# Balkan Sprachbund



## modus.irrealis

Split from this thread



sokol said:


> Greek - yes, but Latin - no: when the Slavs came Latin speaking tribes were driven away to deep forests and high mountains (the so-called Valachians), Latin wasn't a prestige language any more but a minority language. But as for Greek you certainly have a point.


Well Albanians were there much earlier and I've read their language shows a long history of Latin influence, and it is a core member of the sprachbund. And Romance languages were much more widespread in earlier times (with Dalmatian for example), and it's difficult to judge which language was prestigious where (even without things like covert prestige). 



> Well yes, certainly - but should it *really *be coincidence that of all Slavic languages (where too there are reasons to believe in intrinsic development of an enclitic particle - with determined vs. not determined adjective endings) _only _the Balkan branch (Bulgarian + Macedonian) and of all the Romance languages _only _the Balkan branch (Rumanian) should develop an enclitic article?


I'm not saying that contact played no role, but that it's not an either-or question between it happened because of the contact and it happened for internal reasons. The two can, and I would imagine in most cases do, interact with each other. But we can't also make the assumption for example that it is the enclitic article of Romanian that has to be explained and not the proclitic article of the Western Romance languages. Those languages have been in contact and could influence one another while Romanian, once caught off, could go its own way in choosing one of the two possible orders in Latin.



> I *don't* speak of borrowing here but of the _development of new features_ (of which the enclitic articel is but one, the avoidance of infinitives another one) in a mixed linguistic area where it isn't clear if only some or many or even all of the languages present in the area did contribute to this development.
> The *only *thing we can be sure of is that these features did develop only *there *- on the Balkans.


I'm not sure what you mean by this, but that's not entirely true. I've read of Romance dialects in southern Italy that replace the infinitive with finite clauses. Clitic doubling occurs in Spanish and French, and probably other Romance languages. And you can find enclitic articles and future tenses built off want verbs in the Germanic languages. But again, I'm not arguing that internal developments are the only reason.



> Old Church Slavonic certainly had *no *article (but determined/indetermined adjective endings) and did not avoid infinitive constructions.


That would seem to suggest that Balkan Romance languages are responsible for the enclitic article since they had the all the ingredients (although with the lack of information on Albanian, it's hard to tell). I also wonder why only the Slavic speakers in the Eastern Balkans developed the enclitic article.



> I agree with you here in principle; English as a world language is enforcing the ties European languages have nowadays, French did play this role some time ago. Still there are 'sub-regions' *if *one would suggest such a sprachbund, for example the Nordic region (Skandinavian languages), the Mediterranean, and so on.


But in fact it's more than English's role today. It seems to me that Western European languages (with French roughly being the centre) share as many features as the Balkan languages do (e.g. loss of case on nouns but not pronouns, definite and indefinite articles, perfect tense with have/be + past participle, passive voice with be + past participle, SVO as principal word order). I've sometimes wondered why the Balkan languages are presented as something quite unique, since to me Western Europe doesn't seem all that different, and I've thought that it may be that most linguists, being speakers of Western European languages, haven't noticed the shared oddities that their languages have, since they probably don't think they are odd.



Athaulf said:


> Turkish has had a few small, but still interesting influences on the morphology of Bosnian speech. Specifically, the Turkish suffixes -ci/ and -lik have been borrowed in the form _-džija_ and _-luk_, and are actually productive in this role (or at least were productive for a certain period -- using them with modern nouns and adjectives usually sounds a bit funny ). Some of the nouns derived this way have entered even the standard language, though they're not productive in it.


You're right that that is morphology, but still for me this belongs to the lexicon and influence on vocabulary. In fact both those suffixes exist in Greek and the one from -ci (-τζης) is very productive. But I was thinking more of say a language borrowing -ler as its plural marker and forming plurals agglutinatively.


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## Athaulf

modus.irrealis said:


> I'm not saying that contact played no role, but that it's not an either-or question between it happened because of the contact and it happened for internal reasons. The two can, and I would imagine in most cases do, interact with each other. But we can't also make the assumption for example that it is the enclitic article of Romanian that has to be explained and not the proclitic article of the Western Romance languages. Those languages have been in contact and could influence one another while Romanian, once caught off, could go its own way in choosing one of the two possible orders in Latin.



But the really curious thing is the _parallel _development of the enclitic article. As you say:



> I also wonder why only the Slavic speakers in the Eastern Balkans developed the enclitic article.


Count me in the club too.  I can also add that as a Croatian speaker, I find these enclitic articles strikingly weird and alien sounding. As neighboring South Slavic languages, Bulgarian and Macedonian allow a decent level of mutual intelligibility with Serbian and Croatian (in fact, they blend into Serbian dialects that are very close to standard Serbian through a smooth dialect continuum stretching over a hundred miles or so). However, while their vocabulary mostly consists of words with familiar South Slavic roots, I find their grammatical peculiarities (and especially the enclitic articles) utterly alien, far more strange than anything else I've ever heard of in any other Slavic language. 

Therefore, this development was not just parallel with the neighboring non-Slavic languages, but also strikingly contrary to what has been going in the whole rest of the Slavic-speaking world. The contrast is stronger than that between Romanian and other Romance languages, since in the case of Bulgarian/Macedonian, there are immediate closely related languages that developed nothing similar. It would be as if the enclitic article developed only in southern, but not in northern Romanian dialects.



> But in fact it's more than English's role today. It seems to me that Western European languages (with French roughly being the centre) share as many features as the Balkan languages do (e.g. loss of case on nouns but not pronouns, definite and indefinite articles, perfect tense with have/be + past participle, passive voice with be + past participle, SVO as principal word order). I've sometimes wondered why the Balkan languages are presented as something quite unique, since to me Western Europe doesn't seem all that different, and I've thought that it may be that most linguists, being speakers of Western European languages, haven't noticed the shared oddities that their languages have, since they probably don't think they are odd.


Yes, I've actually thought about that too. While the SVO preference is probably a shared trait reaching back to PIE, the other ones have been popping up all over Western Europe seemingly independently. 



> You're right that that is morphology, but still for me this belongs to the lexicon and influence on vocabulary. In fact both those suffixes exist in Greek and the one from -ci (-τζης) is very productive. But I was thinking more of say a language borrowing -ler as its plural marker and forming plurals agglutinatively.


I can hardly imagine something like that happening in Bosnia, because the markings for number are completely fused with those for case and gender in individual suffixes of nouns and adjectives (despite massive borrowings from Turkish even in very bacic vocabulary, all Bosnian dialects have kept a conservative, plain vanilla Slavic grammar). Are there any actual examples of a fusional language borrowing agglutinative features even in such fundamental areas of grammar?


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## robbie_SWE

Wow, that's the spirit! This discussion has entered a whole other academic level! 

I've always thought that the Romanian influence on its neighbours has always been strongly underestimated. The interesting thing has always been why there was (and still is) such a strong Latin "island" in the Balkans, especially when the Roman rule only lasted for appr. 300 years? It is said that the Romance speaking people south of the Danube were assimilated by the Slavs, while the Slavs were assimilated by the Romance speaking population north of the Danube in present day Romania. Apparently the Romance language and culture present in the region at the time was already established and well developed. 

As it was stated before by a forero; all the ingredients were there to create an enclitic article. If I'm not mistaken, it was common in Latin to place the pronoun or the preposition after the object/subject (e.g. _culpa mea_). While the Western Romance languages put these words before the object/subject (Fr: ma voiture, It: la mia macchina), Romanian seemed to retain the "old" Latin word order. Might this be a clue in answering the enigma why the article was placed after the noun in Romanian? 

Referring to the earliest attested documents of the Romanian language, they're much older than presumed. The Byzantine chronicler Theophanes Confessor wrote about the Romance speaking population in the region and their language during the 6th century. But the oldest written document in Romanian is from 1591. 

Hope this kind of opened the frame of this discussion and even answered some questions! 

 robbie


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## sokol

Thank you, Spectre scolaire, now it is completely clear to me that really Turkish couldn't have been the language which 'gave' the distinct features of the Balkans sprachbund.
And thanks also for finding this thesis by *Chase Faucheux (Language Classification and Manipulation in Romania and Moldova, 2004/2006) *where there is mentioned that the sprachbund features developped during the *Byzantine era* (so already before the Ottoman era), and these theories were listed there (p. 26ff):
- the *'romantic' theory* (19th century) of sprachbund features are due to the Dacian/Thracian/Illyrian substrate (Kopitar and others): this theory isn't supported by modern authors as it is almost impossible to proof this theory (because we know next to nothing about these three extinct Indoeuropean languages)
- the *'Greek' theory *(1930) by Kristian Sanfeld who pointed out that Classical Greek still was a bearer of civilization and could have been the source for the sprachbund features [I checked on classical Greek articles: only a definite one standing before the noun, same goes for modern Greek but with the addition of an indefinite article]
- the author of the thesis, *Chase Faucheux,* points out that Classical Greek is a highly unlikely source but that *Byzantine Greek* very well _could _be the source of many Balkanisms
- and then Faucheux gives the opinion of *Georg Solta* who considered *Latin *as the source which Faucheux thinks is highly unlikely

And even though Chase Faucheux already (almost) had me convinced that indeed Byzantine Greek were the main source and donator of the Balkan areal linguistic features he then went on as follows (which is called the *'convergence model'*):


			
				Faucheux said:
			
		

> The actual answer is that the properties of the Balkan Sprachbund come from the multilingual environment itself.


You've finally won me over, Faucheux!
So most likely no single language could be the donator, but the mix of them all: with that I can live!

Unfortunately, this means we shouldn't comment here any more on the sprachbund here in this thread as - at least as far as I am concerned - we now have established that the sprachbund is *not *formeost due to Turkish influence but that Turkish only played a role as a giver of lexical (and sometimes morphological) loans.


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## modus.irrealis

Athaulf said:


> But the really curious thing is the _parallel _development of the enclitic article. As you say:
> 
> Count me in the club too.  I can also add that as a Croatian speaker, I find these enclitic articles strikingly weird and alien sounding. As neighboring South Slavic languages, Bulgarian and Macedonian allow a decent level of mutual intelligibility with Serbian and Croatian (in fact, they blend into Serbian dialects that are very close to standard Serbian through a smooth dialect continuum stretching over a hundred miles or so). However, while their vocabulary mostly consists of words with familiar South Slavic roots, I find their grammatical peculiarities (and especially the enclitic articles) utterly alien, far more strange than anything else I've ever heard of in any other Slavic language.
> 
> Therefore, this development was not just parallel with the neighboring non-Slavic languages, but also strikingly contrary to what has been going in the whole rest of the Slavic-speaking world. The contrast is stronger than that between Romanian and other Romance languages, since in the case of Bulgarian/Macedonian, there are immediate closely related languages that developed nothing similar. It would be as if the enclitic article developed only in southern, but not in northern Romanian dialects.


Although it seems that Dalmatian didn't have an enclitic article so the Romance languages of the Western Balkans seemed to have avoided it as well, although Dalmatian did have a definite article. But I don't know how much of a Romance dialect continuum there was in the Balkans, and as mentioned before there seems to be a lack of knowledge about where all these groups were during the Middle Ages and earlier.



> Yes, I've actually thought about that too. While the SVO preference is probably a shared trait reaching back to PIE, the other ones have been popping up all over Western Europe seemingly independently.


I've usually seen PIE treated as SOV (like Latin and Sanksrit). But why independently in Western Europe but not in the Balkans?  (But again, I think roughly the same mechanisms were probably at work in both areas and involved both contact and internal developments -- like Spectre scolaire mentioned, all the languages involved are distantly related and typologically similar so this would seem to me to be a situation that would encourage cross-influences and reinforcements of trends.)



> I can hardly imagine something like that happening in Bosnia, because the markings for number are completely fused with those for case and gender in individual suffixes of nouns and adjectives (despite massive borrowings from Turkish even in very bacic vocabulary, all Bosnian dialects have kept a conservative, plain vanilla Slavic grammar). Are there any actual examples of a fusional language borrowing agglutinative features even in such fundamental areas of grammar?


On second thought, my example is too drastic. Things I have found in various Greek dialects are things like vowel harmony applied to Greek endings, the present forms of to be becoming enclitic, compound tenses being built off Turkish models, a more agglutinative morphology but with Greek elements, so it's a more indirect influence. (More generally, Tocharian may be an example, this book says "and the [Tocharian] language has been heavily influenced by a language of of agglutinative structure" and much of its noun morphology is agglutinative.)


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## Outsider

robbie_SWE said:


> As it was stated before by a forero; all the ingredients were there to create an enclitic article. If I'm not mistaken, it was common in Latin to place the pronoun or the preposition after the object/subject (e.g. _culpa mea_). While the Western Romance languages put these words before the object/subject (Fr: ma voiture, It: la mia macchina), Romanian seemed to retain the "old" Latin word order. Might this be a clue in answering the enigma why the article was placed after the noun in Romanian?


In _culpa mea_, _mea_ is an adjective pronoun. It is not impossible to say the equivalent _culpa minha_ in Portuguese, or I imagine in other western Romance languages.

I note also that it's usually said that the Romance definite articles probably developed from demonstratives. So what should be compared is the syntax of the demonstratives in classical Latin, Vulgar Latin, western Romance, and eastern Romance.


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## Athaulf

modus.irrealis said:


> I've usually seen PIE treated as SOV (like Latin and Sanksrit).



Hm... you're right about that. But then it's really curious why, as far as I can tell, (almost?) all of the modern European IE languages have SVO as the dominant order. Even in Slavic languages that have kept a complex case system and allow pretty much any word order, there is a strong preference for SVO, and a Google search confirms the same for Baltic languages, which are similar to Slavic ones in this regard. Are there any non-SVO IE languages in Europe at all?



> But why independently in Western Europe but not in the Balkans?  (But again, I think roughly the same mechanisms were probably at work in both areas and involved both contact and internal developments -- like Spectre scolaire mentioned, all the languages involved are distantly related and typologically similar so this would seem to me to be a situation that would encourage cross-influences and reinforcements of trends.)


Having done some further searching, its seems like some linguists have used the concept of "Standard Average European", which would be a sprachbund encompassing all of Europe, with even the non-IE European languages being on its far periphery. The striking similarities in Western European languages would correspond to the core and near periphery of this sprachbund. Unfortunately, none of the references I found are freely available. If you have access to a university library, a very interesting reference I found is: _Martin Haspelmath, "How Young Is Standard Average European?", Language Sciences, v20 n3, p271-287, Jul 1998_.


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## modus.irrealis

Outsider said:


> I note also that it's usually said that the Romance definite articles probably developed from demonstratives. So what should be compared is the syntax of the demonstratives in classical Latin, Vulgar Latin, western Romance, and eastern Romance.


According to the Latin grammar I use:

Numeral adjectives, adjectives of quantity, demonstrative, relative, and interrogative pronouns and adverbs, tend to precede the word or words to which they belong:--
...
Note.--This happens because such words are usually emphatic; but often the words connected with them are more so, and in such cases the pronouns etc. yield the emphatic place:--

So both developments of the article seem to make sense (since an article seems to be less emphatic than a demonstrative).



Athaulf said:


> Hm... you're right about that. But then it's really curious why, as far as I can tell, (almost?) all of the modern European IE languages have SVO as the dominant order. Even in Slavic languages that have kept a complex case system and allow pretty much any word order, there is a strong preference for SVO, and a Google search confirms the same for Baltic languages, which are similar to Slavic ones in this regard. Are there any non-SVO IE languages in Europe at all?


The Celtic languages are VSO. For Greek, SVO and VSO are both equally common, and in the linguistics literature, I've found arguments for both as the "underlying" order. And I've seen German described as basically SOV, with certain movement in main clauses (and in something like "ich habe das Buch gelesen", the main part of the verb is still at the end) but I don't know how justified such an analysis is. But the more ancient I-E languages show many SOV characteristic -- you might interested in Proto-Indo-European Syntax, especially 7.2.



> Having done some further searching, its seems like some linguists have used the concept of "Standard Average European", which would be a sprachbund encompassing all of Europe, with even the non-IE European languages being on its far periphery. The striking similarities in Western European languages would correspond to the core and near periphery of this sprachbund. Unfortunately, none of the references I found are freely available. If you have access to a university library, a very interesting reference I found is: _Martin Haspelmath, "How Young Is Standard Average European?", Language Sciences, v20 n3, p271-287, Jul 1998_.


Thanks -- I'll check that out when I get a chance.


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## sokol

I've dug up some resources:

- link to a pdf file with *researchers in Balkan areal linguistics;* mainly in German, but as this is just a list on what has been said about Balkan Sprachbund so far you can easily google for English resources on the authors concerned

- another paper, again in German, from *Jeroen van Pottelberger,* critizises areal linguistics researchers for assuming more than they could prove (the title itself already is asking if a Sprachbund really is describing linguistic reality or rather the attitudes of linguists); there's some information about 'Standard Average European' too

- finally a magister thesis from* Jörg Kruse,* again in German, and here I'll give a very short overview of some of his points:
-> the Core languages of the Sprachbund are seen as the (plural!) donators of the balkanisms
-> Core languages are Bulgarian, Macedonian, Albanian and Romanian (plus Torlakian dialect of Serbian which is a transition dialect to Macedonian and Bulgarian), whereas:
-> 'second grade' Balkan Sprachbund languages are Modern Greek and 'Serbocroatian' (or more precisely, Štokavian*) dialects)
-> some Northern Romanian dialects too are seen as 'second grade' Sprachbund dialects only, by some authors
-> _modern _authors, Jörg Kruse cites Schaller, give as *likely sources:*
- loss of infinitive (partly or completely): Modern Greek influence
- neutralizing of opposition of genitive + dative: Romance influence (Romanian, Vallachian)
- formation of numerals 11-19: Slavic influence (Macedonian, Bulgarian)
None is given for the enclitic article; but listed are only these three (there could be much more in Schallers monography for all we kow).
As for the time scale we do not have any documents of *Romanian *and *Albanian *language up to the 14th/15th century. As both languages (re)surface to history they are already fully fledged Balkan Sprachbund languages.
Further relevant is the settlement period of *Slavic *tribes on the Balkans which took place in the 6th century (a. d.). (Slavic) Old Bulgarian documents exist since the 9th century and show only partly Balkanic features (like partial infinitive loss which also could be explained as Greek influence only). Apart from that Old Church Slavonic is certainly no Balkan Sprachbund language.
Of *Greek, *of course, there is plenty, but with the divergence between written Greek and spoken Greek even Greek is difficult to take as a historical source - that's all besides the fact that Greek is no core language of the Sprachbund.
Theoretically, the *timescale *for the development of the Balkan Sprachbund could  be set even from long before Christ (with Classical Greek) with the *'Second Period'* being the most important one, that is (according to this paper) sometime between the Slavic settlement and the (re)surfacing of Albanian and Romanian, so about *from 6th century to 13th/14th century, *very roughly speaking. *Before *this period, there *was no *Balkan Sprachbund (but only the 'seed'), and *after *it *did exist, *proofed by Albanian and Romanian documents.
Of the when's and how-exactly's we know very little.
*) Yes, I know, Balkanism grow weaker in Štokavian with distance to Bulgarian and Macedonian, and in Croatian standard language Balkanisms are ruled out by norms (even though some Croatian and Bosnian dialects too show Balkan features).

All in all, the Balkan Sprachbund discussion seems to be *much more* complex than I thought it was. 
Apart from that, there's something missing, some tiny little bits of *history *of the Balkan area:
- the core area of the Sprachbund was dominated by *Orthodox Church* at the time
- the political power active in the region at the time, besides the *Byzantine *Empire, was the *Bulgarian *Empire ruled by the 'Proto-Bulgarians' who still are discussed controversially: Bulgarian historicians traditionally did jump at any clue not linking them with the the Volga Bulgarians who speak a Turkic language, but historically it seems not unlikely that this links exists; also some Aryan influence on the Proto-Bulgarian seems to have been established by historicians.
This would not be incongruent with history at all: the nomadic 'Asian' tribes invading Europe in the early Middle ages oftentimes were not ethnically homogenuous but rather a mixture of many tribes of which one gave the group his name; so it could well be that with the Bulgarians only the 'leading' tribe was Turkic but many of the others were not (even though they themselves called Bulgarian).

And as we still have no explanation at all for the *enclitic article* (at least none that would satisfy me personally only even partly, which the 'inherent' Romanian and Slavic explanations don't), and as areal linguistic phenomena indeed do happen, I will be so bold as to suggest that probably the Proto-Bulgarian language(es) did play an important part too.

It really wouldn't matter too much in this case if they would have been Turkic or Ugric (another people living on the Volga with the Volga Bulgarians) or any other Altaic agglutinative language: in each case the peculiarity of agglutinating specifiers to the noun (rather than putting them before the noun) could have been copied from the Indoeuropean languages present in the Balkans area, even if these language wouldn't have any article themselves (but lots of other suffixes), which the most likely candidates didn't have.

*I know, I can not offer proof.
*It's just a nice theory.
The agglutinative character of Turkish of course was what led me in the first place to believing that the enclitic article would be due to Turkish influence (which we have now established clearly is not the case, as the time scale wouldn't fit and Turkish is no Sprachbund language). Why not another agglutinative language as donator for this feature?
Of Proto-Bulgarian, needless to say, we know of course next to nothing.


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## Spectre scolaire

sokol said:
			
		

> The agglutinative character of Turkish of course was what led me in the first place to believing that the enclitic article would be due to Turkish influence (which we have now established clearly is not the case, as the time scale wouldn't fit and Turkish is no Sprachbund language). Why not another agglutinative language as donator for this feature?


 With all respect, I don’t understand this infatuation for agglutinative languages when it comes to explaining the enclitic article in some Balkan languages. There was no such language behind Old Norse which eventually gave this feature to modern Scandinavian languages. 

The enclitic article in question has, in fact, nothing to do with agglutinative structure of a language. Agglutination in Turkish is exemplified in this posting. 

I think most people, even so-called experts, are discussing _relata refero_ in this case – hardly anybody has a command of several Balkan languages, say, Albanian, Bulgarian and Romanian, and those who claim such knowledge, often have a more theoretical mastery than a practical one. In fact, when it comes to making hypotheses about the emergence of an enclitic article, _contact linguistics_ may count more than practical knowledge of the languages involved. Personally, I am not qualified to utter an opinion, but why not participate in the chorus of conjectures? 

I once studied Albanian – but not with the purpose of figuring out why it has an enclitic article.  I was once supposed to do some work in Albania, and I immediately set out to learn Albanian. After a year, and due to the arbitrary rule of late dictator Enver Hoxha, my assignment was not approved.  So, I do know how this thing works in Albanian , but the circumstances surrounding my not going there, led to oblivion. This is not a language that you could easily practice before the Stalinist regime broke down, so much more that the dialect of Kosovo (which you can hear in many places in Europe) is quite different. 

I can’t come up with a linguistic explanation as to exactly how or why this enclitic article emerged, but I find it thrilling – much more today than almost 30 years ago! – that three languages belonging to three different branches of Indo-European languages share the same innovation. This can only be due to a combination of isolation and contact – quite a paradox, one would say. I’ll make my _conjecture_ (*!*) in a few points without elaborating too much on each of them:

*1*) The Dacian language (about which we know next to nothing) was Proto-Albanian, that is the language spoken in parts of what is now Romania. 

*2*) The advent of the Romans in Dacia led to an exodus of Dacians westwards – probably over a period of more than hundred years. These people settled in part of Illyria which is today’s Albania. The “Proto-Albanians” who remained in Dacia, were assimilated to “Latin culture”. Because of some phonetic criteria linking words in Romanian and Albanian, there is no question of [Eastern] Romance influence on Albanian before the great influx of Latin words from the West when the “refugees” eventually settled in today’s Albania.

*3*) The national myth about Albanian being a development of an old language in Illyria (about which we know – again! – next to nothing) is based on the idea of a sacred homeland of the Albanians. This myth is mostly Hoxha’s work, a man who was smart enough to know that a myth of descent mobilizes a disparate population of Catholics, Greek-Orthodox and Muslims who are further divided into two main Albanian dialects. Actually, he managed to do this work successfully – a major exploit, one could say. Without his version of communism, this Albanian amalgam may have been impossible. This late isolation of Albania is a curious modern parallel to earlier isolation of Romania and Bulgaria, an isolation which originally may have triggered the contact linguistic phenomena we are talking about.

*4*) There is a significant number of “Albanian loanwords” in Romanian. How did they enter the language if there was no contact between them?! In fact, these “loanwords” may rather be Proto-Albanian words belonging to the substratum on which Romanian developed. 

*5*) The enclitic article in Romanian must have developed as a contact-linguistic phenomenon between Proto-Albanian (= Dacian!) and Romanian. Since we don’t know anything about Proto-Albanian, but we do know Latin very well, this feature is likely to have developed initially in Albanian. Because of the isolation of Vulgar Latin in Dacia, there was no restraint against such an “alien” feature in Romanian. 

*6*) Of the three languages in question, two of them are known from early times: Latin and Church Slavonic. The latter didn’t have an enclitic article, so it is likely that Bulgarian developed it in contact with Romanian. As _Athaulf_ points out in #2: “I find [...] the enclitic article utterly alien, far more strange than anything else I've ever heard of in any other Slavic language.” So, how could such an “alien feature” possibly develop? The answer is most probably _isolation_ and _contact_ – again this oxymoron of linguistic phenomena – _isolation_ from the rest of the Slavic world and _contact_ with Romanian and Greek. The latter did not contribute to the enclitic article, but did indeed to a loss of the infinitive, see here.

In linguistics – as in all other sciences – the making of workable hypotheses is a central endeavor. The big question linked to the emergence of the enclitic article is What was the _catalyst_ for the emergence of the enclitic article in Balkan languages?

As a matter of fact, _we don’t know_ – and what is worse, there is no way of setting up a working hypothesis as long as Dacian (or “Proto-Albanian”) is unknown. Personally I’d like to think that the catalyst is not Dacian itself, but contact linguistic phenomena surrounding Dacian and Vulgar Latin. Once an enclitic article had developed in Albanian and Romanian, South Slavic became exposed to this feature on two fronts. The ethnic jumble of Macedonia may have contributed to its emergence _as a common feature_.

I can’t prove anything, and my premise for this posting being a postulation of Dacian as Proto-Albanian, my contact-linguistic concoction may be as farfetched as Enver Hoxha’s national myth concoction regarding Albanian language. Almost. 

As far as my linguistic fantasy goes, I can’t see any better alternative. For the moment.  I might see more perspicaciously following your comments...
 ​


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## sokol

Spectre scolaire said:


> With all respect, I don’t understand this infatuation for agglutinative languages when it comes to explaining the enclitic article in some Balkan languages. There was no such language behind Old Norse which eventually gave this feature to modern Scandinavian languages.


 The reason is quite simple: I just can't persuade me to believing that the *Bulgarian *enclitic article [which is (most likely) the demonstrative pronoun] developed from Church Slavonic _without _any exterior influence: it did in no other Slavic language, and the few Slavic dialects which do have an article (supposedly under German and probably Italian influence which would stand to reason) always have it before the noun.
And the point of Old Norse (me, I know nothing about Old Norse) is not really valid here as the question is rather why three not closely related languages (language groups) would develop such a feature simultanuously.

But you've given a really interesting idea about the enclitic article.



Spectre scolaire said:


> In fact, when it comes to making hypotheses about the emergence of an enclitic article, _contact linguistics_ may count more than practical knowledge of the languages involved.



Here I am of one opinion with you: I always favour contact linguistics for such phenomena. But then I am not completely unbiased as I did study (and made my degree) in sociolinguistics where this view is rather common. 




Spectre scolaire said:


> I once studied Albanian (...) the dialect of Kosovo (which you can hear in many places in Europe) is quite different.



I never 'quite' studied Albanian but a cousin of mine once had an Albanian friend (Kosovo Albanian) and I came in contact with the rather - ahem: fantastic ideas of Albanians (even the ones from Kosovo) about their origin and their language.
I also 'took a look' (I think this would be the proper term) at Albanian and the Kosovo dialect which indeed is rather different.

And yes, I know your theory is conjecture as we do not even know for sure if Dacian were Proto-Albanian (even though it's likely - as we know next to nothing about Dacian).


Spectre scolaire said:


> *5*) The enclitic article in Romanian must have developed as a contact-linguistic phenomenon between Proto-Albanian (= Dacian!) and Romanian. Since we don’t know anything about Proto-Albanian, but we do know Latin very well, this feature is likely to have developed initially in Albanian. Because of the isolation of Vulgar Latin in Dacia, there was no restraint against such an “alien” feature in Romanian.


This sounds quite possible, even likely, and you almost had me convinced by now. But then I thought I should do a little bit more research before answering.

So let's take this closer look to try and answer:


Spectre scolaire said:


> The big question linked to the emergence of the enclitic article is What was the _catalyst_ for the emergence of the enclitic article in Balkan languages?


As you said in your very precise language. 

There's indeed a reference under 'Bulgarian: resources' in this forum to the 'Proto-Bulgarian' language (why didn't I think of this earlier) where there's stated that this language in fact _has _an enclitic article: namely, -A -O -OT -ON -ET (masculine) and -VA -SA -NA -TA (feminine) which do not correspond to the (Slavo)-Bulgarian enclitic article except for female -TA; Bulgarian enclitic articles are -TA -TO (f. + n.) + -TE (plural) plus a variety of forms for masc. which do not correspond to the demonstrative pronoun.
This still would not be proof exactly, but at least it seems we do have some Old Bulgarian inscriptions and that the Old Bulgarian article indeed could be a likely source for the enclitic article in (modern) Slavic Bulgarian.

Anyway, I think we really should rule out* Slavic Bulgarian* as the *catalyst *(thanks again, Spectre!) for development of the enclitic article. (Slavic Bulgarian of course has no indefinite article. Of Macedonian I know very little except that the grammar basically is quite similar to Bulgarian.)

Let's take a look at* Romanian:* here we have an indefinite article _always _standing before the noun whereas the definite article _always _is enclitic which only gives two possibilities: either the enclitic article in Romanian was a loan (I would favor that one), or the indefinite article developed before or after the enclitic definite article (in this case it still would be difficult to proof why then both articles are used in different positions).

This really leaves us with the *Albanian *and the *Old-Bulgarian* (Proto-Bulgarian) theory.
The Albanian definite endings seem to be an extreme 'mess' (as far as I'm concerned ), but there are frequently elements of 'T' and '(J)A', which means that there is _some _(if not much) similarity to both Old and Slavic Bulgarian article.
As far as the etymology of the Albanian article is concerned I am absolutely clueless - probably there _is _an old (Proto)-Albanian source for it, probably not. (But as we can only guess about the Albanian language as spoken two thousand years before there's probably no obvious explanation to be found.)

Anyway, even now that I have discovered that indeed Old Bulgarian did have an enclitic article I have warmed to your 'Albanian theory'. Nevertheless, overall I would consider the 'Old Bulgarian theory' just that tiny little bit better - if only for the fact that we at least know _something _about this language.


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## robbie_SWE

Not to exhume this old discussion from its coffin, but the Dacia hypothesis (I'm referring to the origin of the Dacians and their language) seems to differ depending on the scholar and the country he/she comes from. 

From what I know, discussing whether the Dacians migrated to Albania or from Albania will only result in a major headache. It's like discussing what came first, the egg or the hen? 

The common theory in Romania (be it nationalistic or not) is that the Roman armies forced large chunks of the Dacians population to flee their homeland. They fled to the region now known as Albania, where the Illyrians presumably already lived. According to most Romanian "experts" (yet again just making sure that no one perceives me as being bias in this matter) the theory is that the Dacians were set apart from the Illyrians and Thracians and migrated first after the Roman conquest of the region. 

Some linguists presume that the Dacian language was closely related to Latin and this fact enabled the rather speedy "assimilation" of the region into the Roman Empire. Unfortunately little is known of the language even if some archaeologists state that they have found metal plates written in so called "Dacian" (apparently a very strange language; Greek letters but not many Greek words). 

Before anybody cuts my head off, please let me ensure you that the aim of this post is only to contribute with doubtful (but interesting) facts from Romanian "experts". 

 robbie


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> There's indeed a reference under 'Bulgarian: resources' in this forum to the 'Proto-Bulgarian' language (why didn't I think of this earlier) where there's stated that this language in fact _has _an enclitic article: namely, -A -O -OT -ON -ET (masculine) and -VA -SA -NA -TA (feminine) which do not correspond to the (Slavo)-Bulgarian enclitic article except for female -TA; Bulgarian enclitic articles are -TA -TO (f. + n.) + -TE (plural) plus a variety of forms for masc. which do not correspond to the demonstrative pronoun.
> This still would not be proof exactly, but at least it seems we do have some Old Bulgarian inscriptions and that the Old Bulgarian article indeed could be a likely source for the enclitic article in (modern) Slavic Bulgarian.



I would take the content of those web pages with a huge grain of salt. The issues of Bulgarian early history and ethnogenesis are nowadays a very fertile ground for speculations that often range from unfounded to outright kooky, and my understanding is that presently, there is still pretty much zero reliable academic knowledge about the Old Bulgar language. Therefore, it is wise to treat any web page about the topic (and especially those hosted on Tripod ) as guilty until proven innocent.


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## sokol

Athaulf said:


> (...) Therefore, it is wise to treat any web page about the topic (and especially those hosted on Tripod ) as guilty until proven innocent.



Oh, I didn't know that Tripod has such a bad reputation  ... anyway, that's all that I found on the net on the Old Bulgar language.
(Not bad if compared to what you find on Dacian  but of course you're right, before springing to conclusions one should have reliable sources, or else have done some work on the field - which I have not, concerning the Balkan Sprachbund specifically.)


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## Spectre scolaire

robbie_SWE said:


> Some linguists presume that the Dacian language was closely related to Latin and this fact enabled the rather speedy "assimilation" of the region into the Roman Empire.


 Whoever those linguists are and whatever support they may have found for their assumption about a close proximity between Dacian and Latin, I can’t see that language similarity between conquerors and the conquered should _a priori_ facilitate assimilation. History provides many examples of language shift in which the adopted language is radically different from that of the autochthonous population. Criteria like perceived cultural superiority, prestige and increased opportunities for social mobility are far more important.
 ​


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> Oh, I didn't know that Tripod has such a bad reputation  ...



Well, it's one of those sites where you can open a web page for free. The fact that someone is using it strongly implies amateurism, which of course isn't necessarily bad -- but in matters like these, you'll probably agree that it usually is.  



> anyway, that's all that I found on the net on the Old Bulgar language.)


If you can read Bulgarian (shouldn't be too hard with Slovenian plus some knowledge of Cyrillic), there's plenty of interesting, albeit highly dubious material on this site. Apparently, speculations about these topics are a thriving cottage industry in Bulgaria nowadays.


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## sokol

Athaulf said:


> If you can read Bulgarian (shouldn't be too hard with Slovenian plus some knowledge of Cyrillic), there's plenty of interesting, albeit highly dubious material on this site. Apparently, speculations about these topics are a thriving cottage industry in Bulgaria nowadays.



Well yes, I can _read _Bulgarian - if slowly (that is, _very _slowly indeed), the problem not being the Cyrillic script but so many different words as compared to Slovenian (and Serbian/Croatian).

And then there's the main problem with Bulgarian sources, they're hardly unbiased.
Only browsing through some of the articles, with way too many references to 'Indo-Aryan' and 'Skytho-Sarmatian', gives me some doubt if this site is worth the pains of reading it. 

Of course it would not be unlikely that the Old Bulgars (whatever their language actually was) had contact with Iranian tribes of the Ukrainian steppes, and that there was _some _influence, but it seems that these (completely possible) links are highly overrated on this Bulgarian site. (Of what I found on Non-Bulgarian sites about the Old Bulgarians it seems quite clear that they certainly weren't Iranians or Aryans.)


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> And then there's the main problem with Bulgarian sources, they're hardly unbiased.
> Only browsing through some of the articles, with way too many references to 'Indo-Aryan' and 'Skytho-Sarmatian', gives me some doubt if this site is worth the pains of reading it.
> 
> Of course it would not be unlikely that the Old Bulgars (whatever their language actually was) had contact with Iranian tribes of the Ukrainian steppes, and that there was _some _influence, but it seems that these (completely possible) links are highly overrated on this Bulgarian site. (Of what I found on Non-Bulgarian sites about the Old Bulgarians it seems quite clear that they certainly weren't Iranians or Aryans.)



Yes, there is definitely a huge disconnect between what's being published about this topic in Bulgaria and outside of it, which means that many Bulgarian authors are likely getting carried away a bit too far in their patriotic (to avoid using an uglier word) fervor.  I've also seen a few articles on that website that tend to use, to put it mildly, rather loose standards for "proving" various linguistic correspondences. 

It's a pity because the topic is really interesting in itself, and might have further interesting implications on the broader topic of Balkan languages. Right now, unfortunately, the signal to noise ratio is extremely low, and the information available from more reliable Western academic sources is rather sparse.


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