Balkan Languages

Southeast Europe's Balkan peninsula is home to numerous languages that have come to converge structurally and lexically, due to complex social factors involving contact among speakers of these languages, constituting a 'sprachbund'. This volume provides the first comprehensive, book-length survey of the Balkan languages in English. It covers the full range of languages involved in the Balkan convergence zone, including Albanian, Aromanian, Bulgarian, Gagauz, Greek, Judezmo, Macedonian, Meglenoromanian, Romani, Romanian, Torlak, and West Rumelian Turkish. Balkan convergences - 'Balkanisms' - are presented, considering the grammatical domains of phonetics, phonology, morphology, morphosyntax, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and lexicon. It gives attention to relevant notions of contact linguistics and to the history of the field, while also introducing key conceptual innovations. Providing fresh data and perspectives on the most studied intense contact situation, this work is essential reading for anyone interested in Balkan languages. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Victor A. Friedman is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago and Honorary Associate at La Trobe University. Notable publications include Turkish in Macedonia and Beyond (2003), Studies on Albanian and Other Balkan Languages (2008), and Macedonian Studies II (2015). Brian D. Joseph is Distinguished University Professor of Linguistics and The Kenneth E. Naylor Professor of South Slavic Linguistics at The Ohio State University. Notable publications include The Synchrony and Diachrony of the Balkan Infinitive (1983), Morphology and Universals in Syntactic Change (1990) and Albano-Balkanological Observations (2020).