Torlak varieties are spoken in a geographic area where the spread of Balkan Slavic features has s... more Torlak varieties are spoken in a geographic area where the spread of Balkan Slavic features has shaped local, genealogically West South Slavic idioms in characteristic ways. As a result, they have been recognized by dialectologists as a distinct group of dialects1. The formation of this dialect complex by the diffusion of Balkan Slavic features was facilitated by a particular configuration of political and social boundaries up to the end of the 19th century. More recently, socio-political events have been changing the region and, concomitantly, the interactional spaces and communicative habits of its residents, fostering and/or inhibiting social encounters and language contact. The most far-reaching changes have been the demarcation of political boundaries and the establishment of the Serbian and Bulgarian standard language. Both developments contributed to slowing down and eventually reversing formerly convergent processes (see Sikimić et al., this volume). Consequently, the varieties encountered in this region can be expected to be transitional along two dimensions from a contemporary perspective: horizontally, i.e., in areal respects, by variation in the manifestation of specific structures as ‘Balkan Slavic’ or ‘West South Slavic’, and vertically, i.e., register-based, in the manifestation as ‘dialectal’ or ‘Standard Serbian/Bulgarian’. Focusing on the Serbian part of the region, the present paper aims at assessing the position of the contemporary Timok variety along the areal/horizontal and register/vertical dimensions on the basis of four representative dialect features from nominal and verbal domains: marking of indirect object and possessor, post-positive demonstratives, particle usage of dative reflexive si and auxiliary omission in the perfect tense. Each of these features can be realized in a ‘Balkan Slavic’ (i.e., dialectal / prototypically Timok) or ‘Serbian’ (i.e., standard Serbian) form. Measuring the usage frequencies of both realizations and their respective ratios reveals the overall degree of variation. Investigating the influence of specific linguistic factors on the respective options will demonstrate whether the choice of options is functionally conditioned; i.e., whether the distributions attest to formal and/or functional differentiations. Analyzing the effect of socio-geographic factors on the distribution of options for each feature gives insight to whether the distribution of ratios between one or the other option relates to the embedding of users in particular geographic and social contexts. In a larger perspective, the specific case of Timok is representative for the more general challenge in dialectological and areal research: identifying and discriminating the internal and external conditions triggering variation and the features affected by these conditions. As under a magnifying glass, zooming in on this rather small region—in both socio-geographic and linguistic respects—offers insight into the intricate interaction of drivers of variation and eventual change. The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 places our approach into the tradition of research on Torlak and introduces the corpus used for the present study. The usage frequencies of the diatopic and diastratic variants possible for four morphosyntactic features under consideration and the potential linguistic conditions underlying their distribution are identified in Section 3, while Section 4 is concerned with the impact of extra-linguistic factors. The findings are discussed in Section 5. Section 6 provides a short conclusion.
In this paper, we present a corpus for heritage Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS) spoke... more In this paper, we present a corpus for heritage Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS) spoken in German-speaking Switzerland. The corpus consists of elicited conversations between 29 second-generation speakers originating from different regions of former Yugoslavia. In total, the corpus contains 30 turn-aligned transcripts with an average length of 6 min. It is enriched with extensive speakers’ metadata, annotations, and pre-calculated corpus counts. The corpus can be accessed through an interactive corpus platform that allows for browsing, querying, and filtering, but also for creating and sharing custom annotations. Principal user groups we address with this corpus are researchers of heritage BCMS, as well as students and teachers of BCMS living in diaspora. In addition to introducing the corpus platform and the workflows we adopted to create it, we also present a case study on BCMS spoken by a pair of siblings who participated in the map task, and discuss advantages and chal...
In this paper, we present a corpus for heritage Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS) spoke... more In this paper, we present a corpus for heritage Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS) spoken in German-speaking Switzerland. The corpus consists of elicited conversations between 29 second-generation speakers originating from different regions of former Yugoslavia. In total, the corpus contains 30 turn-aligned transcripts with an average length of 6 min. It is enriched with extensive speakers' metadata, annotations, and pre-calculated corpus counts. The corpus can be accessed through an interactive corpus platform that allows for browsing, querying, and filtering, but also for creating and sharing custom annotations. Principal user groups we address with this corpus are researchers of heritage BCMS, as well as students and teachers of BCMS living in diaspora. In addition to introducing the corpus platform and the workflows we adopted to create it, we also present a case study on BCMS spoken by a pair of siblings who participated in the map task, and discuss advantages and challenges of using this corpus platform for linguistic research.
The study deals with lexical and syntactic features of the Pope Gregory XI’s consistorial bull to... more The study deals with lexical and syntactic features of the Pope Gregory XI’s consistorial bull to the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit, written in Avignon in 1371 and translated from Latin into Old Croatian (Čakavian). The focus is on the degree of consciousness of the translator’s work, which does not imply a word for word (or even morpheme for morpheme) translation, but rather work with the semantics of the original text and careful selection of language elements. The analyzed examples demonstrate 1) variability of translation of lexemes and syntactic constructions (cf. for example, Latin persona ‘person’ and Old Croatian prelat ‘prelate’, stroitelь ‘administrator; abbot, prior, superior’ and oblastnik ‘administrator, governor’); 2) generalization of meaning of Latin lexemes (cf. for example, Latin antistes ‘bishop, abbot or prior’, episcopus ‘bishop’ and pontifex ‘pontiff’ and Old Croatian biskup ‘bishop’); 3) possibility of translating Latin tokens with phrases (cf., for exa...
This article presents the results of a quantitative study in which the complexity levels of diale... more This article presents the results of a quantitative study in which the complexity levels of dialectal varieties belonging to the South Slavic dialect continuum are measured and analyzed. The sample comprises 919 data points, pertaining to the Bulgarian–Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian dialect continua. Complexity is viewed in this study as a property demonstrating variation across areas and subject to diachronic change which can be associated either with language-internal processes or with language contact. This study discusses which linguistic processes produced varying levels of complexity in the modern South Slavic varieties. In particular, a correlation of complexity with altitude and distance to the Albanian border, two factors which can be associated with degree of isolation versus contact of speech communities, is investigated for a subset of varieties spoken across the areas with bi- and multilingual population. Suggestions on which constellations of societal features could act...
A corpus-based method for assessing a range of dialect-standard variation is presented for identi... more A corpus-based method for assessing a range of dialect-standard variation is presented for identifying samples exhibiting the highest prevalence of dialect features. This method provides insight into areal and inter-speaker variation and allows the extraction of maximally non-standard manifestations of the dialect, which may then be sampled and used for the study of language change and variation. The focus is on a non-standard Torlak variety, which has undergone considerable change under the influence of standard Serbian. The degree of variation is assessed by measuring the frequencies of five distinguishing linguistic features: accent position, dative reflexive si, auxiliary omission in the compound perfect, the post-positive article, and analytic case marking in the indirect object and possessive. Locations subject to the greatest and least influence of the standard are revealed using hierarchical clustering. A positive correlation between the frequencies of occurrence reveals whi...
Der Beitrag beschaftigt sich mit der Etymologie des Namens des Hauptgotzen der Rugenslawen und pl... more Der Beitrag beschaftigt sich mit der Etymologie des Namens des Hauptgotzen der Rugenslawen und pladiert dafur, das er ursprunglich Svantevid geheisen haben mus. Dies ergibt sich aus einer sorgfaltigen Analyse des Kultes im indogermanischen Kontext, dessen Hauptfunktion das Weissagen ist.
Telling apart family-internal developments from contact-induced changes and socio-geographically ... more Telling apart family-internal developments from contact-induced changes and socio-geographically conditioned areal trends is still one of the main challenges in tracing the development – and stability – of languages. Notably prima facie contact phenomena might turn out to have resulted from the interaction of a variety of sources upon closer inspection; assessing their interaction is a crucial requirement for comprehending the dynamics of change. Based on the example of simplification patterns in the system of short personal pronouns observed in the Balkan Slavic dialects located in the territory of North Macedonian and Greece, the present paper illustrates the necessity of identifying the multiplicity of triggers and their interaction, thereby making a case for the relevance of small-scale, transient patterns in understanding diachronic processes. In particular, it places the simplifications within the pronominal system into the larger context of differential object indexing by pre...
When speakers of different languages interact, they are likely to influence each other: contact l... more When speakers of different languages interact, they are likely to influence each other: contact leaves traces in the linguistic record, which in turn can reveal geographical areas of past human interaction and migration. However, other factors may contribute to similarities between languages. Inheritance from a shared ancestral language and universal preference for a linguistic property may both overshadow contact signals. How can we find geographical contact areas in language data, while accounting for the confounding effects of inheritance and universal preference? We present sBayes, an algorithm for Bayesian clustering in the presence of confounding effects. The algorithm learns which similarities are better explained by confounders, and which are due to contact effects. Contact areas are free to take any shape or size, but an explicit geographical prior ensures their spatial coherence. We test sBayes on simulated data and apply it in two case studies to reveal language contact i...
The supporting information gives additional details on the related work and the methods and provi... more The supporting information gives additional details on the related work and the methods and provides the full experimental results for the simulation study and the two case studies.
Summary Idioms of the Torlak dialect (spoken in southeast Serbia and western Bulgaria) are known ... more Summary Idioms of the Torlak dialect (spoken in southeast Serbia and western Bulgaria) are known for their “double affiliation”. On the one hand, by virtue of their historical and phonetic features, they belong to the western range of the South Slavic dialectic continuum. On the other hand, according to their morphosyntactic characteristics (the presence of the post-positive article, the reduced case system, etc.), they adhere to the eastern range (i. e. Balkan Slavic). This paper views the innovative features of Torlak syntax from a strictly synchronic perspective and as a phenomenon of double (i. e. both head- and dependent-) argument marking. It is argued that cases of double argument marking in Torlak appear when several conditions are met. In order to be archaically marked with an overt relict case marker, a nominal group should either refer to the a-declension or, in case of the other declension types, assume a prominent position not only on the animacy scale but also on the s...
Telling apart family-internal developments from contact-induced changes and socio-geographically ... more Telling apart family-internal developments from contact-induced changes and socio-geographically conditioned areal trends is still one of the main challenges in tracing the development - and stability - of languages. Notably prima facie contact phenomena might turn out to have resulted from the interaction of a variety of sources upon closer inspection; assessing their interaction is a crucial requirement for comprehending the dynamics of change. Based on the example of simplification patterns in the system of short personal pronouns observed in the Balkan Slavic dialects located in the territory of North Macedonian and Greece, the present paper illustrates the necessity of identifying the multiplicity of triggers and their interaction, thereby making a case for the relevance of small-scale, transient patterns in understanding diachronic processes. In particular, it places the simplifications within the pronominal system into the larger context of differential object indexing by pre...
When speakers of different languages interact, they are likely to influence each other: contact l... more When speakers of different languages interact, they are likely to influence each other: contact leaves traces in the linguistic record, which in turn can reveal geographical areas of past human interaction and migration. However, other factors may contribute to similarities between languages. Inheritance from a shared ancestral language and universal preference for a linguistic property may both overshadow contact signals. How can we find geographical contact areas in language data, while accounting for the confounding effects of inheritance and universal preference? We present sBayes , an algorithm for Bayesian clustering in the presence of confounding effects. The algorithm learns which similarities are better explained by confounders, and which are due to contact effects. Contact areas are free to take any shape or size, but an explicit geographical prior ensures their spatial coherence. We test sBayes on simulated data and apply it in two case studies to reveal language contact ...
A corpus-based method for assessing a range of dialect-standard variation is presented for identi... more A corpus-based method for assessing a range of dialect-standard variation is presented for identifying samples exhibiting the highest prevalence of dialect features. This method provides insight into areal and inter-speaker variation and allows the extraction of maximally non-standard manifestations of the dialect, which may then be sampled and used for the study of language change and variation. The focus is on a non-standard Torlak variety, which has undergone considerable change under the influence of standard Serbian. The degree of variation is assessed by measuring the frequencies of five distinguishing linguistic features: accent position, dative reflexive si, auxiliary omission in the compound perfect, the post-positive article, and analytic case marking in the indirect object and possessive. Locations subject to the greatest and least influence of the standard are revealed using hierarchical clustering. A positive correlation between the frequencies of occurrence reveals which non-standard feature is the best predictor of the others.
Torlak varieties are spoken in a geographic area where the spread of Balkan Slavic features has s... more Torlak varieties are spoken in a geographic area where the spread of Balkan Slavic features has shaped local, genealogically West South Slavic idioms in characteristic ways. As a result, they have been recognized by dialectologists as a distinct group of dialects1. The formation of this dialect complex by the diffusion of Balkan Slavic features was facilitated by a particular configuration of political and social boundaries up to the end of the 19th century. More recently, socio-political events have been changing the region and, concomitantly, the interactional spaces and communicative habits of its residents, fostering and/or inhibiting social encounters and language contact. The most far-reaching changes have been the demarcation of political boundaries and the establishment of the Serbian and Bulgarian standard language. Both developments contributed to slowing down and eventually reversing formerly convergent processes (see Sikimić et al., this volume). Consequently, the varieties encountered in this region can be expected to be transitional along two dimensions from a contemporary perspective: horizontally, i.e., in areal respects, by variation in the manifestation of specific structures as ‘Balkan Slavic’ or ‘West South Slavic’, and vertically, i.e., register-based, in the manifestation as ‘dialectal’ or ‘Standard Serbian/Bulgarian’. Focusing on the Serbian part of the region, the present paper aims at assessing the position of the contemporary Timok variety along the areal/horizontal and register/vertical dimensions on the basis of four representative dialect features from nominal and verbal domains: marking of indirect object and possessor, post-positive demonstratives, particle usage of dative reflexive si and auxiliary omission in the perfect tense. Each of these features can be realized in a ‘Balkan Slavic’ (i.e., dialectal / prototypically Timok) or ‘Serbian’ (i.e., standard Serbian) form. Measuring the usage frequencies of both realizations and their respective ratios reveals the overall degree of variation. Investigating the influence of specific linguistic factors on the respective options will demonstrate whether the choice of options is functionally conditioned; i.e., whether the distributions attest to formal and/or functional differentiations. Analyzing the effect of socio-geographic factors on the distribution of options for each feature gives insight to whether the distribution of ratios between one or the other option relates to the embedding of users in particular geographic and social contexts. In a larger perspective, the specific case of Timok is representative for the more general challenge in dialectological and areal research: identifying and discriminating the internal and external conditions triggering variation and the features affected by these conditions. As under a magnifying glass, zooming in on this rather small region—in both socio-geographic and linguistic respects—offers insight into the intricate interaction of drivers of variation and eventual change. The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 places our approach into the tradition of research on Torlak and introduces the corpus used for the present study. The usage frequencies of the diatopic and diastratic variants possible for four morphosyntactic features under consideration and the potential linguistic conditions underlying their distribution are identified in Section 3, while Section 4 is concerned with the impact of extra-linguistic factors. The findings are discussed in Section 5. Section 6 provides a short conclusion.
In this paper, we present a corpus for heritage Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS) spoke... more In this paper, we present a corpus for heritage Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS) spoken in German-speaking Switzerland. The corpus consists of elicited conversations between 29 second-generation speakers originating from different regions of former Yugoslavia. In total, the corpus contains 30 turn-aligned transcripts with an average length of 6 min. It is enriched with extensive speakers’ metadata, annotations, and pre-calculated corpus counts. The corpus can be accessed through an interactive corpus platform that allows for browsing, querying, and filtering, but also for creating and sharing custom annotations. Principal user groups we address with this corpus are researchers of heritage BCMS, as well as students and teachers of BCMS living in diaspora. In addition to introducing the corpus platform and the workflows we adopted to create it, we also present a case study on BCMS spoken by a pair of siblings who participated in the map task, and discuss advantages and chal...
In this paper, we present a corpus for heritage Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS) spoke... more In this paper, we present a corpus for heritage Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS) spoken in German-speaking Switzerland. The corpus consists of elicited conversations between 29 second-generation speakers originating from different regions of former Yugoslavia. In total, the corpus contains 30 turn-aligned transcripts with an average length of 6 min. It is enriched with extensive speakers' metadata, annotations, and pre-calculated corpus counts. The corpus can be accessed through an interactive corpus platform that allows for browsing, querying, and filtering, but also for creating and sharing custom annotations. Principal user groups we address with this corpus are researchers of heritage BCMS, as well as students and teachers of BCMS living in diaspora. In addition to introducing the corpus platform and the workflows we adopted to create it, we also present a case study on BCMS spoken by a pair of siblings who participated in the map task, and discuss advantages and challenges of using this corpus platform for linguistic research.
The study deals with lexical and syntactic features of the Pope Gregory XI’s consistorial bull to... more The study deals with lexical and syntactic features of the Pope Gregory XI’s consistorial bull to the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit, written in Avignon in 1371 and translated from Latin into Old Croatian (Čakavian). The focus is on the degree of consciousness of the translator’s work, which does not imply a word for word (or even morpheme for morpheme) translation, but rather work with the semantics of the original text and careful selection of language elements. The analyzed examples demonstrate 1) variability of translation of lexemes and syntactic constructions (cf. for example, Latin persona ‘person’ and Old Croatian prelat ‘prelate’, stroitelь ‘administrator; abbot, prior, superior’ and oblastnik ‘administrator, governor’); 2) generalization of meaning of Latin lexemes (cf. for example, Latin antistes ‘bishop, abbot or prior’, episcopus ‘bishop’ and pontifex ‘pontiff’ and Old Croatian biskup ‘bishop’); 3) possibility of translating Latin tokens with phrases (cf., for exa...
This article presents the results of a quantitative study in which the complexity levels of diale... more This article presents the results of a quantitative study in which the complexity levels of dialectal varieties belonging to the South Slavic dialect continuum are measured and analyzed. The sample comprises 919 data points, pertaining to the Bulgarian–Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian dialect continua. Complexity is viewed in this study as a property demonstrating variation across areas and subject to diachronic change which can be associated either with language-internal processes or with language contact. This study discusses which linguistic processes produced varying levels of complexity in the modern South Slavic varieties. In particular, a correlation of complexity with altitude and distance to the Albanian border, two factors which can be associated with degree of isolation versus contact of speech communities, is investigated for a subset of varieties spoken across the areas with bi- and multilingual population. Suggestions on which constellations of societal features could act...
A corpus-based method for assessing a range of dialect-standard variation is presented for identi... more A corpus-based method for assessing a range of dialect-standard variation is presented for identifying samples exhibiting the highest prevalence of dialect features. This method provides insight into areal and inter-speaker variation and allows the extraction of maximally non-standard manifestations of the dialect, which may then be sampled and used for the study of language change and variation. The focus is on a non-standard Torlak variety, which has undergone considerable change under the influence of standard Serbian. The degree of variation is assessed by measuring the frequencies of five distinguishing linguistic features: accent position, dative reflexive si, auxiliary omission in the compound perfect, the post-positive article, and analytic case marking in the indirect object and possessive. Locations subject to the greatest and least influence of the standard are revealed using hierarchical clustering. A positive correlation between the frequencies of occurrence reveals whi...
Der Beitrag beschaftigt sich mit der Etymologie des Namens des Hauptgotzen der Rugenslawen und pl... more Der Beitrag beschaftigt sich mit der Etymologie des Namens des Hauptgotzen der Rugenslawen und pladiert dafur, das er ursprunglich Svantevid geheisen haben mus. Dies ergibt sich aus einer sorgfaltigen Analyse des Kultes im indogermanischen Kontext, dessen Hauptfunktion das Weissagen ist.
Telling apart family-internal developments from contact-induced changes and socio-geographically ... more Telling apart family-internal developments from contact-induced changes and socio-geographically conditioned areal trends is still one of the main challenges in tracing the development – and stability – of languages. Notably prima facie contact phenomena might turn out to have resulted from the interaction of a variety of sources upon closer inspection; assessing their interaction is a crucial requirement for comprehending the dynamics of change. Based on the example of simplification patterns in the system of short personal pronouns observed in the Balkan Slavic dialects located in the territory of North Macedonian and Greece, the present paper illustrates the necessity of identifying the multiplicity of triggers and their interaction, thereby making a case for the relevance of small-scale, transient patterns in understanding diachronic processes. In particular, it places the simplifications within the pronominal system into the larger context of differential object indexing by pre...
When speakers of different languages interact, they are likely to influence each other: contact l... more When speakers of different languages interact, they are likely to influence each other: contact leaves traces in the linguistic record, which in turn can reveal geographical areas of past human interaction and migration. However, other factors may contribute to similarities between languages. Inheritance from a shared ancestral language and universal preference for a linguistic property may both overshadow contact signals. How can we find geographical contact areas in language data, while accounting for the confounding effects of inheritance and universal preference? We present sBayes, an algorithm for Bayesian clustering in the presence of confounding effects. The algorithm learns which similarities are better explained by confounders, and which are due to contact effects. Contact areas are free to take any shape or size, but an explicit geographical prior ensures their spatial coherence. We test sBayes on simulated data and apply it in two case studies to reveal language contact i...
The supporting information gives additional details on the related work and the methods and provi... more The supporting information gives additional details on the related work and the methods and provides the full experimental results for the simulation study and the two case studies.
Summary Idioms of the Torlak dialect (spoken in southeast Serbia and western Bulgaria) are known ... more Summary Idioms of the Torlak dialect (spoken in southeast Serbia and western Bulgaria) are known for their “double affiliation”. On the one hand, by virtue of their historical and phonetic features, they belong to the western range of the South Slavic dialectic continuum. On the other hand, according to their morphosyntactic characteristics (the presence of the post-positive article, the reduced case system, etc.), they adhere to the eastern range (i. e. Balkan Slavic). This paper views the innovative features of Torlak syntax from a strictly synchronic perspective and as a phenomenon of double (i. e. both head- and dependent-) argument marking. It is argued that cases of double argument marking in Torlak appear when several conditions are met. In order to be archaically marked with an overt relict case marker, a nominal group should either refer to the a-declension or, in case of the other declension types, assume a prominent position not only on the animacy scale but also on the s...
Telling apart family-internal developments from contact-induced changes and socio-geographically ... more Telling apart family-internal developments from contact-induced changes and socio-geographically conditioned areal trends is still one of the main challenges in tracing the development - and stability - of languages. Notably prima facie contact phenomena might turn out to have resulted from the interaction of a variety of sources upon closer inspection; assessing their interaction is a crucial requirement for comprehending the dynamics of change. Based on the example of simplification patterns in the system of short personal pronouns observed in the Balkan Slavic dialects located in the territory of North Macedonian and Greece, the present paper illustrates the necessity of identifying the multiplicity of triggers and their interaction, thereby making a case for the relevance of small-scale, transient patterns in understanding diachronic processes. In particular, it places the simplifications within the pronominal system into the larger context of differential object indexing by pre...
When speakers of different languages interact, they are likely to influence each other: contact l... more When speakers of different languages interact, they are likely to influence each other: contact leaves traces in the linguistic record, which in turn can reveal geographical areas of past human interaction and migration. However, other factors may contribute to similarities between languages. Inheritance from a shared ancestral language and universal preference for a linguistic property may both overshadow contact signals. How can we find geographical contact areas in language data, while accounting for the confounding effects of inheritance and universal preference? We present sBayes , an algorithm for Bayesian clustering in the presence of confounding effects. The algorithm learns which similarities are better explained by confounders, and which are due to contact effects. Contact areas are free to take any shape or size, but an explicit geographical prior ensures their spatial coherence. We test sBayes on simulated data and apply it in two case studies to reveal language contact ...
A corpus-based method for assessing a range of dialect-standard variation is presented for identi... more A corpus-based method for assessing a range of dialect-standard variation is presented for identifying samples exhibiting the highest prevalence of dialect features. This method provides insight into areal and inter-speaker variation and allows the extraction of maximally non-standard manifestations of the dialect, which may then be sampled and used for the study of language change and variation. The focus is on a non-standard Torlak variety, which has undergone considerable change under the influence of standard Serbian. The degree of variation is assessed by measuring the frequencies of five distinguishing linguistic features: accent position, dative reflexive si, auxiliary omission in the compound perfect, the post-positive article, and analytic case marking in the indirect object and possessive. Locations subject to the greatest and least influence of the standard are revealed using hierarchical clustering. A positive correlation between the frequencies of occurrence reveals which non-standard feature is the best predictor of the others.
The paper presents new diachronic and synchronic data from the zones of intensive Slavic-non-Slav... more The paper presents new diachronic and synchronic data from the zones of intensive Slavic-non-Slavic contact in South-Eastern Europe within the framework of major theoretical issues of the Balkan and general contact linguistics. The contact induced change and variation through time and space (on the Island of Krk, in Tsakonia, in Prespa, in Golo Bordo, in Mrkovići and in Carașova) reveal the general paths of language convergence and the restrictions that apply to that convergence. Historically changing social circumstances of contact, such as symbiosis with dominant and non-dominant bilingualism are taken into consideration together with the roles of a high culture language vs. a language of traditional culture.
Between Separation and Symbiosis - South Eastern European Languages and Cultures in Contact. De Gruyter Mouton., 2021
The book deals in detail with previously understudied language contact settings in the Balkans (S... more The book deals in detail with previously understudied language contact settings in the Balkans (South East Europe) that present a continuum between ethnic and linguistic separation and symbiosis among groups of people. The studies in this volume achieve several aims: they critically assess the Balkan Sprachbund theory; they analyse general contact theories against the background of new, original, representative field and historical Greek, Albanian, Romance, Slavic and Judesmo data; they employ and contribute to recent methods of research on linguistic convergence in bilingual societies; they propose new general assessments of extra- and intralinguistic factors of Balkanization over the centuries; and they outline prospects for future research. The factors relevant to contact scenarios and linguistic change in the Balkans are identified and typologized through models such as those related to a balanced or unbalanced (socio)linguistic situation.
Online digital edition of multiple versions of the hagiography of St Petka of Tarnovo with facsim... more Online digital edition of multiple versions of the hagiography of St Petka of Tarnovo with facsimiles and interactive transcripts - https://www.punco.uzh.ch/editions
Using a digital corpus composed of about 1000 sentences from pre-standardized literature (3 damas... more Using a digital corpus composed of about 1000 sentences from pre-standardized literature (3 damaskini collections from the 17th and 18th centuries) and contemporary Balkan Slavic dialects (more than 30 locations in Torlak and Macedonian regions), we analyze the distribution of these patterns of indirect-object marking. Tracing the ranges of variation and identifying changes in preferences allows to assess the diachronic development and areal diffusion of indirect object marking strategies.
Presented at the BSSC 2022 Conference in Columbus, Ohio, on April 8th 2022.
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Consequently, the varieties encountered in this region can be expected to be transitional along two dimensions from a contemporary perspective: horizontally, i.e., in areal respects, by variation in the manifestation of specific structures as ‘Balkan Slavic’ or ‘West South Slavic’, and vertically, i.e., register-based, in the manifestation as ‘dialectal’ or ‘Standard Serbian/Bulgarian’. Focusing on the Serbian part of the region, the present paper aims at assessing the position of the contemporary Timok variety along the areal/horizontal and register/vertical dimensions on the basis of four representative dialect features from nominal and verbal domains: marking of indirect object and possessor, post-positive demonstratives, particle usage of dative reflexive si and auxiliary omission in the perfect tense.
Each of these features can be realized in a ‘Balkan Slavic’ (i.e., dialectal / prototypically Timok) or ‘Serbian’ (i.e., standard Serbian) form. Measuring the usage frequencies of both realizations and their respective ratios reveals the overall degree of variation. Investigating the influence of specific linguistic factors on the respective options will demonstrate whether the choice of options is functionally conditioned; i.e., whether the distributions attest to formal and/or functional differentiations. Analyzing the effect of socio-geographic factors on the distribution of options for each feature gives insight to whether the distribution of ratios between one or the other option relates to the embedding of users in particular geographic and social contexts.
In a larger perspective, the specific case of Timok is representative for the more general challenge in dialectological and areal research: identifying and discriminating the internal and external conditions triggering variation and the features affected by these conditions. As under a magnifying glass, zooming in on this rather small region—in both socio-geographic and linguistic respects—offers insight into the intricate interaction of drivers of variation and eventual change.
The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 places our approach into the tradition of research on Torlak and introduces the corpus used for the present study. The usage frequencies of the diatopic and diastratic variants possible for four morphosyntactic features under consideration and the potential linguistic conditions underlying their distribution are identified in Section 3, while Section 4 is concerned with the impact of extra-linguistic factors. The findings are discussed in Section 5. Section 6 provides a short conclusion.
language change and variation. The focus is on a non-standard Torlak variety, which has undergone considerable change under the influence of standard Serbian. The degree of variation is assessed by measuring the frequencies of five distinguishing linguistic features: accent position, dative reflexive si, auxiliary omission in the compound perfect, the post-positive article, and analytic case marking in the indirect object and possessive. Locations subject to the greatest and least influence of the standard are revealed using hierarchical clustering. A positive correlation between the frequencies of occurrence reveals which non-standard feature is the best predictor of the others.
Consequently, the varieties encountered in this region can be expected to be transitional along two dimensions from a contemporary perspective: horizontally, i.e., in areal respects, by variation in the manifestation of specific structures as ‘Balkan Slavic’ or ‘West South Slavic’, and vertically, i.e., register-based, in the manifestation as ‘dialectal’ or ‘Standard Serbian/Bulgarian’. Focusing on the Serbian part of the region, the present paper aims at assessing the position of the contemporary Timok variety along the areal/horizontal and register/vertical dimensions on the basis of four representative dialect features from nominal and verbal domains: marking of indirect object and possessor, post-positive demonstratives, particle usage of dative reflexive si and auxiliary omission in the perfect tense.
Each of these features can be realized in a ‘Balkan Slavic’ (i.e., dialectal / prototypically Timok) or ‘Serbian’ (i.e., standard Serbian) form. Measuring the usage frequencies of both realizations and their respective ratios reveals the overall degree of variation. Investigating the influence of specific linguistic factors on the respective options will demonstrate whether the choice of options is functionally conditioned; i.e., whether the distributions attest to formal and/or functional differentiations. Analyzing the effect of socio-geographic factors on the distribution of options for each feature gives insight to whether the distribution of ratios between one or the other option relates to the embedding of users in particular geographic and social contexts.
In a larger perspective, the specific case of Timok is representative for the more general challenge in dialectological and areal research: identifying and discriminating the internal and external conditions triggering variation and the features affected by these conditions. As under a magnifying glass, zooming in on this rather small region—in both socio-geographic and linguistic respects—offers insight into the intricate interaction of drivers of variation and eventual change.
The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 places our approach into the tradition of research on Torlak and introduces the corpus used for the present study. The usage frequencies of the diatopic and diastratic variants possible for four morphosyntactic features under consideration and the potential linguistic conditions underlying their distribution are identified in Section 3, while Section 4 is concerned with the impact of extra-linguistic factors. The findings are discussed in Section 5. Section 6 provides a short conclusion.
language change and variation. The focus is on a non-standard Torlak variety, which has undergone considerable change under the influence of standard Serbian. The degree of variation is assessed by measuring the frequencies of five distinguishing linguistic features: accent position, dative reflexive si, auxiliary omission in the compound perfect, the post-positive article, and analytic case marking in the indirect object and possessive. Locations subject to the greatest and least influence of the standard are revealed using hierarchical clustering. A positive correlation between the frequencies of occurrence reveals which non-standard feature is the best predictor of the others.
Presented at the BSSC 2022 Conference in Columbus, Ohio, on April 8th 2022.