Balkan sprachbund


The Balkan sprachbund or Balkan language area is 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 Balkan sprachbund is a prominent example of the sprachbund concept.
The languages of the Balkan sprachbund share their similarities despite belonging to various separate language family 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 whilst other populations to whom the land is not a cultural pivot may still adopt the features for their local register.
While some of these languages may share little vocabulary, their grammars have very extensive similarities; for example:
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

The earliest scholar to notice the similarities between Balkan languages belonging to different families was the Slovenian scholar Jernej Kopitar in 1829. August Schleicher more explicitly developed the concept of areal relationships as opposed to genetic ones, and Franz Miklosich studied the relationships of Balkan Slavic and Romance more extensively.
Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Kristian Sandfeld-Jensen, and Gustav Weigand 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”.
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:
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:
LanguageScore
Macedonian12
Bulgarian and Torlakian11.5
Albanian10.5
Eastern Romance9.5
Greek9.5
Balkan Romani7.5

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 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 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 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", 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 or Slavicization. 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:
In the Balkan languages, the genitive and dative cases undergo syncretism.
Example:
LanguageDativeGenitive
EnglishI gave the book to Maria. It is Maria's book.
AlbanianLibrin ia dhashë Marisë.Libri është i Marisë.
AromanianVivlia lju dedu ali Marii. Vivlia easti ali Marii.
BulgarianДадох книгата на Мария
Книгата е на Мария
RomanianI-am dat cartea Mariei.
colloq. for fem. :
I-am dat cartea lui Marian.		Cartea este a Mariei.
or
Este cartea Mariei.
colloq. for fem. :
Cartea este a lui Marian.
MacedonianЍ ја дадов книгата на Марија.
Книгата е на Марија.

Greek		Έδωσα το βιβλίο στην Μαρία.

or
Έδωσα της Μαρίας το βιβλίο.
Είναι το βιβλίο της Μαρίας.

Greek		Της το έδωσα

'I gave it to her.'		Είναι το βιβλίο της.

'It is her book.'
Syncretism of locative and directional expressions
Note: In Romanian this is an exception, and it only applies when referring to individual countries, e.g. în Germania, în Franța, etc. The rule is that into translates as ”la” when trying to express destination, e.g. la Atena, la Madrid, la vale, la mare, etc. but even in this case the same preposition is used to express direction and location.

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 voi and in Serbo-Croatian ću, ćeš, će, 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. Certain Torlakian dialects also have an invariant future tense marker in the form of the proclitic third-person-singular present form of the verb 'to want': će vidim 'I will see', će vidiš "you will see", će vidi 'he/she/it will see'.
LanguageVariantFormationExample: 'I'll see'
AlbanianToskdo + subjunctiveDo të shoh
AlbanianGhegkam + infinitiveKam me pa
Aromanianva / u + subjunctiveVa s'vedu / u s'vedu
Greekθα + subjunctiveΘα δω / βλέπω ; "I'll see / be seeing"
Bulgarianще + present tenseЩе видя
Macedonianќе + present tenseЌе видам
Serbianхтети / hteti + infinitiveЈа ћу видети
Serbianхтети / hteti + subjunctiveЈа ћу да видим
Romanianvoi, vei, va, vom, veți, vor + infinitiveVoi vedea
Romanianva + subjunctiveVa să văd
Romaniano + subjunctiveO să văd
Romaniana avea + subjunctiveAm să văd
Balkan Romanika + subjunctiveKa dikhav