The Balkan sprachbund or Balkan language area is a proposed theory of an ensemble of areal features—similarities in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology—among the languages of the Balkans. Several features are found across these languages though not all apply to every single language.
The languages of the Balkans share their similarities despite belonging to various separate language family (genetic) branches. The Slavic, Hellenic, Romance and Albanian branches all belong to the large Indo-European family, and the Turkish language is non-Indo-European.
Some of the languages use these features for their standard language (i.e. those whose homeland lies almost entirely within the region) whilst other populations to whom the land is not a cultural pivot (as they have wider outside communities) may still adopt the features for their local register.
While some of these languages may share little vocabulary, their grammars exhibit extensive similarities; for example:
They have similar case systems, those that have preserved grammatical case and verb conjugation systems. They have all become more analytic, although to differing degrees. Some of those languages mark evidentiality, which is uncommon among Indo-European languages, and was likely inspired by contact with Turkish.Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (2018) "Evidentiality and language contact" in Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y., (ed.) Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality. Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 148–172.
The existence of the Balkan sprachbund has not gained widely acceptance among linguists as is explained below, and the reason for these similarities is not a settled question among experts. Genetic commonalities, language contact, and the geopolitical history of the region all seem to be relevant factors, but many disagree over the specifics and degree of these factors.
History and criticism The earliest scholar to notice the similarities between Balkan languages belonging to different families was the Slovenian scholar Jernej Kopitar in 1829. August Schleicher (1850)August Schleicher, Linguistische Untersuchungen, vol. 2: Die Sprachen Europas in systematischer Übersicht. Bonn: H.B. König, 1850. more explicitly developed the concept of areal relationships as opposed to genetic ones, and Franz Miklosich (1861) studied the relationships of Balkan Slavic and Romance more extensively.
Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1923), Kristian Sandfeld-Jensen (1926),K. Sandfeld, Balkanfilologien: En oversigt over dens resultater og problemer. Copenhagen: Lunp, 1926; translated into French as Linguistique balkanique: problèmes et résultats. Paris: Champion, 1930. and Gustav Weigand (1925, 1928); Gustav Weigand, "Texte zur vergleichenden Syuntax der Balkansprachen", Balkan Archiv IV (1928): 53–70. developed the theory in the 1920s and 1930s.
In the 1930s, the Romanian linguist Alexandru Graur criticized the notion of "Balkan linguistics," saying that one can talk about "relationships of borrowings, of influences, but not about Balkan linguistics".Chase Faucheux, Language Classification and Manipulation in Romania and Moldova, M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 2006, quoting André Du Nay, The Origins of the Rumanians: The Early History of the Rumanian Language, 1996.
The term "Balkan language area" was coined by the Romanian linguist Alexandru Rosetti in 1958, when he claimed that the shared features conferred the Balkan languages a special similarity. Theodor Capidan went further, claiming that the structure of Balkan languages could be reduced to a standard language. Many of the earliest reports on this theory were in German, hence the term "Balkansprachbund" is often used as well.
Languages
The languages that share these similarities belong to five distinct branches of the Indo-European languages:
Indo-European languages Albanian Tosk Gheg Eastern Romance Aromanian Northern Romanian Eastern Romanian Megleno-Romanian Romanian Istro-Romanian Hellenic Greek Indo-Aryan Romani South Slavic Eastern South Slavic Bulgarian Macedonian Torlak Western South Slavic Serbo-Croatian Slovenian
In 2000, the Finnish linguist Jouko Lindstedt computed a Balkanization factor, which gives each Balkan language a score proportional to the number of features shared in the Balkan language area. The results were:
Language Score Macedonian 12 Bulgarian and Torlak 11.5 Albanian 10.5Eastern Romance 9.5 Greek 9.5 Balkan Romani 7.5
Another language that may have been influenced by the Balkan language union is the Judaeo-Spanish variant that used to be spoken by Sephardi Jews living in the Balkans. The grammatical features shared (especially regarding the tense system) were most likely borrowed from Greek.
Origins The source of these features as well as the directions have long been debated, and various theories were suggested.
Paleo-Balkan Early researchers, including Kopitar, believed they must have been inherited from the Paleo-Balkan languages (e.g. Illyrian, Thracian and Dacian) which formed the substrate for modern Balkan languages. But since very little is known about Paleo-Balkan languages, it cannot be determined whether the features were present. The strongest candidate for a shared Paleo-Balkan feature is the postposed article.
Greek Another theory, advanced by Kristian Sandfeld in 1930, was that these features were an entirely Greek influence, under the presumption that since Greece "always had a superior civilization compared to its neighbours", Greek could not have borrowed its linguistic features from them. However, no ancient dialects of Greek possessed Balkanisms, so that the features shared with other regional languages appear to be post-classical innovations. Also, Greek appears to be only peripheral to the Balkan language area, lacking some important features, such as the postposed article. Nevertheless, several of the features that Greek does share with the other languages (loss of dative, replacement of infinitive by subjunctive constructions, object clitics, formation of future with auxiliary verb "to want") probably originated in Medieval Greek and spread to the other languages through Byzantine influence.
Latin and Romance The Roman Empire ruled all the Balkans, and local variation of Latin may have left its mark on all languages there, which were later the substrate to Slavic newcomers. This was proposed by Georg Solta. The weak point of this theory is that other Romance languages have few of the features, and there is no proof that the Eastern Romans were isolated for enough time to develop them. An argument for this would be the structural borrowings or "linguistic calques" into Macedonian from Aromanian, which could be explained by Aromanian being a substrate of Macedonian, but this still does not explain the origin of these innovations in Aromanian. The analytic perfect with the auxiliary verb "to have" (which some Balkan languages share with Western European languages), is the only feature whose origin can fairly safely be traced to Latin.
Multiple sources
The most commonly accepted theory, advanced by Polish scholar Zbigniew Gołąb, is that the innovations came from different sources and the languages influenced each other: some features can be traced from Latin, Slavic, or Greek languages, whereas others, particularly features that are shared only by Romanian, Albanian, Macedonian and Bulgarian, could be explained by the substratum kept after Romanization (in the case of Romanian) or Slavicization (in the case of Bulgarian). Albanian was influenced by both Latin and Slavic, but it kept many of its original characteristics.
Several arguments favour this theory. First, throughout the turbulent history of the Balkans, many groups of people moved to another place, inhabited by people of another ethnicity. These small groups were usually assimilated quickly and sometimes left marks in the new language they acquired. Second, the use of more than one language was common in the Balkans before the modern age, and a drift in one language would quickly spread to other languages. Third, the dialects that have the most "balkanisms" are those in regions where people had contact with people of many other languages.
Features
Grammatical features
Case system The number of cases is reduced, several cases being replaced with prepositions, the only exception being Serbo-Croatian. In Bulgarian and Macedonian, on the other hand, this development has actually led to the loss of all cases except the vocative.
A common case system of a Balkan language is:
Nominative Accusative Dative/genitive (merged) Vocative
Syncretism of genitive and dative In the Balkan languages, the genitive and dative cases (or corresponding prepositional constructions) undergo syncretism.
Example: Language Dative Genitive English I gave the book to Maria. It is Maria's book. Albanian Aromanian Bulgarian [] [] Romanian colloq. for fem. (oblig. for masc.): (literally, "The book is Maria's.") or ("It is Maria's book.")colloq. for fem. (oblig. for masc.): Macedonian [] []Greek [] or[] [] []'I gave it to her.' []'It is her book.'
Syncretism of locative and directional expressions Language 'in Greece' 'into Greece' Albanian Aromanian ; ; Bulgarian () () Greek () () Macedonian () () Romanian*
Note: In Romanian this is an exception, and it only applies when referring to individual countries, e.g. , , etc. The rule is that into translates as "" when trying to express destination, e.g. , , , , etc.
Verb tenses
Future tense The future tense is formed in an analytic way using an auxiliary verb or particle with the meaning "will, want", referred to as de-volitive, similar to the way the future is formed in English. This feature is present to varying degrees in each language. Decategorization is less advanced in fossilized literary Romanian and in Serbo-Croatian , where the future marker is still an inflected auxiliary. In modern Greek, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Albanian, Aromanian, and spoken Romanian, decategorization and erosion have given rise to an uninflected tense form, where the frozen third-person singular of the verb has turned into an invariable particle followed by the main verb inflected for person (compare Rom 1.sg. , 2.sg. , 3.sg. > invariable > mod. ).Bernd Heine & Tania Kuteva, Language Contact and Grammatical Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Certain Torlak dialects also have an invariant future tense marker in the form of the proclitic third-person-singular present form of the verb 'to want': () 'I will see', () "you will see", () 'he/she/it will see'. Language Variant Formation Example: 'I'll see' Albanian Tosk (invariable) + subjunctive Gheg (conjugated) + infinitive Aromanian / (inv.) + subjunctive / Greek (inv.) + subjunctive / ( / ); "I'll see / be seeing" Bulgarian (inv.) + present tense () Macedonian (inv.) + present tense () Serbian (standard Serbian) / (conjugated) + infinitive () (colloquial Serbian) / (conjugated) + subjunctive () Romanian (literary, formal) + infinitive (archaic) (inv.) + subjunctive (popular) (inv.) + subjunctive (colloquial alternative) (conjugated) + subjunctive Balkan Romani (Erli)Romani dialects outside the Balkans generally do not express the future tense in this way. Unlike the avoidance of the infinitive, which had already come to encompass all Romani varieties before many of them were brought out of the Balkans into the rest of Europe, the formation of the future tense with a devolitive particle is apparently a later development, since it is only seen in those dialect groups that have not left the Balkans. (inv.) + subjunctive
Analytic perfect tense