. In this language, the selection of the neuter het vs. non-neuter article de is lexically driven and has no semantic motivation (Blom et al. 2008). Other languages, like Kikongo, have several noun classes (ten in the case of Kikongo) and every class only contains nouns that belong together semantically (Dereau, 1995). A language exhibiting Grammatical Gender, like Dutch, is to be considered opaque.

3.2.4.2 Syntactic Alignment

In a clause, arguments can be expressed in different ways. FDG recognises three types of alignment: pragmatic, semantic and morphosyntactic. The former or interpersonal alignment is witnessed in Tagalog, where Topic arguments need to be marked by the particle ang= (10).

10 bumilí ang=lalake ng=isda sa=tindahan Interpersonal Alignment PFV.A.buy SPEC.TOP=man OBL=fish LOC=store

‘The man bought fish at the/a store. Bickel (2011:8)

The second type of alignment is semantic, or representational, alignment. Arguments can be either aligned based on a hierarchy of animacy and person, or based on their semantic role. In the latter case arguments are marked for categories such as Actor, Undergoer or Location (Hengeveld and Mackenzie, 2008). In Acehnese, for example, arguments are expressed through the use of clitics, depending on their semantic roles, e.g. =geuh for Undergoer:

11 gopnyan galak=geuh that Representational Alignment 3.HON happy=3.HON.U very

‘He is very happy. Durie (1985: 56)

Finally, another group of languages presents purely morphosyntactic alignment, which is, as opposed to the previous ones, opaque because the arguments’ alignment has no

23 counterpart at the IL and RL. This alignment leads to a zero-to-one relation between levels. English, for example, shows Grammatical Relations. (12) illustrates that the alignment of arguments is syntactically driven: he is the grammatical subject and therefore occurs in preverbal position.

12a He eats an apple. Syntactic Alignment 12b He falls. 12c He was chased by the dog.

3.2.4.3 Nominal Expletives

Nominal Expletives are units needed at the ML to fill in the subject slot, without having any counterpart at IL and RL, and are therefore opaque. Also known as dummy subjects, they are mostly found in weather (13a) and existential (13b) predicates and non-raised constructions (13c).

13a It is snowing. 13b There is a dog in the garden. 13c It seems that John is tired.

Both verbs to snow, to be and to seem need a placeholder, either because the verbs have a zero argument structure or because the subject, in this case a dog and John, does not precede, as is usually the case, but follows the verb.

3.2.4.4.Influence of Complexity on Word Order or Heavy Shift

In FDG the order of constituents in the sentence is considered to be driven by their semantic and pragmatic status. This can, however, be overruled in some cases. If a certain constituent is morphosyntactically complex or heavy, it can be placed to the end of the sentence. The most common instances of Heavy Shift are shifts of NPs containing adnominal phrases or relative clauses, as in the English sentences in (14) below.

14 Yesterday I saw at work the girl with really long red hair.

This is opaque, as the position of the girl with really long red hair is not semantically nor pragmatically motivated.

3.2.4.5.Predominantly Head Marking

Grammatical information can be marked in two ways: by means of affixes, which are head marking, or by means of clitics or free-standing morphemes, which are phrase marking. As far as affixes are concerned, it is the class or complexity of the host which defines the nature of the affix, causing a zero-to-one correspondence between the RL and the ML. Thus they are to be considered opaque. Free-standing morphemes and clitics are, on the other hand, more transparent because they are not defined by the class of complexity of the host. For this features it is impossible to assign a binary value, therefore we looked at what the predominant strategy is.

3.2.4.6.Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation

Adding a morpheme to a stem might cause the latter to undergo certain changes. These changes may be due to semantic or pragmatic reasons, as we saw in 3.2.3.3 above, or to pure morphological reasons, resulting in a zero-to-one relation between RL and ML. In Hungarian, for instance, by adding the imperative morpheme -s the final -t of the stem of the verb köt- 'to tie' becomes -š: köš-s 'tie!'.

3.2.4.7.Morphophonologically Conditioned Affix Alternation or Conjugation/Declension

Just like stems, affixes can also undergo alternations when added to certain stems due to morphophonological reasons. This is a specific phenomenon and only applies to certain affixes. It is however importat to distinguish between two kinds of Affix Alternation: a purely morphological and a morphoponological one. The latter is very rare, but we find an example of it in the West Greenlandic. When the affix –lirtuuq ‘one who likes’ is attached to a stem, its first consonant phonologically adapts to the last one of the stem:

15 sin-nirtuuq

One who likes to sleep (Leufkens, 2015).

The morphological type of Affix Alternation is, on the other hand, lexically driven by conjugation or declension classes. With the term conjugation, we refer to the affix mutating based on the class of the verb it attaches to, declension being its nominal equivalent. An example of the latter comes from Latin, in which nouns are lexically divided into five classes and every class requires a specific affix paradigm, as illustrated in Table 2 below.

Table 2: The Latin declension for the second and third masculine noun classes: 2st group 3rd group puer ‘boy’ rex ‘king’

Nominative puer rex

Genitive puer-i reg-is

Dative puer-o reg-i

Accusative puer-um reg-em

Vocative puer rex

Ablative puer-o reg-e

This alternation is clearly opaque since it is purely morpho(phono)logically driven and has no semantic motivation.

3.2.5 The BS Features

Besides the nineteen features from Leufkens (2013 & 2015) we decided to include in this study five more morphosyntactic features typical of the Balkan Sprachbund, namely Dependent Verb Forms, Analytic Formation of Future and Subjunctive, Grammaticalized Definiteness, Object Clitic Doubling and Poor Case Morphology. The next subchapter will present the features within the transparency framework.

3.2.5.1 Dependent Verbs

As stated by Friedman (2006, 2011) and Tomić (2006), the lack of a proper infinitive and other non-finite verb forms is to be considered the trademark of the Balkan Sprachbund and is claimed to be common to all languages listed in 2.2 above. Rather than speaking of finite vs non-finite verbs, we will speak of dependence. An independent verb form is one that can

26 stand on its own in a main clause. A dependent one, on the other hand, cannot (Hengeveld, 1998). The latter are found in subordinate clauses (Dixon & Aikhenvald, 2006). The most common dependent verb forms are the following six: infinitive, participle, gerund, supine, subjunctive and nominalization (Hengeveld, 1998). In this subchapter, we will analyse what strategies our four languages use in order to express subordinate clauses of the three kinds: relative, complement and adverbial. Each language will be assigned one opacity point for every dependent verbal form it possesses. Analytical verb forms will be considered transparent. By analytical we mean all verbs that are formed by an auxiliary or free-standing morpheme followed by an independent verb, like the future formation in English. This strategy is transparent because one free-standing particle marks by itself a certain mood, e.g. subjunctive or infinitive.

3.2.5.2 Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation

A second fundamental feature Balkanists have long claimed to be common to all languages of the Sprachbund is the analytic, rather than suffixal, subjunctive and future formation (Friedman 2006 and Tomić 2006). By suffixal we refer to the formation of a verb form by adding a specific morpheme to the verb root, as in the Italian future in (9) above. In contrast, the analytic formation implies the use of a free-standing marker or auxiliary followed by a finite verb form or the infinitive, as in (16) (Friedman, 2006).

16 I will go

The latter is, of course, more transparent, as one unbound item alone marks a specific mood or tense, as will does for future in English.

3.2.5.3 Grammaticalized Definiteness

Definiteness can be marked in several ways. One strategy is to use a determiner, marked for definiteness or indefiniteness (Lyons, 1999). This is highly transparent: one pragmatic feature corresponds to one single morphosyntactic unit. Other languages, however, do not have determiners, and must thereby resort to other opaque strategies in order to mark definiteness. Definiteness may, for instance, be expressed through constituent order, and thereby affect the one-to-one relation between a certain position and a certain syntactic or semantic function.

3.2.5.4 Clitic doubling

Object clitic doubling, also known as resumptive clitic pronouns, is a phenomenon by which an object clitic pronoun appears together with the noun phrase it refers to (Kallulli & Tasmowski, 2008), as in the Italian example (17) below.

17 Il prosciutto l’ho comprato io.

DEF.M.SG ham CL.ACC.M.SG’have.PRS.1.SG buy.PCTP.PST NOM.1.SG

I bought the ham. (lit. “I bought it the ham”)

Clitic doubling is, of course, opaque, as it gives rise to reduplication: two formal units refer to the same semantic unit.

3.2.5.5 Case Morphology

As claimed by Friedman (2006, 2011) and Tomić (2006) a.o., the languages of the Balkan Sprachbund have all simplified their inherited case morphology over time. The preference of a language to use prepositions over case morphology is considered transparent. Case is, on the contrary, considered opaque because it leads to both head marking rather than phrase marking, may lead to Cumulation (3.2.3.1 above) and, when the preposition is present too, reduplication.

3.2.6 Summary of all the features

Before starting to present the methodology, we propose a summary of all the transparency features investigated in this study in Table 4 below.

Table 4: Summary of all transparency features Feature Transparent Value Opaque Value Redundancy Clausal Agreement or Cross-Reference Absent Present

Phrasal Agreement Absent Present

Concord Absent Optional or Obligatory

Tense Copying Absent Present

Discontinuity Extraposition and Extraction Absent Present

Raising Absent Present

Circumfixes and Circumpositions Absent Present

Infixes Absent Present

Non-Parallel Alignment Absent Present

Fusion Cumulation of TAME and Case Absent Present

Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: Absent Present Suppletion

Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: Absent Present Irregular Stem Formation

Form-based Form Grammatical Gender Absent Present

Syntactic Alignment Absent Present

Nominal Expletives Absent Present

Influence of Complexity in Word Order or Absent Present Heavy Shift

Predominantly Head Marking Mostly phrase marking Mostly head marking

Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Absent Present Alternation

Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation Absent Present and Conjugation/Declension

BS Features Dependent Verbs Absent Present

Future and Subjunctive Formation Analytic Suffixal

Grammaticalized Definiteness Present Absent

Clitic Doubling Absent Present

Case Morphology Absent Present

3.3 Materials and Methods

For the present study, the research was conducted in two different ways. We made use of reference grammars, as well as native speaker consultants. Table 5 below lists the references and the native speaker's names.

Table 5: Reference grammars and native speakers consultants Language Reference grammars Native Speakers Consultants

Italian None -Myself

Russian Timberlake, A., 2004, A Reference Grammar of Russian, Cambridge -Ekaterina Shilova University Press; -Olesia Iagovdik

Romanian -Dindelegan, G. P. 2013. The Grammar of Romanian, Oxford -Cristina Şiclovan University Press; -Dorin Perie -Dobrovie-Sorin, C & I. Giurgea. 2013. A reference grammar of Romanian. Volume 1. The noun phrase, John Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam; -Hoffman, C. N. 1989. Romanian Reference Grammar, Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Dept. of State, Washington D.C.;

Mallinson, G. 1986. Rumanian, Croom Helm: London;

Bulgarian -Scatton, E. A. 1984. A Reference Grammar of Modern Bulgarian, -Preslava Petrova Slavica Publishers, Inc.; -Magdalena Nedelova

Greek -Holton, D., P. Mackridge & I. Philippaki-Warburton. 2004. Greek: An -Anonymous on Essential Grammar of the Modern Language, Routledge; www.hinative.com, platform -Holton, D., P. Mackridge & I. Philippaki-Warburton. 2012. Greek: A dedicated to native speakers’ Comprehensive Grammar, 2nd Edition, Routledge; grammaticality judgments

The core method of this research has been to consult the aforementioned grammars and native speakers in order to attest the presence or absence of opaque features listed in 3.2 above. For the aim of this study, we considered one example of opacity as sufficient evidence to define that feature as opaque (leading to a + value). For two the BS features, Dependent Verbs and Case Morphology, we decided to also add between parenthesis the number of cases and dependent verbs languages show, e.g. + (4). If a language was considered transparent with regards to a certain feature than a negative value (-) was assigned. Note that we decided to count opaque rather than transparent features because of our decision to consider one

30 instance as sufficient evidence for opacity. In case there was no literature available on that particular phenomenon we assigned the value No Data (ND).

4. The Results

The present section will outline the results, language by language. We would like to point out that, with regard to the transliteration of Russian, Bulgarian and Greek, we adopted the ALA- LC Romanization Tables from the Library of Congress.

4.1. The Italian Data

Out of the twenty-four features investigated in this study, Italian has nineteen. It is thus to be considered quite opaque. This chapter will outline the Italian data, divided by subgroups. A summary table will conclude the chapter.

4.1.1. Redundancy

The subcategory Redundancy groups together four features: Cross Reference or Clausal Agreement, Phrasal Agreement, Concord and Tense Copying. Italian is quite opaque in these respects and shows to have them all.

Cross Reference Phrasal Agreement Concord Tense Copying + + + +

In Italian the predicate always agrees with its subject in person and number. The predicate can stand on its own, which implies that the subject is simply a spelled-out replication of the person and number features already present on the verb. The subject is only overtly pronounced when it has a contrastive focal or topical function. As (18) below shows, this is a clear proof that the agreement relation in Italian is indeed Cross-Reference:

18 Veng-o domani. Io veng-o domani, tu sabato. come-PRS.1sg tomorrow 1sg.NOM come-PRS.1sg tomorrow, 2sg.NOM Saturday

I am coming tomorrow. I am coming tomorrow, you are coming on Saturday.

Agreement is obligatory on the phrasal level, where modifiers, determiners and demonstratives must all agree in person and number with the noun:

19 Le vecchi-e signor-e DET.F.PL old.F.PL lady.F.PL

The old ladies.

Both Concord and Tense Copying are present in Italian. (20) shows all types of concord found in this language.

20a Plural Concord Due libr-i Two book-M.PL

20b Negative Concord Non ho vist-o nessuno. NEG have.1sg.PRS see.PRT.PST-M nobody

I haven’t seen anyone.

20c Temporal Concord Ieri ho studiato Yesterday have.1sg.PRS study.PRT.PST-M

Yesterday I studied.

Tense Copying is only obligatory in certain contexts. The tense of the subordinate clause relates to the external time of speech. In (21a) below Maria was studying Latin at the same time of the internal speech which is in the past (ha detto ‘she said’), therefore the past tense of the main clause is copied to the embedded clause. In (21b) the tense feature is not copied to the subordinate clause. The sentence acquires a different meaning and the embedded clause acquires an imperfective aspect: Maria said she studies Latin (today).

21a Maria ha dett-o che studi-av-a Latino. Tense Copying Maria have.2sg.PRS say.PRT.PST-M COMP study-IMP-3sg Latin

Mary said she was studying Latin.

21b Maria ha dett-o che studi-a Latino. No Tense Copying Maria have.2sg.PRS say.PRT.PST-M COMP study.PRES-3sg Latin

Mary said she studies Latin.

4.1.2. Discontinuity

Of the five Discontinuity features investigated Italian only presents three: Extraposition and Extraction, Raising and Non-Parallel Alignment.

Extraposition Raising Non-Parallel Infixes Circumfixes, and Extraction Alignment Circumpositions + + + - -

Extraposition and Extraction are very common in Italian. It is especially found in sentences with a specific pragmatic meaning, such as focus and topic. (22a) is unmarked, while in its marked counterpart (22b) the adjunct “di Clint Eastwood” is extraposed.

22a Abbiamo molti film di Clint Eastwood a casa. Non extraposed Have.PRS.1PL many.M.PL film by Clint Eastwood at home

Abbiamo molti film a casa di Clint Eastwood. Extraposed

22b We have many movies by Clint Eastwood at home.

Raising is present is Italian but only witnessed with two verbs, namely sembrare ‘seem’ and parere ‘seem, appear’.

23a Sembr-a che Mario sia stanc-o. Unraised seem.PRS-3SG COMP Mario be.SUBJ.PRS.3SG tired-M.SG

It seems that Mario is tired. Raised

23b Mario sembr-a stanc-o. Mario seem.PRS-3SG tired-M.SG

Mario seems tired.

The last feature of this subgroup that we find in Italian is Non-Parallel Alignment, which is found in sentences containing phonologically weak elements such as clitics. In (24) the dative clitic gli ‘to him’ is spelled out together with the auxiliary ho ‘have’.

24 Gli ho aperto. ˈʎɔ aˈperto 3SG.DAT have.PRS-1SG open.PST.PRT.SG

I opened the door for him.

Infixes and Circumpositions are, on the other hand, not present in this language.

4.1.3. Fusion

All three Fusion features investigated are present in Italian: Cumulation of TAME plus Person, Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: Suppletion and Irregular Stem

Formation.

Cumulation of TAME Suppletion Irregular Stem Formation + + +

Even though case is not marked on Italian verbs, there is always Cumulation of TAME. As example (25) below clearly shows, the portmanteau morpheme -o encodes person, number, aspect and tense.

25 Legg-o read-IND.PRS.PFV.1SG'

As far as Suppletion is concerned, it is found in the paradigm of some irregular verbs such as andare ‘to go’ (26a) and essere ‘to be’ (26b), where the verbal stem changes throughout the conjugation:

26a vad-o andav-o andr-ò I am going I was going I will go

26b sono ero sarò I am I was I will be

Another instance of Suppletion is found in the declension of personal pronouns, which have three different forms: nominative, dative and accusative:

Table 6: The declension of Italian pronouns Nominative Dative Accusative 1SG io mi, me mi, me 2SG tu ti, te ti, te 3SG egli, essa, esso gli, le la, lo lui, lei 1PL noi ci ci 2PL voi vi vi 3PL essi, esse loro li, le

Irregular Stem Formation is also quite rare. Within the verbal domain we find it in the

34 conjugation of certain verbs, which show an alternation of the stem vowel in the perfect tense. This behaviour is only peculiar of some verbs and not characteristic of a specific verbal class. Table 7 below shows the perfect tense conjugation of fare ‘to do’ and vedere ‘to see’. The thematic vowels a and e are substituted by e and i respectively in the 1st and 3rd singular and 3rd plural.

Table 7: perfect tense conjugation of fare and vedere fare ‘to do’ vedere ‘to see’

1SG fec-i vid-i 2SG fac-esti ved-esti 3SG fec-e vid-e 1PL face-mmo ved-emmo 2PL fac-este ved-este 3PL fec-ero vid-ero

4.1.4. Form-based Form

This subcategory includes all forms that do not have a higher counterpart at IL and RL. Italian is quite opaque in this respect. Out of the seven features investigated, it has six: Grammatical Gender, Syntactic Alignment, Heavy Shift, Predominantly Head Marking, Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation and Affix Alternation and Declension.

Grammatical Syntactic Heavy Predominantly Stem Affix Nominal Gender Alignment Shift Head Marking Alternation Alternation/ Expletives Declension + + + + + + -

Nouns in Italian can have two genders: masculine and feminine. In certain cases, such as for jobs and pets, gender is semantically assigned, but as far as objects and most animals are concerned, gender is assigned arbitrarily:

27 tavol-o sedi-a ippopotam-o tigr-e table-M.SG chair-F.SG hyppo-M.SG tiger-F.SG

Italian has Syntactic Alignment. The position of the arguments in the clause is purely driven by their syntactic functions. In (28a) below Mario is the Actor and the subject. On the

35 contrary, in its passive counterpart (28b) Mario is the Actor but not the subject. The latter is the Undergoer of the action, la mela ‘the apple’.

28a Mario mangi-a la mela. Active Mario eat-IND.PRS.3SG DET.F.SG apple

Mario eats the apple.

28b La mela viene mangi-at-a da Mario. Passive DET.F.SG apple come-IND.PRS.3SG eat-PST.PRT-F.SG by Mario

The apple is eaten by Mario.

Complexity influences word order in Italian. When particularly heavy, constituents can be moved to the end of the clause. This often happens to arguments with heavy specifiers (29b) or followed by a relative clause (29c):

29a Ieri ho visto la tua amic-a al parco. yesterday have.PRS.1SG see.PST.PRT DET.F.SG POSS.F.2SG friend at park

29b Ieri ho visto al parco la tua amica con quel gross-o cane ner-o. with DEM.M.SG big-M.SG dog black-M.SG

29c Ieri ho visto al parco la tua amica che studi-a economia con Giuseppe. who study-PRS.3SG economy with Giuseppe

Yesterday I saw your friend in the park.

In Italian only definiteness and possession are marked through free-standing morphemes on the phrase level. All other grammatical information is marked through the use of affixes, which are always Head Marking, as (30) below shows for the plural morpheme -e.

30 Quell-e vecchi-e e simpatich-e signor-e DEM-F.PL old-F.PL and nice-F.PL lady-F.PL

Those old and nice ladies.

Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation is quite rare in this Romance language. Within the nominal domain it can be found in the formation of plural nouns. When adding the plural morpheme -i to the stem of amic- ‘friend’, the last phoneme of the stem undergoes a phonological change: it becomes a palato-alveolar affricate.

31 amic-o /amiko/ amic-i /amitʃi/

Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation is only found in the verbal domain in Italian, namely in the verbal Conjugation. As Table 8 below shows, most verbal affixes behave in a regular way. The third person singular morpheme is nevertheless still conjugation-dependent.

Table 8: Conjugation of amare, credere and dormire: 1st group 2nd group 3rd group amare ‘to love’ credere ‘to believe’ dormire ‘to sleep’ 1SG am-o cred-o dorm-o 2SG am-i cred-i dorm-i 3SG am-a cred-e dorm-e 1PL am-iamo cred-iamo dorm-iamo 2PL am-a-te cred-e-te dorm-i-te 3PL am-ano cred-ono dorm-ono

Finally, Nominal Expletives are not present in Italian.

4.1.5 BS Features

In this last subchapter we will outline the results for Italian with regards to the BS features. These features are: Dependent Verb Forms, Definiteness, Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation, Clitic Doubling and Case Morphology. Of these five features, Italian is only opaque regarding three of them: Dependent Verbs, Clitic Doubling and Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation.

Dependent Verbs Definiteness Analytic Future and Clitic Doubling Case Morphology Subjunctive Formation + (4) - + + -

With regard to Dependent Verbs, Italian is very opaque. Of the six dependent verbal forms we investigated, it has four: infinitive, gerund, participles and subjunctive.

The infinitive is the most common in this language and it is used in both complement and adverbial clauses. In complement clauses where the subjects of the main and subordinate clauses are identical, the infinitive is almost always obligatory:

32 Vogli-o andare want-PRS.1.SG go.INF

*Voglio che vado COMP go.PRS.1.SG

I want to go.

The gerund is only used in adverbial clauses:

33 Spingendo una sedia arriv-ò alla porta push.GER DET.F.SG chair arrive-PST.1.SG to.DET.F.SG door

By pushing a chair s/he got to the door. Nedjalkov (1998:450)

Present participles are rarely used in spoken Italian in adverbial clauses, but they remain in certain idiomatic expressions (34a). In relative clauses they are slightly more common (34b).

34a Vole-nte o nole-nte, devi uscire. want-PTCP.PRS or not.want-PTCP.PRS must-PRS.2.SG go.out

Wanting it or not, you must go out. Haspelmath and König (1998:602)

34b Quest-a è una pianta provenie-nte DEM-F.SG be.PRS.3.SG INDEF.F.SG plant come-PTCP-PRS

dall’ Africa from.DEF Africa

This is a plant that comes from Africa.

Past participles are conversely very common in both adverbial (35a) and relative clauses (35b).

35a Finita la scuola, vado a Parigi. finish.PTCP.PST DET.F.SG school, go-PRS.1.SG to Paris

Once I finish school, I will go to Paris.

35b Ved-o la macchina della ragazza ucci-sa. see-PRS.1.SG DEF.F.SG car of.DEF.F.SG girl murder-PTCP.PST.F.SG

I see the car of the girl who was murdered.

Finally, the subjunctive is found in both complement (36a) and adverbial clauses. In some cases, the use of the subjunctive is obligatory (36b).

36a Pens-o che sia bello. think-PRS.1.SG COMP be.SUBJ.PRS.3.SG beautiful

I think it’s beautiful.

36b Nonostante sia/*è freddo, … despite be.SUBJ.3.SG/be.PRS.3.SG cold

Despite it being cold, …

Italian has a very transparent strategy to mark definiteness. It has two sets of free-standing determiners, one marking definiteness (37a) and one indefiniteness (37b).

37a Ho visto il cane. have.PRS.1.SG see.PTCP.PST DEF.M.SG dog

37b Ho visto un cane. have.PRS.1.SG see.PTCP.PST INDEF.M.SG dog

I have seen the/a dog.

Being a fusional language, Italian is highly opaque with regard to the Future and Subjunctive formation. Both future (38a) and subjunctive (38b) are formed in a non- analytical way.

38a Ci andr-ò domani. CL.LOC go.FUT-FUT.1.SG tomorrow

I will go tomorrow.

38b Che vad-a a casa! that do.SUBJ-SUBJ.3.SG to home

Let it go home!

In Italian resumptive clitic pronouns are very common, but confined to the spoken variety.

39 Il prosciutto l’ho comprato io. DEF.M.SG ham CL.ACC.M.SG’have.PRS.1.SG buy.PCTP.PST NOM.1.SG

I bought the ham.

Finally, Italian has no case morphology, with the exception of the pronoun system (see Table 6 in 4.1.3 above).

Table 9 below summarizes the transparency features found in Italian.

Table 9: Summary of transparency features in Italian Feature Value

Redundancy Cross-Reference or Clausal Agreement + Phrasal Agreement + Concord + Tense Copying + Discontinuity Extraposition and Extraction + Raising + Circumfixes and Circumpositions - Infixes - Non-Parallel Alignment + Fusion Cumulation of TAME and Case + Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: + Suppletion Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: Irregular + Stem Formation Form-based Form Grammatical Gender + Syntactic Alignment + Nominal Expletives - Influence of Complexity in Word Order or Heavy Shift + Predominantly Head Marking + Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation + Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation and + Declension BS Features Dependent Verbs + (4) Definiteness - Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation + Clitic Doubling + Case Morphology -

4.2. The Russian Data

Out of the twenty-four features investigated in this research, Russian has eighteen. It is therefore to be considered quite opaque. This chapter will outline the data, divided by subgroups. A summary table will conclude the chapter.

4.2.1. Redundancy

The subcategory Redundancy groups together four features: Cross Reference or Clausal Agreement, Phrasal Agreement, Concord and Tense Copying. Russian is very opaque in these respects and shows to have them all.

Clausal Agreement Phrasal Agreement Concord Tense Copying + + + +

Agreement between the predicate and its subject is obligatory in Russian. They agree in person and number. The subject must always be spelled out (40), which proves that the Agreement relation in this languages is Clausal Agreement and not Cross Reference.

40 I͡ a govor-͡iu po-russki. 1.NOM.SG speak.IPFV.PRS-1SG Russian

*Govor-͡iu po-russki.

I speak Russian. Shilova (PERS.COMM)

Phrasal Agreement is also obligatory in Russian. Within the nominal domain, adjectives, pronouns and demonstratives always agree in number, gender and case with the noun:

41 Ann-a krasiv-a͡ia devushk-a. Anna.NOM.F.SG beautiful-NOM.F.SG girl-NOM.SG

Anna is a beautiful girl. Shilova (PERS.COMM)

Both Temporal (42a), Negative (42b) and Plural Concord were found in Russian.

42a Vchera my kupi-li zhurnal Yesterday 1.NOM.PL buy.PFV-PST.PL newspaper

Yesterday we bought a newspaper.

42b Nikto ne prochita-l knig-u

Nobody NEG red.PFV-PST.M.SG book-ACC.S.F

Nobody has read the book. Shilova (PERS.COMM)

Plural formation in Russian has a peculiar behaviour when numerals are involved. In (43) below, apel’sin- ‘orange’ takes the accusative masculine plural morpheme -y.

43 Ann-a kupila-la apel’sin-y Anna.NOM.F.SG buy.PFV-PST.F.SG orange-ACC.M.PL

Anna bought oranges. I͡ agovdik (PERS.COMM)

However, if the same sentence contains a numeral, apel’sin- takes a different morpheme. If the numeral is dva ‘two’, tri ‘three or chetyre ‘four’ or ends in one of these numbers (dvadtsat’ chetyre ‘twenty-four’, 103 sto tri ‘one hundred three’ etc), then apel’sin- takes the genitive singular morpheme, in this case the masculine -a:

44 Ann-a kupila-la dva/tri/chetyre/p͡iat’des͡iat’ tri apel’sin-a Anna.NOM.F.SG buy.PFV-PST.F.SG two.M/three/four/fifty-three orange-GEN.M.SG

Anna bought two/three/four/fifty-three oranges. I͡ agovdik (PERS.COMM)

On the other hand, if the numeral is or ends in a number higher than four, that is from p͡iat’ ‘five’ upwards, then apel’sin- would take the genitive plural morpheme, in this case -ov:

45 Ann-a kupila-la p͡iat’/des͡iat’/dvenadtsat’/sorok shest’ apel’sin-ov Anna.NOM.F.SG buy.PFV-PST.F.SG five/ten/twelve/forty-six orange-GEN.M.PL

Anna bought five/ten/twelve/forty-six oranges. I͡ agovdik (PERS.COMM)

The last feature of this group is Tense Copying. In Russian this mechanism is obligatory in certain contexts (46a), but not all (46b).

46a An͡ia skaza-la sto ona izucha-la latyn’ Ania.NOM tell.PFV-PST.F.SG COMP NOM.3.SG.F study.IPFV- latin.ACC.M.SG PST.F.SG Ania said that she was studying Latin.

46b An͡ia skaza-la sto ona izucha-et latyn’ Ania.NOM tell.PFV-PST.F.SG COMP NOM.3.SG.F study.IPFV- latin.ACC.M.SG PRS.3.SG Ania said that she studies Latin. Shilova (PERS.COMM)

To sum up, even though Tense Copying is not always obligatory, Russian is considered to be opaque in this respect.

4.2.2. Discontinuity

Of the five Discontinuity features investigated Russian only presents two, namely Extraposition and Extraction and Non-Parallel Alignment.

Extraposition and Non-Parallel Infixes Raising Circumfixes, Extraction Alignment Circumpositions + + - - -

Extraposition and Extraction are both possible is Russian. As the examples below show the PP o liubv’i can, for pragmatic reasons, be extraposed (47b) and extracted (47c).

47a On pisa-l mnogo stat-eĭ o 3.NOM.M.SG write.IPFV-PST.M.SG many poem-GEN.M.PL about

liubv’-i v shkol’n-ye god-y. love-PREP.F.SG in in scholastic-ACC.PL year-ACC-PL

47b On pisa-l mnogo stat-eĭ v shkol’n-ye god-y o liubv’-i. Extraposition

47c O liubv’-i on pisa-l mnogo stat-eĭ v shkol’n-ye god-y. Extraction

He wrote many poems about love in his school years. I͡ agovdik (PERS.COMM)

The other feature of this group found in Russian is Non-Parallel Alignment. When preceded by the negation ne ‘not’, the past tense masculine of the verb byt’ ‘to be’

43 phonologically merges with the negation. These two words are hence spelled out as a single phonological unit (48b).

48a byl /’bɨɫ/ 48b ne byl /’nebɨɫ/ I͡ agovdik (PERS.COMM)

Infixes and Circumfixes are not present in Russian, while Raising is not allowed in this language.

4.2.3. Fusion

Russian shows all three Fusion features investigated in this study: Cumulation of TAME plus Person and Case plus Person, Suppletion and Irregular Stem Formation.

Cumulation of TAME and Case Suppletion Irregular Stem Formation + + +

As far as Cumulation is concerned, in Russian we witness the existence of both cases of Cumulation, namely of TAME plus Person and of Case plus Person. The formation of the past tense is achieved by adding the affix -l/-la/-lo/-li to the verbal stem. The affix does not only encode tense but also number and person, as the conjugation of the verb chitat’ ‘to read.IPFV’ in (49) below shows.

49 chita-l chita-la chita-lo chita-li read.PST.M.SG read.PST.F.SG read.PST.N.SG read.PST.PL

Another case of Cumulation is found in the formation of participles. The present passive participle for example is formed by means of the morpheme -em/im-, which encodes both tense (present) and voice (passive). The other participles are formed in a similar way, as Table 10 below summarizes. What is evident from this data is that Russian has both Cumulation of TAME and Person and Cumulation of Case and Person. The latter is always present within the nominal domain, as shown by devushk-a ‘girl-NOM.F.SG’.

Table 10: The formation of Russian participles (Timberlake, 2004:96) Active Participles Passive Participles

Present: STEM + ͡iushch/͡iashch + number- Present: STEM + em/im + number-gender-case gender-case cita-͡iushch-iĭ cita-em-yĭ read.PFV- PTCP.PRS-NOM.M.SG read.PFV- PTCP.PRS.PASS- NOM.M.SG who is reading which is read -͡iushch/͡iashch- encodes both tense -em/im- encodes both tense (present) and voice (present) and voice (active) (passive) Past: STEM + vsh + number-gender-case Past: STEM + n/nn + number-gender-case cita-vsh-iĭ cita-nn-yĭ read.PFV-PTCP.PST-NOM.M.SG read.PFV-PST.PASS-NOM.M.SG which was read who was reading -vsh- encodes both tense (past) and voice -n/nn- encodes both tense (past) and voice (passive) (active)

While most adjectives form their comparatives and superlatives in a regular way, some are clearly irregular and show Suppletion. The exemplar case is perhaps the adjective khorosh-iĭ ‘good-NOM.M.SG’:

Comparative Superlative

50 khorosh-iĭ ‘good’ luchshe ‘better’ luchsh-iĭ ‘best’ Timberlake (2004:128)

This is also found within the verbal domain. The verb idti ‘to go (imperfective)’ shows Suppletion in the past tense formation:

51 id-u shë-l go.1SG go-PST.M.SG Shilova (PERS.COMM)

The verb byt’ ‘to be’ has a null present tense form, but shows Suppletion in the formation of the future tense2:

52 by-l bud-u be-PST.M.SG be.FUT Timberlake (2004:275)

The last feature we are going to describe before moving to Form-based Form, is Irregular Stem Formation. As Timberlake (2004) outlines, aspect in Russian is not marked by a single morphological unit. It is rather a lexical classification. Nevertheless, Russian has developed a couple of morphological strategies to mark perfective or imperfective aspect. This can, among others, be achieved by means of vowel alternation in the stem:

53 reshit’/reshat’ ‘decide’

slyshat’/slushat’ ‘listen’ Shilova (PERS.COMM)

4.2.4. Form-based Form

This subcategory includes all forms that do not have a higher counterpart in IL and RL. Russian is quite opaque in this respect. Out of the seven features investigated, it has six: Grammatical Gender, Syntactic Alignment, Heavy Shift, Predominantly Head Marking, Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation and Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation or Conjugation and Declension.

Grammatical Syntactic Heavy Predominantly Stem Affix Nominal Gender Alignment Shift Head Marking Alternation Alternation/ Expletives Declension + + + + + + -

Russian has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Gender assignment is arbitrary, as Table 11 below shows.

2 The verb byt’ ‘to be’ is the only one to have an imperfective future tense, as the imperfective future tense of all other verbs is formed by means of the future tense of byt’ + infinite: ia budu citat’ ‘I will be reading’;

Table 11: Gender in Russian nouns (Timberlake, 2004) Masculine Feminine Neuter

stul’ ‘chair’ mashin-a ‘car’ solnts-e ‘sun’ karandash ‘pencil’ tetrad’ ‘notebook’ zerkal-o ‘mirror’ khleb ‘bread’ ryb-a ‘fish’ masl-o ‘oil’

Russian has a very peculiar Alignment system. While Syntactic Alignment is present, it is not the only possibility. We will here try to outline all possible alignments in this language. Syntactic Alignment is found in active-passive sentence pairs. Example (54a) below is syntactically aligned, and so is its passive counterpart (54b).

54a My opoznava-li khromosom-y 1.NOM.PL recognize.IPFV-PST.PL chromosome-ACC.M.PL

We were recognizing chromosomes.

54b Khromosom-y mogut byt’ […] opoznava-em-y […] chromosome-NOM.M.PL can.PRS.3.PL be.INF recognize.IPFV- PTCP.PRS.PASS-M.PL

Chromosomes ca be […] recognized […] Timberlake (2004: 349)

The second type of alignment we find in Russian is Semantic or Representational Alignment. The verb nuzhen (nuzhn-o/-a/-i in its neutral/feminine/plural forms) ‘be necessary’ has semantic alignment:

55 Mne nuzhen karandash. 1.DAT.SG be_necessary.M.SG pencil.M.SG

I need a pencil. I͡ agovdik (PERS.COMM)

This is also witnessed with other verbs with a similar thematic structure, such as skuchno ‘be bored’, toshnit’ ‘be nauseated’, kholodno ‘be cold’ etc.

56 Mne sluchno. 1.DAT.SG be_bored. ‘I’m bored’

Mne toshn-it. 1.DAT.SG be_nauseated ‘I’m nauseated’

Mne kholodno. 1.DAT.SG be_cold ‘I’m cold’ I͡ agovdik (PERS.COMM)

(56) is clear proof of the existence of Semantic Alignment in this language. Nevertheless, for the sake of this research, Russian must still be considered opaque in this respect. Even if limited, Syntactic Alignment exists and thereby it is to be considered non-transparent. When particularly heavy, constituents can be moved to the final part of the clause. This is the case of v basseĭne nedaleko ot novoĭ shkoli ‘at the pool not far from the new school’ in (57b) below.

57a I͡ a vchera v basseĭn-e uvide-la tvo͡iu podrug-u 1.NOM.SG yesterday in pool- see.PFV- your.ACC.F.SG friend.F- PREP.M.SG PST-F.SG ACC.F.SG

57b I͡ a vchera uvidela tvo͡iu podrugu v basseĭn-e nedaleko ot nov-oĭ shkol-i in pool- not far from new- school- PREP.M.SG GEN.F.SG GEN.F.SG

Yesterday I saw you friend at the pool not far from the new school. I͡ agovdik (PERS.COMM)

Russian is Predominantly Head Marking. In examples (57b) above both case, number and gender are head marked on the PP nov-oĭ shkol-i ‘new-GEN.F.SG school-GEN.F.SG’. The last two features of this group present in Russian are Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation and Conjugation and Declension. Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation is not very common, but we find it in the declension of certain words such as chërt ‘devil’. As Table 12 below shows, adding the plural morphemes causes a vowel alternation ë-e in the stem:

Table 12: Declension of chërt ‘devil’ (Timberlake, 2004:139) Singular Plural Nominative chërt chert-i Genitive chërt-a chert-eĭ Dative chërt-u chert-͡iam Accusative chërt-a chert-eĭ Prepositional/Locative chërt-e chert-͡iakh Instrumental chërt-om chert-͡iam

Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation is present in Russian in the form of Declension and Conjugation. As far as Declension classes are concerned, Russian has three. The belonging of a noun to a certain class is in most cases gender driven. Class 1 can be further split into two subgroups: 1a only consists of masculine nouns, while 1b exclusively includes neuter nouns. Class 2 and 3 are mostly feminine, but with some exceptions, such as the masculine put’ ‘path, (Table 13 below). Since the attribution to one class rather than another is not always semantically driven, Russian is to be considered opaque in this respect. As Timberlake (2004) points out, the differences in the plural forms are almost non-existing thus we will only report here the singular ones:

Table 12: The three declension classes of Russian (Timberlake 2004:140-150) Class 1a Class 1b Class 2 Class 3 zavod ‘factory’ mesto ‘place’ nedel͡ia ‘week’ put’ ‘path Nominative zavod mest-o nedel-͡ia put’ Genitive zavod-a mest-a nedel-i put-i Dative zavod-u mest-u nedel-e put-i Accusative zavod mest-o nedel-͡iu put’ Prepositional/Locative zavod-e mest-e nedel-e put-i Instrumental zavod-om mest-om nedel-eĭ put-ëm

Russian verbs are can be divided into two goups. Table 14 below shows the Conjugation patterns of two verbs of the first and second group, chitat’ ‘to read’ and govorit’ ‘to speak’.

Table 14: Conjugation of chitat’ ‘to read’ and govorit’ ‘to speak’ (I͡ agovdik, PERS.COMM) 1st group 2nd group chitat’ ‘to read’ govorit’ ‘to speak 1 SG chita-͡iu govor-͡iu 2 SG chita-esh’ govor-ish’ 3 SG chita-et govor-it 1 PL chita-em govor-im 2 PL chita-ete govor-ite 3 PL chita-͡iut govor-͡iat

Nominal Expletives are not present in Russian, not in existential, nor in weather predicates:

58a V sad-u sobak-a. in garden.LOC.SG dog-NOM

There is a dog in the garden.

58b Id-ët dojd’. go.IPFV-PRS.3.SG rain.NOM.F.SG

It’s raining. Shilova (PERS.COMM)

4.2.5 BS Features

In this last subsection we will outline the Russian results with regard to the BS features. These features are: Dependent Verb Form, Definiteness, Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation, Clitic Doubling and Case Morphology. Of these five features, Russian is only opaque regarding three of them: Dependent Verbs and Case Morphology.

Dependent Verbs Definiteness Analytic Future and Clitic Doubling Case Morphology Subjunctive Formation + (2) + - - + (6)

Russian only presents two dependent verbal forms: infinitive and gerund. The most common is infinitive, which is found in complement clauses:

59 Khoch-u spat’. want.IPFV-PRS.1.SG sleep.IPFV.INF

I want to sleep. Shilova (PERS.COMM.)

Participles in this language are only used in formal written registers and will thus not be considered. The gerund, on the contrary, is slightly more common and used in adverbial clauses:

60 Smotr-ia na kartin-y, ona stala dumat’ o materi. look-GER at picture-ACC.PL she started to think about her mother.

Looking at the pictures, she started to think about her mother. Shilova (PERS.COMM)

Russian lacks determiners, it has thus developed another strategy to mark Definiteness. Let’s consider two different contexts in which a child tells his parents that there was a dog ‘sobaka’ at school. In the first one, the dog is common knowledge to the speakers

50 as well (61a) and therefore preceding the verb. In the second scenario, however, it is not common knowledge (61b) and therefore positioned at the end of the sentence.

61a Segodn͡ia sobak-a by-la v shkol-e. Today dog-NOM.F.SG be-PST.F.SG in school-PREP.F.SG

Today THE dog was at school./Today there was THE dog at school.

61b Segodn͡ia by-la v shkol-e sobak-a. Today be-PST.F.SG in school-PREP.F.SG dog-NOM.F.SG

Today A dog was at school./Today there was A dog at school. I͡ agovdik (PERS.COMM)

This strategy is to be considered opaque. Russian is completely transparent with regard to the following feature: both the future and the subjunctive are fully analytical. The future is formed with the future of the verb byt’ ‘to be’ followed by the infinitive:

62 My bud-em spat’. NOM.1.PL be.FUT-1.PL sleep.INF

We will sleep. Shilova (PERS.COMM)

The subjunctive, on the other hand, is marked by the particle by, which can sometimes be an enclitic on the complementizer:

63 I͡ a khote-la sto-by oni priekha-li. NOM.1.SG want.IPFV-PST.F COMP-SUBJ NOM.3.PL come.IPFV-PST

I wanted them to come. Shilova (PERS.COMM)

Not having person clitics, Object Clitic Doubling does not exist in Russian. Finally, Russian has an extremely rich declension system, with six different cases as outlined in 4.2.3 above. Moreover, in most cases the use of a preposition is obligatory (64), causing reduplication and therefore making the language even more opaque.

64 I͡ a na rynk-e NOM.1.SG at market-LOC.SG

I am at the market. Shilova (PERS.COMM.)

Table 15 below summarizes the transparency features investigated and their value for Russian.

Table 15: Summary of transparency features in Russian Feature Value

Redundancy Cross-Reference or Clausal Agreement + Phrasal Agreement + Concord + Tense Copying + Discontinuity Extraposition and Extraction + Raising - Circumfixes and Circumpositions - Infixes - Non-Parallel Alignment + Fusion Cumulation of TAME and Case + Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: + Suppletion Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: Irregular + Stem Formation Form-based Form Grammatical Gender + Syntactic Alignment + Nominal Expletives - Influence of Complexity in Word Order or Heavy Shift + Predominantly Head Marking + Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation + Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation and + Declension Extra Features Dependent Verbs + (2) Definiteness + Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation - Clitic Doubling - Case Morphology + (6)

4.3 The Romanian Data

Out of the twenty-four features investigated in this research, Romanian turns out to have twenty. It is therefore to be considered quite opaque. This chapter will outline the data, divided by subgroups. A summary table will conclude the chapter.

4.3.1 Redundancy

The subcategory Redundancy groups together four features: Cross Reference or Clausal Agreement, Phrasal Agreement, Concord and Tense Copying. Romanian is very opaque in these respects and presents all features.

Clausal Agreement Phrasal Agreement Concord Tense Copying + + + +

Agreement between the predicate and its subject is obligatory in Romanian. They agree in person and number. Nevertheless, the subject must not be spelled out (65), which proves that the Agreement relation in this language is indeed Cross Reference.

65 Îi voi da carte-a mîine. 3.OBL.SG.F will.1.SG give.INF book.F-DET tomorrow

I will give her the book tomorrow. Hoffman (1989:15)

Agreement in Romanian is also obligatory on the phrasal level. Adjectives, pronouns and demonstratives always agree in number and gender with the noun:

66 Aceşt-i băieţ-i bun-i DEM-M.PL boy-M.PL good-M.PL These good boys Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea (2013:2)

All three types of Concord are found in Romanian. We below report examples for both Negative (67a), Plural (67b) and Temporal (67c) Concord.

67a N-am adu-s nimic. NEG-have.INF.PRS.1.SG bring-PST.PTCP nothing

I didn’t bring anything Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea (2013:116)

67b Trei cop-i-i three child-M.PL-DET.DEF.M.PL Three children. Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea (2013:18)

67c Îi voi da cartea mîine. 3.OBL.SG.F will give.INF book tomorrow

I will give her the book tomorrow. Hoffman (1989:15)

Finally, we also find Tense Copying in Romanian (68b).

68a Maria a spus că studiaz-ă latina. Maria have.PRS.3.SG say.PST.PTCP COMP study.PRS-3.SG Latin

Mary said that she studies Latin.

68b Maria a spus că studi-a latina. Maria have.PRS.3.SG say.PST.PTCP COMP study.PST-3.SG Latin

Mary said that she was studying Latin. Perie (PERS.COMM)

4.3.2. Discontinuity

Of the six Discontinuity features investigated, Romanian only presents three: Extraposition and Extraction, Raising and Non-Parallel Alignment.

Extraposition Raising Non-Parallel Infixes Circumfixes, and Extraction Alignment Circumpositions + + + - -

Both Extraposition and Extraction are possible in Romanian. In sentence (69) below, cadouri mai frumoase decât iai dat tu belongs together at the RL but decât iai dat tu is extraposed and moved to the end of the sentence.

69 I-am dat cadour-i mai CL.OBL.SG-have.IND.PRS.1 give.PST.PTCP present-M.PL more

frumoas-e Monică-i [decât i-ai pretty-F.PL Monica- than CL.OBL.SG- DET.DEF.OBL.F.SG have.IND.PRS.2.SG

dat tu]. give.PST.PTCP you

I/We gave Monica prettier presents than you gave her. Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea (2013:449)

Similarly, in (70) multe carti despre câini belongs together at the semantic level. Despre câini can however be extracted and moved to the left-hand side of the clause for pragmatic reasons.

70 Despre câin-i avem mult-e About dog.M.PL have.INP.PRS.1.PL many-F.PL

cart-i în magazin. book-F.PL in store.M.SG

About dogs we have many books in store. Şiclovan (PERS.COMM)

While no evidence was found for Object Raising, Subject Raising is possible, but only allowed with the verbs a vedea ‘to see’ and a parea ‘to seem.

71a Par-e că el este înţelept. Seem-IND.PRS.3.SG COMP 3.NOM.M.SG be.IND.PRS.3.SG wise.M.SG

It seems that he is wise.

71b El pare că este înţelept. 3.NOM.M.SG seem-IND.PRS.3.SG COMP be.IND.PRS.3.SG wise.M.SG

71c El pare înţelept. 3.NOM.M.SG seem-IND.PRS.3.SG wise.M.SG

He seems wise. Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea (2013:81)

The last feature of this group found in Romanian is Non-Parallel Alignment. Clitics, as well as he negation nu, can attach to the verb, as examples (69a and b) reported below as (72) show.

72a I-am dat cadour-i mai CL.OBL.SG-have.IND.PRS.1 give.PST.PTCP present-M.PL more

frumoas-e Monică-i decât i-ai pretty-F.PL Monica- than CL.OBL.SG- DET.DEF.OBL.F.SG have.IND.PRS.2.SG

dat tu. give.PST.PTCP you

I/We gave Monica prettier presents than you gave her. Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea (2013:449) 72b N-am adu-s nimic. NEG-have.INF.PRS.1.SG bring-PST.PTCP nothing

I didn’t bring anything Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea (2013:116)

Infixes and Circumfixes are, on the contrary, not present in Romanian.

4.3.3 Fusion

Romanian shows all three Fusion features investigated in this study: Cumulation of TAME plus Person and Case plus Person, Suppletion and Irregular Stem Formation.

Cumulation of TAME and Case Suppletion Irregular Stem Formation + + +

Cumulation of TAME plus Person is witnessed in the verbal morphology. As example (73) below shows, the morpheme -eşte encodes both Mood, Tense, Person and Number.

73 Ion cit-eşte o cart-e Iion read-IND.PRS.3.SG DET.INDEF.F.SG book.F.SG

Ion reads a book. Dindelegan (2013:100)

Cumulation of Case plus Person is also witnessed in Romanian. Example (74) below shows the marking of Case plus Gender and Number.

74 copil-e fat-o child-VOC.M.SG girl-VOC.F.SG Child! Girl! Dindelegan (2013:272)

Some irregular verbs, such as a fi ‘to be’, show Suppletion in their paradigm:

75 sînt era-m fi fost be.IND.PRS.1SG be.IND.IMP-1.SG be.INF be.PST.PTCP

I am I was to be been Dindelegan (2013: 23)

And finally, even though quite rare, Irregular Stem Formation is also found in Romanian. In the plural formation, some nouns undergo a modification in the stem:

76 soră ‘sister’ surori ‘sisters’ om ‘man’ oameni ‘men’ cal ‘horse’ cai ‘horses’ Şiclovan (PERS.COMM.)

4.3.4. Form-based Form

This subcategory includes all forms that do not have a higher counterpart in IL and RL. Romanian is quite opaque in these respects. Out of the seven features investigated, it has six: Grammatical Gender, Syntactic Alignment, Heavy Shift, Predominantly Head Marking, Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation and Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation or Conjugation.

Grammatical Syntactic Heavy Predominantly Stem Affix Nominal Gender Alignment Shift Head Marking Alternation Alternation/ Expletives Declension + + + + + + -

Romanian has three gender classes: masculine, feminine and neuter, and gender is mostly arbitrarily assigned:

77 Masculine Feminine Neuter rac ‘crab’ carte ‘courtyard’ scaun ‘chair’ pom ‘tree’ basma ‘headscarf’ lucru ‘work’ genunchi ‘knee’ baie ‘bathroom’ nume ‘name’

Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea (2013:6)

As far as Alignment is concerned, Romanian has Syntactic Alignment. As examples () below show, it is the subject, be it the Actor (78a) or the Undergoer (78b), to occupy the first position in the sentence.

78a Ei bat băiat-ul NOM.3.PL beat.IND.PRS.3.PL cild-DET.DEF.M.SG

They beat the child. Şiclovan (PERS.COMM.)

78b Băiat-ul e bătut cild-DET.DEF.M.SG be.IND.PRS.3.SG beat.PST.PTCP.M.SG

The child is beaten. Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea (2013:364)

When constituents are too heavy, it is more acceptable to move them to the right-hand side of the sentence (79b).

79a ?Ieri am văzut prieten-ul yesterday have.IND.PRS.1 see.PST.PTCP friend-DET.DEF.M.SG

tău cu câine-le mar-e POSS.2.SG with dog-DET.DEF.M.SG big-M.SG

alb la piscina. white.M.SG in pool

Yesterday I saw your friend with the big white dog at the pool.

79b Ieri am văzut la piscina prietenul tău cu câinele mare alb.

Yesterday I saw at the pool your friend with the big white dog. Şiclovan (PERS.COMM.)

Romanian is Predominantly Head Marking. For the verbal domain, we have already seen in the Fusion section above that head marking is the dominant strategy (see examples 61 and 62 above). In the nominal domain Case, Number are Gender are marked on the head (80a). Definiteness can be marked both on the head (80b) and on the phrase (80c), while prepositions are always phrase marking (80d).

80a copil-e 80b băiat-ul child-VOC.M.SG ‘child!’ child-DET.DEF.M.SG ‘the child’

Dindelegan (2013:100) Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea (2013:364)

80c un om 80d in piscina DET.INDEF.M.SG mam ‘a man’ at pool

Mallinson (1986:252) Şiclovan (PERS.COMM.)

Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation is very rare. We only found one instance of it, namely the plural formation of the noun şarpe ‘snake’. Adding the plural morpheme -i indeed causes a vowel alternation in the stem:

81 şarp-e şerp-i Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea (2013)

Finally, the last feature for this group is Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation or Conjugation and Declension. Even though Romanian does not have different Declension classes, it has four separate Conjugation classes, as outlined in Table 16 below.

Table 16: The four conjugation classes in Romanian (Şiclovan, PERS.COMM.) 1st group 2nd group 3rd group 4th group a cânta ‘to sing’ a vedea ‘to see’ a cere ‘to ask’ a fugi ‘to run’ 1SG cânt văd cer fug 2SG cânţ-i vez-i cer-i fug-i 3SG cânt-ă ved-e cer-e fug-e 1PL cânt-ăm ved-em cer-em fug-im 2PL cânt-aţi ved-eţi cer-eţi fug-iţi 3PL cânt-ă văd cer fug

Nominal Expletives are not found in Romanian.

4.3.5 BS Features

In this last section we will outline the Romanian results with regard to BS Features. These features are: Dependent Verbs, Definiteness, Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation, Clitic Doubling and Case Morphology. Of these five features, Romanian is opaque regarding four of them: Dependent Verbs, Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation, Clitic Doubling and Case Morphology.

Dependent Verbs Definiteness Analytic Future and Clitic Doubling Case Morphology Subjunctive Formation + (5) - + + + (3)

Out of the six dependent verbs investigated here, Romanian possesses five: infinitive, subjunctive, participle, supine and gerund. The Romanian infinitive is analytical, being introduced by the particle a in almost all cases (82a), but also suffixal (Dindelegan, 2013). It is used in all three kinds of subordinate clauses, including relative ones (82b).

82a Se tem-e (de) a plec-a. CL.REFL.ACC fear-PRS.3.SG (of) INF leave-INF

S/he is afraid of leaving. Dindelegan (2013:213)

82b Nu-i cinel ajut-a. NEG.be.PRS.3.SG who helo-INF

There is nobody to help me Dindelegan (2013:487)

The subjunctive, also partly analytic and partly suffixal, is found in complement clauses:

83 Vreau să plec. Want.PRS.1.SG SUBJ leave.SUBJ.1.SG

I want to leave. Dindelegan (2013:48)

The gerund in Romanian is used both in adverbial (84a) and in relative (84b) clauses:

84a Ascult-ând-ul, enervare-a tutur-or creşte-a. listen-GER-CL.ACC.3.SG, irritation-DET.DEF. NOM all-GEN grow-PST.3.SG

Listening to him, everyone was getting more and more annoyed. Dindelegan (2013:205)

84b Are o rană sânger-ând-ă NOM.3.F.SG have.PRS.3.SG cound bleed.GER.F.SG

She has a bleeding wound. Dindelegan (2013:246)

Finally, while past participles are found only in adverbial clauses (85a), the supine is found both in complement (85b) and in relative ones (85c).

85a Pleca-tă prea târziu de acasă, leave-PTCP.PST.F.SG too late from home,

n-a mai găs-it bilet-e. NEG-have.PRS.3.SG also find-PTCP.PST ticket-PL

Having left home too late, she dind’t find any more tickets. Dindelegan (2013:228)

85b El se satur-ă de făcut exerciţ-ii. NOM.M.3.SG CL.REFL.3SG be.fed.up-PRS.3.SG SUP do.SUP exercise-PL

He is fed up with doing exercises. Dindelegan (2013:244)

85c Cal de furat. horse SUP steal.SUP.

A stolen horse. Dindelegan (2013:236)

Romanian has two sets of determiners. The definite determiner is enclitic to the first element in the noun phrase (86a), while the indefinite is free standing and occurs at the beginning of the phrase (86b).

86a băiatu-l frumos 75b un băiat

boy-DEF.M.SG beautiful.M.SG INDEF.M.SG boy

‘the beautiful boy’ ‘a boy’

Dindelegan (2013:257) Dindelegan (2013:292)

The Romanian future is completely analytical, but its subjunctive is not. Romanian has three possible future forms. Even though they are formally different, they do not differ in meaning (Dindelegan, 2013). The first future is formed by an auxiliary followed by the infinitive:

87 Vom cânta will.1.PL sing.INF

We will sing. Şiclovan (PERS.COMM)

The second and third options are both formed with the present subjunctive. In one case, the subjunctive is introduced by the future marker o (88a), while in the second by the auxiliary a avea ‘to have’ (88b):

88a Ei o să aştept-e aici. NOM.3.PL FUT SUBJ wait-SUBJ.3.SG here

They will wait here. Şiclovan (PERS.COMM)

88b Eu am să lucrez. NOM.1.SG have.PRS.1.SG SUBJ work.1.SG

I will work. Şiclovan (PERS.COMM)

The Romanian subjunctive is only partially analytical. The verb is always preceded by the free-standing morpheme să. The 1st and 2nd persons singular and plural endings are equal to the present ones, but the third persons must bear specific endings for the subjunctive (89). Romanian will therefore be considered opaque with regards to this feature.

89 El vre-a să vin-ă. NOM.3.SG want-PRS.3.SG SUBJ come-SUBJ.3.SG

He wants to come. Şiclovan (PERS.COMM)

Romanian widely allows Object Clitic Doubling:

90 Cap-ul plecat nu l tai-e sabi-a. head-DEF bent NEG CL.ACC cut-PRS.3.SG sword-DEF

Keep your head down. Friedman (2006:663)

Finally, Romanian distinguishes between three cases: direct, indirect and vocative (91) and therefore opaque in this respect.

91 Direct Indirect Vocative

fat-ă fet-e fat-o girl-NOM=ACC.F.SG girl-GEN=DAT.F.SG girl-VOC.M.SG

Dindelegan (2013:261-272)

Table 17 below outlines the values for the transparency features in Romanian.

Table 17: Summary of transparency features in Romanian Feature Value

Redundancy Cross-Reference or Clausal Agreement + Phrasal Agreement + Concord + Tense Copying + Discontinuity Extraposition and Extraction + Raising + Circumfixes and Circumpositions - Infixes - Non-Parallel Alignment + Fusion Cumulation of TAME and Case + Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: + Suppletion Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: Irregular + Stem Formation Form-based Form Grammatical Gender + Syntactic Alignment + Nominal Expletives - Influence of Complexity in Word Order or Heavy Shift + Predominantly Head Marking + Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation + Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation and + Declension Extra Features Dependent Verbs + (5) Definiteness - Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation + Clitic Doubling + Case Morphology + (3)

4.4 The Bulgarian Data

Out of the twenty-four features investigated in this research, Bulgarian turns out to have eighteen. It is therefore to be considered quite opaque. This chapter will outline the data, divided by subgroups. A summary table will conclude the chapter.

4.4.1 Redundancy

The subcategory Redundancy groups together four features: Cross Reference or Clausal Agreement, Phrasal Agreement, Concord and Tense Copying. Bulgarian is very opaque in these respects and presents all features.

Cross Reference Phrasal Agreement Concord Tense Copying + + + +

Agreement between the predicate and its subject is obligatory in Bulgarian. They agree in person and number. However, the subject does not have to be spelled out (92a), which proves that the agreement relation in this language is indeed Cross Reference.

92a Igraj-e-m 92b Nie igraj-e-m. play-PRS-1.PL NOM.1.PL play-PRS-1.PL

We play. Scatton (1984:182)

In Bulgarian, agreement is also obligatory on the phrasal level. Adjectives, determiners and demonstratives always agree in number and gender with the noun:

93 dobr-a žena good-F.SG woman

Good woman Scatton (1984:126)

Both Plural (94a) Negative (94b) and Temporal Concord (94c) are found in Bulgarian. We hereby report an example of each.

94a Dve zen-i two woman-PL

Two women. Scatton (1984:312)

94b Nikoj ne zna-e nobody NEG know-PRS.3.SG

Nobody knows. Scatton (1984:128)

94c Včera go vidja-x-Ø na ulica-ta. yesterday ACC.M.3.SG see-PST-1.SG in street-DET.DEF.F.SG

Yesterday I saw him on the street. Scatton (1984:321)

The last feature of this group, Tense Copying, is present in Bulgarian (95a) but not obligatory (95b). According to Stojanov (1964) and Andrejčin (1944), there is no difference in meaning between the two variants.

95a Znae-x če toj idv-a. know-PST.1.SG COMP NOM.3.SG come-PRS.3.SG

I knew that he was coming.

95b Znae-x če toj idva-s-e.

know-PST.1.SG COMP NOM.3.SG come-PST-3.SG

I knew that he was coming. Scatton (1984:381)

4.4.2. Discontinuity

Of the six Discontinuity features investigated, Bulgarian only presents three: Raising, Non- Parallel Alignment and Extraposition and Extraction.

Raising Non-Parallel Extraposition and Infixes Circumfixes, Alignment Extraction Circumpositions + + + - -

Subject Raising is possible and witnessed with the verbs izgležda ‘to appear’ and struva se ‘to seem’:

96a Izgležd-a, če toj e prav appear.RPS.3.SG COMP NOM.M.3.SG be.PRS.3.SG right.M.SG

It seems that he is right. Petrova (PERS.COMM.)

96b Toj izgležda da e prav NOM.M.3.SG appear.RPS.3.SG be.PRS.3.SG right.M.SG

He appears to be right. Petrova (PERS.COMM.)

Non-stressed dative forms are enclitics on the first stressed nominal form of the noun phrase, giving rise to Non-Parallel Alignment:

97 stara-ta mu kŭš-ta old.F.SG-DET.DEF.F.SG DAT.3.SG.M house.F.SG-DET.DEF.F.SG

/staratamu kɤʃta/

His old house. Scatton (1984:147)

Finally, Extraction (98a) in Bulgarian is not ungrammatical but slightly odd. Extraposition (98b) is, on the other hand, considered unacceptable by both native speaker consultants for this study.

98a Ža gotovene, nie ima-me mnogo about cooking NOM.1.PL have-PRS.1.PL many

knig-i u doma. book-PL at home

About cooking, we have may books at home.

98b *Imame mnogo knigi v nasha-ta kyshta ža gotovene. POSS-1.PL-DET.DEF.F.SG summer_house about cooking

We have many books in our summer house about cooking. Nedelova (PERS.COMM)

Bulgarian will therefore be considered opaque in this respect. The other three features, Infixes and Circumfixes are, on the contrary, not present in Bulgarian.

4.3.3 Fusion

Bulgarian shows all three Fusion features investigated in this study: Cumulation of Case plus Person, Suppletion and Irregular Stem Formation.

Cumulation of Case + Person Suppletion Irregular Stem Formation + + +

Bulgarian case morphology is not at all complex. The only case still being morphologically marked is vocative. It is marked on adjectives which can bear two suffixes: vocative (99a) and non-vocative (99b). In both cases we witness though Cumulation of Case and Person:

99a sin-i blue-VOC.M.SG 99b sin-ŭ blue-M.SG Nedelova (PERS.COMM)

Suppletion in Bulgarian is found both within the verbal and the nominal domains. Within the former, we witness it in the conjugation of certain irregular verbs, such as the verb ‘to be’:

100 sŭm bjax bil be.PRS.1.SG ‘I am’ be.PST.1.SG ‘I was’ be.PST.PTCP.M.SG ‘been’

Scatton (1984:194)

Within the nominal domain, on the other hand, we find it in the declension of pronouns:

Table 18: Declension of Romanian personal pronouns (Scatton, 1984:146) Singular Plural 1 2 3 1 2 3 m n f Nominative az ti toj to tja nie vie te Dative mene tebe nemu nej nam vam tjam Accusative mene tebe nego neja nas vas tjax

The last feature of this group is Irregular Stem Formation. In the formation of the present tense, all stems in -i-, -a- and -ja- undergo velar-alveopalatal transformation (101a). In the verb draskam ‘to scratch’ however the velar k is transformed into a palatalized coronal (101b).

101a lŭga-Ø-ŭt => lŭžaŭt ‘ they deceive’ 101b draska-Ø-ŭt => drast’aŭt ‘they scratch’ Scatton (1984:183)

4.3.4. Form-based Form

This last category includes all forms that do not have a semantic or pragmatic counterpart. Bulgarian is quite opaque in these respects. Out of the seven features investigated, it has five: Grammatical Gender, Syntactic Alignment, Heavy Shift, Predominantly Head Marking and Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation or Conjugation

Grammatical Syntactic Heavy Predominantly Affix Stem Nominal Gender Alignment Shift Head Marking Alternation/ Alternation Expletives Declension + + + + + - -

Bulgarian nouns can be assigned to three different genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. The assignment to one gender rather than another is purely arbitrary in most cases, as example (102) below shows.

102 Masculine Feminine Neuter stol ‘chair’ prolet ‘springtime’ more ‘sea’ sluga ‘servant’ masa ‘table’ momiče ‘girl’

Scatton (1984:126-7)

As far as alignment is concerned, Bulgarian has Syntactic Alignment. As example (103) below shows, the subject always occupies the first position in the sentence, be it the Actor (103a) or the Undergoer (103b).

103a Te prodad-ox-a kola-ta 3.PL sell-PST-3.PL car-DET.DEF.F.SG

They sold the car.

103b Kola-ta e prodadena. car-DET.DEF.F.SG be.PRS.3.SG sell.PST.PTCP.F.SG

The car has been sold. Scatton (1984:342)

If a constituent is too heavy, then it is preferred to move it to the right-hand side of the sentence (104b).

104a Včera vidja-x-Ø tvoja prijatel na bassejna yesterday see-PRS-1.SG POSS.2.SG friend at pool

Yesterday I saw your friend at the pool.

104b Včera vidja-x-Ø na bassejna tvoja ispansk-i yesterday see-PRS-1.SG at pool POSS.2.SG Spanish.M.SG

prijatel s goljam-o-to bjal-o kuče. friend with big-N- white-N dog DET.DEF.N Yesterday at the pool I saw your Spanish friend with the big white dog.

Bulgarian is a Predominantly Head Marking language. Only prepositions and indefinite determiners are marked at the phrasal level, as in na bassejna (104) above. All other functions, including definiteness, are marked on the head, as in goljamo-to (104). The last feature to be discussed here is Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation. Bulgarian verbs in are divided into three classes, based on their conjugation pattern. The difference in their conjugation is however only visible in the past tense, where they each take a different past suffix. Verbs of group one form the past tense with suffix -ox-, verbs of the second with suffix -ix- while those of the third group with suffix -ax-:

Table 18: The Conjugation of Bulgarian verbs in the past tense (Scatton, 1984:438) 1st group 2nd group 3rd group četa ‘to read’ xodja ‘to go’ gledam ‘to look’ 1SG čet-ox-Ø xod-ix-Ø gled-ax-Ø 2SG čete xodi gleda 3SG čete xodi gled 1PL čet-ox-me xod-ix-me gled-ax-me 2PL čet-ox-te xod-ix-te gled-ax-te 3PL čet-ox-a xodix-a gled-ax-a

Finally, Nominal Expletives and Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation are not witnessed in Bulgarian.

4.4.5 BS Features

In this last section we will outline the results for Bulgarian with regard to the BS Features. These features are: Dependent Verbs, Definiteness, Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation, Clitic Doubling and Case Morphology. Of these five features, Bulgarian is only opaque regarding three of them: Dependent Verbs, Clitic Doubling and Case Morphology.

Dependent Verbs Definiteness Analytic Future and Clitic Doubling Case Morphology Subjunctive Formation + (2) - - + + (1)

In Bulgarian, only two dependent verb forms were found: infinitive, or bare stem, and participles. Even though Bulgarian does not have any infinitival morphology, the bare stem of the verb is used in complement clauses, as in (105) below.

105 Iskam do dojda. want.PRS.1.SG COMP come

I want to come. Scatton (1984:378)

Participles, on the other hand, are found in relative clauses:

106 Xora-ta, strad-ašt-i ot tazi people-DET.PL suffer.PTCP.PRS-PL from DEM.F.SG

bolest, pij-at mineraln-a voda. disease drnk-PRS.3.PL mineral-F.SG water

People, suffering from this disease, drink mineral Scatton (1984:382) water.

Bulgarian only marks definiteness systematically. It does so by means of a determiner, which is always enclitic on the first element of the noun phrase:

107 Xubav-a-ta kniga nice-F.SG-DEF.F.SG book

The nice book. Scatton (1984:164)

Indefiniteness can sometimes be marked by using the cardinal number edin ‘one’ (108). Its use is however not systematic (Scatton, 1984).

108 Toj čete-š-e edna kniga. NOM.1.SG read-IMP-3.SG one.F.SG book

He was reading a book. Scatton (1984:316)

Bulgarian is fully analytic in the Formation of Future and Subjunctive. The former is formed with the auxiliary šte followed by the present tense forms (109a), the subjunctive with the particle da (109b).

109a šte vŭrvja FUT go.PRS.1.SG

I will go. Scatton (1984:11)

109b I da val-i-Ø šte izlezn-e-m. even if SUBJ rain-PRS-3.SG FUT go.out-PRS-1.PL

Even if it rains, we will go out. Haspelmath & König (1998:588)

Bulgarian allows Object Clitic Doubling.

110 Pokorena glava sabja ne ja ja seč-e-Ø. Bent head sword NEG CL.ACC cut-3.SG

Keep your head down. Friedman (2006:663)

Finally, Bulgarian has a very poor case morphology, with only the vocative overtly marked on adjectives:

111 sin-i blue-VOC.M.SG

Table 19 below summarizes the values for each feature in Bulgarian.

Table 19: Summary of transparency features in Bulgarian Feature Value

Redundancy Cross-Reference or Clausal Agreement + Phrasal Agreement + Concord + Tense Copying + Discontinuity Extraposition and Extraction + Raising +

Circumfixes and Circumpositions - Infixes - Non-Parallel Alignment + Fusion Cumulation of TAME and Case + Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: + Suppletion Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: Irregular + Stem Formation Form-based Form Grammatical Gender + Syntactic Alignment + Nominal Expletives - Influence of Complexity in Word Order or Heavy Shift + Predominantly Head Marking + Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation - Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation and + Declension BS Features Dependent Verbs + (2) Definiteness - Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation - Clitic Doubling + Case Morphology + (1)

4.5 The Modern Greek Data

Out of the twenty-four features investigated in this research, Greek turns out to have eighteen. It is therefore to be considered quite opaque. This chapter will outline the data, divided by subgroups. A summary table will conclude the chapter

4.5.1 Redundancy

The subcategory Redundancy groups together four features: Cross Reference or Clausal Agreement, Phrasal Agreement, Concord and Tense Copying. Modern Greek turned out to be very opaque in these respects and has them all.

Cross Reference Phrasal Agreement Concord Tense Copying + + + +

Agreement between the verb and its subject is always obligatory in Modern Greek. The subject however does not need to be spelled out in unmarked contexts:

112 Kan-ei pōs den katalabain-ei pretend.PRS-PRS.3.SG COMP NEG understand.PRS-PRS.3.SG

He pretends not to understand Holton et al. (2012:258)

Agreement is also obligatory on the phrasal level. All elements within the noun phrase must agree with the noun in gender, number and case:

113 Ē deyter-a tax-ē DEF.NOM.F.SG second-NOM.F-SG class-NOM.F.SG

The second class. Holton et al. (2012:88)

Concord is also found in Modern Greek. We hereby present examples of each type of Concord, negative (114a), temporal (114b) and plural (114c).

114a Den thel-ō tipota NEG want.PRS-PRS.1.SG anything.

I don’t want anything. Holton et al. (2012:406)

114b E-graph-e sto Giannē chthes. IMP-write-PST.3.SG to John yesterday.

She wrote to John yesterday. Holton et al. (2012:249) 114c Oi pente antr-es DET.NOM.PL five man-NOM.PL

The five men. Holton et al. (2012:375)

Finally, Tense Copying is present in this language (115a) but not obligatory (115b).

115a Mou eip-e oti den se ēxer-e. DAT.1.SG tell.PST- COMP NEG ACC.2.SG know.PST-PST3.SG PST.3.SG (S)he told me that (s)he didn’t know you.3

115b Mou eip-e oti den se xer-ei.

3 Produced by us and judged by native speakers on the online forum dedicated to native speakers’ judgments www.hinative.com;

DAT.1.SG tell.PST- COMP NEG ACC.2.SG know.PRS-PRS.3.SG PST.3.SG (S)he Told me that (s)he doesn’t know you. Holton et al. (2004:219)

4.5.2 Discontinuity

Of the six Discontinuity features investigated Greek only presents three, namely Extraposition and Extraction, Raising and Non-Parallel Alignment.

Extraposition Non-Parallel Raising Infixes Circumfixes, and Extraction Alignment Circumpositions + + + - -

In Modern Greek Extraposition is possible and often done when the constituent is particularly heavy, as in (116) below.

116 Ērth-e ki o antras na come.PST-PST.3.SG too DEF.NOM.M.SG man FUT

tē dei, o opoios den ACC.F.SG see DEF.NOM.M.SG REL.M.SG NEG

einai polu phil-os tēs. be very friend-NOM.M.SG GEN.F.SG

John came to see her too, who is not a close friend of hers. Holton et al. (2012:533)

The second Discontinuity feature found in Greek is Non-parallel Alignment. Determiners, as well as clitics, can be proclitic or enclitic. In some cases this can also cause an assimilation:

117 ton patera → /tombat’era/ the father (ACC) ton kero → /toŋɟer’o/ the weather (ACC)

Holton et al. (2012:20)

Finally, Raising (118) is possible in Modern Greek:

118 Epis-a ton Gianni na fig-i telefte-os persuade.PST-PST.1.SG DEF.ACC.M.SG John SUBJ leave-3.SG last-NOM

I persuaded John to leave last. Beys (2009:105)

The other two features, Infixes and Circumfixes, are not witnessed in this language.

4.5.3 Fusion

Modern Greek shows all three Fusion features investigated in this study: Cumulation of TAME plus Person and Case plus Person, Suppletion and Irregular Stem Formation.

Cumulation of TAME and Case Suppletion Irregular Stem Formation + + +

In Modern Greek we find both Cumulation of TAME plus Person (119a) and Cumulation of Case plus Person (119b):

119a brech-ei 119b Ta louloudi-a rain.PRS-PRS.3.SG DEF..ACC-N.PL flower-ACC.PL

It rains. The flowers. Holton et al. (2012:260) Holton et al. (2012:255)

Suppletion is found within the verbal domain. As a matter of fact, many Greek verbs show Suppletion in their paradigm, as in the case of the verb the verb eimai ‘to be’:

120 eimai ēmoun be.PRS.1.SG ‘I am’ be.IMP.1.SG ‘I was’

Holton et al. (2012:171)

Irregular Stem Formation is quite rare. The imperfect is usually formed by means of a syllabic augment: a e- is usually prefixed to the verbal stem, as in e-leg-es ‘IMP-say- IMP.2.SG”. In few stems however we find an internal vocalic augment, like in the imperfect formation of yparchō ‘exist’ (121b).

121a yparch-ō 121b ypērch-a exist.PRS-PRS.1.SG ‘I exist’ exist.IMP-IMP.1.SG ‘I existed’

Holton et al. (2012:188)

4.5.4 Form-based Form

This subcategory includes all forms that do not have a higher counterpart in IL and RL.

Modern Greek is relatively opaque in these respects. Of the seven features investigated, we found five: Grammatical Gender, Heavy Shift, Predominantly Head Marking, Syntactic Alignment and Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation or Conjugation and Declension.

Grammatical Heavy Shift Predominantly Syntactic Affix Nominal Stem Gender Head Marking Alignment Alternation/ Expletives Alternation Declension + + + + + - ND

Nouns in Greek belong to a gender, be it masculine, feminine or neuter. While animate nouns are usually assigned gender on a semantic basis, inanimate ones are assigned gender arbitrarily.

122 Masculine Feminine Neuter aeras ‘air’ karekla ‘chair’ aleuri ‘flour’ periorismos ‘limitation’ gnōsē ‘knowledge’ kephi ‘high spirits’

Holton et al. (2012:317)

When too heavy, constituents can easily be moved to the right-hand side of the sentence, causing Heavy Shift:

123 Ērth-e ki o Giannes na come.PST-PST.3.SG too DEF.NOM.M.SG John FUT

tē dei, o opoios den ACC.F.SG see DEF.NOM.M.SG REL.M.SG NEG

einai polu phil-os tēs. be very friend-NOM.M.SG GEN.F.SG

John came to see her too, who is not a close friend of hers. Holton et al. (2012:533)

Greek is Predominantly Head Marking, as example (123) above shows. Only determiners and prepositions are phrase marking. Even though the order of constituents in the sentence is quite free in Modern Greek (124a and b), the verb always agrees with the syntactic subject. It thus follows that Greek has Syntactic Alignment.

124a Ē mētera mou malō-s-e ton patera mou. DET.NOM mother POSS.1.SG scold-PST- DET.ACC.M.SG father POSS.1.SG .F.SG PST.3.SG 124b Ton patera mou malōse ē mētera mou.

My mother told my father off. Holton et al. (2012:518-522)

The last Form-based Form feature found in Modern Greek is Affix Alternation or Conjugation and Declension. Each gender class can be further divided in several declension classes. Masculine nouns, for example, can be divided into seven classes based on the declension model they follow, as Table 20 below shows.

Table 20: Masculine nouns classes in Modern Greek (Holton et al., 2012:55-62) Sg. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Nom. phulak-as klepht-ēs ouran-os tom-eas prutan-ēs pap-as manab-ēs Gen. phulak-a klepht-ē ouran-o tom-ea prutan-ē pap-a manab-e Acc. phulak-a klepht-ē ouran-ou tom-ea prutan-ē pap-a manab-e Voc. phulak-a klepht-ē ouran-e tom-ea prutan-ē pap-a manab-e Pl. Nom. phulak-es klepht-es ouran-oi tom-eis prutan-eis pap-ades namab-ēdes Gen. phulak-ōn klepht-ōn ouran-ōn tom-ōn prutan-ōn pap-adōn namab-ēdōn Acc. phulak-es klepht-es ouran-ous tom-eis prutan-eis pap-ades namab-ēdes Voc. phulak-es klepht-es ouran-oi tom-eis prutan-eis pap-ades namab-ēdes ‘guardian’ ‘thief’ ‘heaven’ ‘section’ ‘rector’ ‘priest’ ‘greengrocer’

The verbal system also has Conjugation classes. Greek verbs can be divided into three groups. Table 21 below shows the conjugation pattern for each group.

Table 21: The three different Conjugation groups in Modern Greek 1st Group 2nd Group A 2nd Group B denō ‘tie’ agapō ‘love’ theōrō ‘consider’

1 SG den-ō agap-ō/-aō theōr-ō 2 SG den-eis agap-as theōr-eis 3 SG den-ei agap-a/-ei theōr-ei 1 PL den-oume agap-ame/-oume theōr-oume 2 PL den-ete agap-ate theōr-eite 3 PL den-oun agap-oun/-an theōr-oun

No data was found on Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation, which will therefore be labelled as ND. On the other hand, Modern Greek does not require Nominal Expletives with weather (125a) nor existential predicates (125b):

125a brech-ei rain.PRS-PRS.3.SG ‘it rains’ Holton et al. (2012:260)

125b Ech-ei psar-ia appose; have.PRS-PRS.3.SG fish-NOM.N.PL tonight

Is there fish tonight? Holton et al. (2012:261)

4.5.5 BS Features

In this last subchapter we will outline the results for Modern Greek with regard to the BS Features. These features are: Dependent Verbs, Definiteness, Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation, Clitic Doubling and Case Morphology. Of these five features, Modern Greek is only opaque regarding three of them: Dependent Verbs, Clitic Doubling and Case Morphology.

Dependent Verbs Definiteness Analytic Future and Clitic Doubling Case Morphology Subjunctive Formation + (1) - - + + (4)

The only dependent verb form Modern Greek possesses is the gerund (126), which is used to express adverbial clauses. Participles do exist but are only used in formal written language and therefore won’t be considered in this study.

126 O Giannēs ērth-e trech-ontas otan DET.NOM.M.SG John go.PST-3.SG run-GER when

akou-s-e ta nea. her.PST-PST-3.SG DEF.N.PL news

John came running when he heard the news’ Holton et al. (2012:306)

Definiteness in this language is marked by means of determiners. There are two sets of determiners: one marking definiteness (127a) and one indefiniteness (127b). Greek will therefore be considered fully transparent in this respect.

127a O phylak-as 116b Enas phylak-as DEF.M.SG.NOM guard-NOM.M.SG INDEF.M.SG.NOM guard-NOM.M.SG

The guard. A guard. Holton et al. (2012:55)

Both Future and Subjunctive are analytically formed. The future is formed with the particle tha followed by the indicative mood (128a), while the subjunctive with the particles na or as plus the indicative mood (128b).

128a Tha eimai FUT be.PRS.1.SG

I will be. Holton et al. (2012:171)

128b Na mēn tou to e-leg-es. SUBJ NEG DAT.M.SG ACC.N.SG IMP-say-IMP.2.SG

You shouldn’t have told him that. Holton et al. (2012:265)

Greek is, on the other hand, opaque with regards to the last two features: Clitic Doubling and Case Morphology. The former is very common:

129 Ta louloudi-a ta e-pher-e o Takēs DEF..ACC-N.PL flower- CL.N.PL IMP-bring.- DEF.NOM.M.SG Takis ACC.PL IMP3.SG

Takis brought the flowers. Holton et al. (2012:255)

Finally, Modern Greek still possesses a relatively complex case system. The only case Greek lost over time is the Dative, which has left traces in certain fixed expressions like tois ekato ‘per cent’. The other four cases, Nominative, Genitive, Accusative and Vocative, are still present in the language, as we saw in Table 20 in 4.5.4 above.

Table 21 below summarizes all features for Modern Greek.

Table 21: Summary of transparency features in Modern Greek Feature Value

Redundancy Cross-Reference or Clausal Agreement + Phrasal Agreement +

Concord + Tense Copying + Discontinuity Extraposition and Extraction + Raising + Circumfixes and Circumpositions - Infixes - Non-Parallel Alignment + Fusion Cumulation of TAME and Case + Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: + Suppletion Morphologically Conditioned Stem Alternation: Irregular + Stem Formation Form-based Form Grammatical Gender + Syntactic Alignment + Nominal Expletives - Influence of Complexity in Word Order or Heavy Shift + Predominantly Head Marking + Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation ND Morphologically Conditioned Affix Alternation and + Declension BS Features Dependent Verbs + (1) Definiteness - Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation - Clitic Doubling + Case Morphology + (4)

4.6 Summary of the results

Before moving to the discussion and conclusion, we would like to propose a schematic summary of the results in Table 21 below.

Table 21: Overall results Feature Italian Romanian Russian Bulgarian Greek 19/24 20/24 18/24 18/24 18/24 Redundancy Cross-Reference or Clausal + + + + + Agreement Phrasal Agreement + + + + + Concord + + + + + Tense Copying + + + + + Discontinuity Extraposition and Extraction + + + + + Raising + + - + + Circumfixes and - - - - - Circumpositions Infixes - - - - - Non-Parallel Alignment + + + + + Fusion

Cumulation of TAME and + + + + + Case Morphologically Conditioned + + + + + Stem Alternation: Suppletion Morphologically Conditioned + + + + + Stem Alternation: Irregular Stem Formation Form-based Form Grammatical Gender + + + + + Syntactic Alignment + + + + + Nominal Expletives - - - - - Influence of Complexity in + + + + + Word Order or Heavy Shift Predominantly Head Marking + + + + + Morphophonologically + + + - ND Conditioned Stem Alternation Morphologically Conditioned + + + + + Affix Alternation and Declension BS Features Dependent Verbs + (4) + (5) + (2) + (1) + (1) Definiteness - - + - - Analytic Future and + (2) + - - - Subjunctive Formation Clitic Doubling + + - + + Case Morphology - + (3) + (6) + (1) + (4)

Feature Italian Romanian Russian Bulgarian Greek 19/24 20/24 18/24 18/24 18/24

5. Discussion

This section will discuss the results and their implications for our hypotheses. As outlined in section 2.5 above, we had two separate hypotheses, reported in (130) below.

130 Hypothesis 1: Convergence forced the languages of the BS to become more transparent Prediction 1: Romanian will be more transparent than Italian Bulgarian will be more transparent than Russian Hypothesis 2: The language of the Orthodox Church, Koine Greek, and later Old Church Slavonic and Church Slavonic, had an influence on the linguistic development of the languages of the BS Prediction 2: Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek possess the same features

Our first hypothesis assumed the underlying cause of the Balkanisms to be the convergence due to intense contact between (speakers of) the languages of the Balkan Linguistic Area. Thus, our predictions were that languages pertaining to the Balkan Sprachbund, Romanian

80 and Bulgarian, would be more transparent than related languages not belonging to the Sprachbund, Italian and Russian. Our results show, however, that this hypothesis is not borne out. If we consider the Romance languages, we clearly see that Romanian is even slightly more opaque than Italian: Italian possesses no case morphology while Romanian does. As far as the Slavic languages are concerned, the conclusion seems to be straightforward, Bulgarian is just as opaque as Russian. If we count the opacity values (+) in Table 21 above, we see that both Slavic languages possess eighteen features. Nevertheless, by looking at the individual features, we notice that they do not share the exact same ones. As a matter of fact, there is a difference with regard to Raising and Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation. While the results for the latter are in favour of our hypothesis (Russian is opaque while Bulgarian is transparent), Raising poses a great problem. Russian does not allow raising and is therefore transparent in this respect. Bulgarian is, however, opaque. Raising is a very opaque feature, as an element semantically belonging to the embedded clause behaves as an argument of the main clause. It thus causes a grammatical discontinuity, finding itself on the border between Discontinuity and Form-based Form. This is very strong proof that our hypothesis is not correct and that convergence is not the cause behind the existence of the Balkan Sprachbund. Our second hypothesis was that diglossia, and thus Koine Greek and later on Old Church Slavonic and Church Slavonic, is the underlying cause behind the existence of the Balkan Sprachbund. Therefore, our prediction was that Modern Greek, offspring of Koine Greek, Romanian and Bulgarian would share the same features. This hypothesis is borne out. Modern Greek, Romanian and Bulgarian possess the same features, except for two: Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation and Analytic Future and Subjunctive Formation. The former is extremely rare in Romanian. However, since no data was found in Greek, we cannot draw any firm conclusions. The second feature is, on the other hand, crucial for our hypothesis. While the formation of the future in Romanian is fully analytical, the formation of the subjunctive is not. As we outlined in section 4.3.5 above, the subjunctive formation is in fact partly analytical and partly suffixal. The verb is always introduced by the free-standing morpheme să. While the 1st and 2nd person singular and plural endings are equal to the ones in the present indicative, the third person must bear specific endings for the subjunctive (89 above). The marker să originated from the Latin si ‘if/whether’ (Coteanu et al. 1998) and functioned as a conditional complementizer. It is only shortly before the 16th century that it is re- analysed as a subjunctive marker (Frîncu, 1969). Hill (2013) suggests that the emergence of a

81 proper subjunctive is the consequence of a language-internal change with regard to complementizers, which causes the disappearance of de + indicative forms in subjunctive contexts. The de + indicative form indeed replicated the subjunctive pattern of other Balkan languages (Hill, 2013), such as Bulgarian and Greek. Hill’s (2013) data provides us with further proof that contact is indeed not the reason behind the existence of the Balkan Linguistic Area. If the convergence hypothesis were indeed borne out, we would have witnessed a diachronic change in the opposite direction, namely towards a de + indicative form to mark subjunctive in line with the other Balkan Linguistic Area languages. The diachronic change we witness in the formation of the Romanian subjunctive is, in our eyes, a firm proof of Greek as the prestige language of the Sprachbund. Due to Koine Greek influence, Romanian first developed an analytical subjunctive. However, in the 16th century Romanian partly parts from the Balkan Linguistic Area and starts undergoing internal changes, which lead to the emergence of its own suffixal subjunctive introduced by the marker să. Interestingly, the 16th century is also the one in which the first written texts in vulgar Romanian appear (Hill, 2013), marking the beginning of a new linguistic era. This might also be the cause underlying the presence of Morphophonologically Conditioned Stem Alternation in Romanian. However, given the shortage of data in Greek and Early Romanian on this phenomenon, we can only speculate. Our results confirm Kortmann’s (1998) theory that the language of the clergy has had a strong influence in the linguistic development of European vernaculars. However, his theory does not only regard Balkan languages, but rather all languages of Central and Eastern Europe. A study of Latin, Early and Modern Italian by Van Velzen (2016) highlights the surprising fact that, despite the heightened contact during the Middle Ages, Modern Italian is in fact hardly more transparent than Latin. This could be easily explained by the role the Latin language has played over the years. The first Italian translation of the Bible dates back to the 18th century, but was banned by Pope Pius XVII shortly after. It is only during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962-1965) that the Roman Catholic Church decides to abandon Latin as the official language of the liturgy. These and our data definitely point towards a new perspective.

6. Conclusion

The implications of this perspective are quite important. Our findings suggest that, as far as the Balkan Sprachbund is concerned, we must consider two separate kinds of contact. On the one hand, there is community contact, resulting in the constant convergence of languages. On the other hand, there is the case of diglossia. Over the centuries, the Balkans witnessed the imposition of a prestige language, namely Koine Greek followed by Old Church Slavonic and later Church Slavonic. This prestige language was very strong and predominant in all formal and educational contexts, having a decisive influence on the development of the vernaculars. The present data confirms that the languages of the Balkan Linguistic Area are not simply converging one towards the other, as proposed by Civjan (1965, 1979), but were strongly influenced by the prestige language used by the clergy. However, since Koine Greek and Church Slavonic have been replaced by the vernaculars, the latter are now following their own individual linguistic paths. We are therefore expecting them to slowly drift apart, leaving the underlying Greek foundation behind and evolving each in its own direction. Nevertheless, much research still has to be done. Hopefully, this study serves as a springboard and lays the grounds for a new beginning in typological research.

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