Languages of the Balkan Sprachbund in the Balkans, Cyprus and Italy
Shared linguistic features in Southeast Europe
See also: Paleo-Balkan languages
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Balkan
Geographic distribution
Balkans
Languages
Albanian (especially Tosk)
Balkan Gagauz Turkish
Balkan Romani
Bulgarian
Eastern Romance
Hellenic
Macedonian
Torlakian dialects
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 (genetic) branches. The Slavic, Hellenic, Romance, Albanian and Indo-Aryan 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 communities outside of it) 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:
They have similar case systems, in 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,[1] which is uncommon among Indo-European languages, and was likely inspired by contact with Turkish.[2][3]
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.
^Fielder, Grace E. (1999). "The Origin of Evidentiality in the Balkans: Linguistic Convergence or Conceptual Convergence?". Mediterranean Language Review. 11: 59–89. JSTOR 10.13173/medilangrevi.11.1999.0059.
^Victor Friedman (2004). "The Typology of Balkan Evidentiality and Areal Linguistics". In Mišeska Tomić, Olga (ed.). Balkan Syntax and Semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. p. 124.
^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 Balkansprachbund or Balkan language area is an ensemble of areal features—similarities in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology—among the languages...
A sprachbund (/ˈsprɑːkbʊnd/; German: Sprachbund [ˈʃpʁaːxbʊnt] , lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence...
Network Balkanization History of the BalkansBalkan Wars Yugoslav Wars Languages of the BalkansBalkansprachbundBalkan music Gray, Colin S.; Sloan, Geoffrey...
Bulgarian and Macedonian, falls into the Balkan Slavic linguistic area, which is part of the broader Balkansprachbund. According to UNESCO's list of endangered...
National Museum of Ethnology. pp. 59–89. Joseph, Brian (2017). "The BalkanSprachbund" (PDF). linguisticsociety.org. Retrieved 2 October 2020. List, Johann-Mattis;...
dialect. Note: the lexicon used below is not universally recognized Balkansprachbund Common Romanian Eastern Romance influence on Slavic languages Substrate...
Sambahsa [samˈbaːsa] or Sambahsa-Mundialect is a constructed international auxiliary language (IAL) devised by French linguist Olivier Simon. Among IALs...
(collectively forming the East South Slavic languages), it is a member of the Balkansprachbund and South Slavic dialect continuum of the Indo-European language family...
unusual characteristics with other languages in the Balkans, notably Greek and Albanian (see Balkansprachbund). Eastern Bulgarian dialects[citation needed]...
languages to form a sprachbund (also known as a linguistic area, convergence area or diffusion area). Some examples are the Balkansprachbund, the Mainland...
of the BalkanSprachbund. Glottolog and Ethnologue recognize four Albanian languages. They are classified as follows: Indo-European Paleo-Balkan Albanian...
Torlakian dialectal area. The Balkan Slavic area is also part of the BalkanSprachbund. The external boundaries of the Balkan Slavic/Eastern South Slavic...
(1953) Balkan sprachbund Balkania Balkan Games Balkan studies Balkan Battlegroup Balkanization Craiova Group Hellenoturkism Imagining the Balkans Regional...
languages; Albanian; Greek; the "westernmost" Finno-Ugric languages. The Balkansprachbund is thus included as a subset of the larger SAE, while Baltic Eastern...
phonological features and elements of grammar (see Balkansprachbund) may also be from Paleo-Balkan languages. Romanian developed from the Common Romanian...
that are shared with other Balkan languages, such as Albanian, Bulgarian and Eastern Romance languages (see Balkansprachbund), and has absorbed many foreign...
the complete disappearance of verb infinitives, a feature of the Balkansprachbund. As such, the tenses and moods that, in Romanian, use the infinitive...
South Slavic idioms has characteristics that make it part of the Balkansprachbund, a group of languages that share typological, grammatical and lexical...
but it may be as well the effect of later convergence within the BalkanSprachbund.." "List of words of Latin origin". Finkenstaedt, Thomas; Dieter Wolff...
which derived from Proto-Slavic. Bulgarian is also a part of the Balkansprachbund, which also includes Greek, Macedonian, Romanian, Albanian and the...
Approximation to Modality? Anastasia Makarova - On the Macedonian Perfect(s) in the Balkan Context Rosetti, Alexandru (1986). Istoria limbii române, vol I [History...
reference such as "the minister said that + indicative" are preferred. Balkansprachbund Irrealis mood For a more precise rendering, it would be possible to...
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