CONTACT LINGUISTICS IN SLAVIC AND BALKAN AREAS

The course introduces the main concepts, methods, and theoretical approaches of contact linguistics, with particular attention to the Slavic and Balkan linguistic areas. It examines how prolonged multilingual interaction may affect phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, the lexicon, and discourse structure.

The course combines general issues in contact linguistics with the analysis of selected case studies involving Slavic, Romance, Greek, Albanian, Balkan Romance, Romani, Turkish, and other languages spoken in Southeastern and Eastern Europe. Particular attention will be devoted to the Balkan Sprachbund, to contact-induced convergence and divergence, to grammatical borrowing, and to the distinction between internally and externally motivated change.

The course will also address the sociolinguistic conditions under which contact-induced change occurs, including bilingualism, diglossia, language shift, minority-language maintenance, standardization, migration, and heritage-language transmission.

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

understand the basic concepts and terminology of contact linguistics;
distinguish between borrowing, convergence, interference, replication, calquing, and contact-induced grammatical change;
identify the social and structural factors that favour linguistic convergence;
analyse contact phenomena in Slavic and Balkan languages;
evaluate competing explanations based on language contact, internal development, and typological parallelism;
discuss the notion of linguistic area and the methodological problems involved in identifying an areal feature;
conduct a small-scale analysis of a contact phenomenon using textual, corpus-based, or comparative data;
critically assess the relevant scholarly literature.

There are no prerequisites for ths course

The course introduces the theoretical and methodological foundations of contact linguistics, with particular attention to the main mechanisms of contact-induced change, including borrowing, calquing, grammatical replication, interference, and structural convergence. It also examines the notion of linguistic area and the methods of areal typology, focusing on the criteria used to distinguish contact-induced phenomena from inherited features, internal developments, and typological parallelism.

A central part of the course is devoted to the Balkan linguistic area and to the major convergence phenomena that have developed among genetically unrelated languages. Particular attention is given to shared features in the nominal domain, such as case reduction, postposed definite articles, genitive-dative syncretism, and clitic doubling, as well as to features in the verbal domain, including the analytic future, the have-perfect, evidentiality, and the reduction or loss of the infinitive. The course also explores syntactic convergence in clause structure, subordination, finite complementation, and clitic distribution.

The final part of the course focuses on contact situations involving Slavic languages, with special reference to South Slavic and Balkan Slavic varieties. Through selected case studies, it examines Greek-Slavic, Albanian-Slavic, and Romance-Slavic contact in Southeastern Europe, taking into account both the structural outcomes of linguistic interaction and the historical and sociolinguistic conditions that have favoured their development.

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2006. Grammars in contact: A cross-linguistic perspective. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (eds.), Grammars in Contact: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, 1–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Campbell, Lyle. 2017. Why is it so hard to define a linguistic area? In Raymond Hickey (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics, 19–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Friedman, Victor A. 2006. Balkans as a linguistic area. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 657–672. Oxford: Elsevier.

Haarmann, Harald. 1978. Balkanlinguistik: Probleme der Sprachkonvergenz in Südosteuropa. Tübingen: Narr.

Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva. 2005. Language Contact and Grammatical Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hickey, Raymond (ed.). 2010. The Handbook of Language Contact. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Hickey, Raymond (ed.). 2017. The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Johanson, Lars. 2002. Structural Factors in Turkic Language Contacts. Richmond: Curzon.

Joseph, Brian D. 1983. The Synchrony and Diachrony of the Balkan Infinitive: A Study in Areal, General, and Historical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Matras, Yaron & Jeanette Sakel (eds.). 2007. Grammatical Borrowing in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Myers-Scotton, Carol. 2002. Contact Linguistics: Bilingual Encounters and Grammatical Outcomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Thomason, Sarah G. 2001. Language Contact: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Thomason, Sarah G. & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwell.

The verification of knowledge combines traditional evaluation methods with interactive assignments

written and oral

The instructor is responsible for ensuring the authenticity and originality of all examinations and coursework. In cases of suspected academic misconduct, an additional on-site assessment may be required during the exams, which may differ from the standard format.

Evaluation of activities
Tesina of comparatve analysis (30%)
Analysis of a grammatical phenomenon in three Slavic languages
Assignment based on use of corpora (20%)
Use of a digital corpus for identifying lessical frequency or syntactic structures
Short essay on a comparative and/or historical topic (20%)
Presentation (30%)
Case study of a linguistic phenomenon


The final grade will be determined based on the following criteria:
- Knowledge of theoretical topics (up to 12 points)
- Ability to critically analyze theoretical topics (up to 5 points)
- Clarity and confidence in oral presentation (up to 3 points)
- Command of specialized terminology and appropriate language use (up to 5 points)
- Ability to engage in autonomous and well-structured discussion (up to 5 points)

The maximum score is 30/30. Cum laude may be awarded in the case of an excellent performance across all evaluated criteria.

This course is blended and it allows for a mix of in-person discussions and online interactive elements.
1. Online Comparative Linguistic Challenges (Asynchronous)
Phonetic Shift Matching: Provide words in different Slavic languages and have students identify historical sound changes.
Cognate Hunt: Students use digital corpora (e.g., Aranea, Russian National Corpus) to find cognates and analyze their semantic shifts.
Case System Puzzle: Give sentences with missing case endings and let students reconstruct them based on their knowledge of Slavic morphology.

2. Synchronous Live Activities (Online & In-Person)
Morphosyntactic Speed Debates: Students will be assigned different Slavic languages and will have to argue which has the most “complex” case or aspect system, using examples.
Word Order Experiment: Analyzing sentences with scrambled word orders in different Slavic languages.
Linguistic Escape Room: Students solve linguistic puzzles (phonological, morphological, syntactic).

3. Corpus-Based Assignments (Online & Hybrid)
Frequency Analysis: Students will have to use a corpus to compare the frequency of specific grammatical structures (e.g., aspect usage in Russian vs. Polish).
Translation & Variation: Students will compare translations of the same text across Slavic languages, identifying key syntactic and lexical differences.
AI & Computational Linguistics Task: Students will be introduced to tools like UniMorph or Universal Dependencies to analyze cross-linguistic patterns.

4. Collaborative Projects (Online & In-Person)
Comparative Linguistic Wiki: Students contribute to a shared online document analyzing a specific linguistic phenomenon across Slavic languages.
Crowdsourced Etymology Map: Using Google MyMaps, students will trace the geographic spread of loanwords and sound shifts.