Contact-induced language change in situations of non-stable bilingualism—its limits and modelling: Slavic (social) dialects in Albania

• Applicant: Dr. Maxim Makartsev
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics ; General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 429823235

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

This project aimed to model language contact outcomes using the methods of statistical language research, social dialectology, as well as territorial dialectology in situations of unstable bilingualism among Slavic language varieties that show different degrees of structural affinity to the dominant language, that is, Albanian. Three of the Slavic varieties in question are part of the Balkan sprachbund and are therefore structurally closer to Albanian. Additionally, two Štokavian (non-Balkan Slavic) migrational dialects in Albania were researched. The focus was on identifying contact-induced features that would indicate a structural alignment of the varieties under investigation with either the Balkan sprachbund in general or Albanian in particular, with an investigation of how various sociolinguistic parameters in the linguistic biographies of the speakers and the initial structural affinity to the Balkan sprachbund were relevant to the outcomes of the respective contact. This is the first study of Slavic dialects in Albania and one of the few studies of Slavic dialects in general that focuses on their vertical or social continuity—that is, from the more conservative to the more innovative and contactinfluenced sociolinguistic groups. Their contacts with Albanian and other Balkan languages have led to quantitative and qualitative changes in the studied dialects that have been unevenly distributed across speakers due to a number of sociolinguistic factors. In situations where there was variation in the dialect before the contact, contact supported the structures that showed higher structural affinity to the Balkan sprachbund (e.g., the use of subjunctives instead of infinitives). It also led to the grammaticalization of forms not formerly attested in the varieties (e.g., in Štokavian: future marking with the petrified copula and article-like uses of the demonstrative pronouns; in Balkan Slavic, grammaticalization of the progressive aspect through various matter and pattern borrowings from Albanian). The main instrument that was created during the project is the Corpus of Slavic Dialects in Albania (~572,000 word forms), which also serves language documentation functions, which is especially relevant as one of the dialects went extinct during the project, so the Corpus documents the speech of its last speakers. The Corpus has been made available online. Part of the data included in the Corpus are narratives on the traditional culture and oral history of the respective communities that should be of interest to not only the researchers, but members of the communities, language activists, and the general public. Another instrument created during the project is a dataset focusing on Balkan and South Slavic causativity marking in the minority dialects of Albania, which moreover collects quantitative data for the first time regarding one of the least-researched Balkanisms, the so-called labile or ambitransitive verbs.

Link to the final report

https://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.17813

Publications

• "On the hybrid interlinguistic phenomena in Slavic dialects in Albania” [in Russian: K voprosu o gibridnyh mežjazykovyh javlenijah v slavjanskih dialektah Albanii]. In VAProsy jazykoznanija: Megasbornik nanostatej. Sbornik statej k jubileju V. A. Plungiana, edited by A. A. Kibrik et al., 329–336. Moscow: Buki Vedi. (Open access.)
  Makartsev, Maxim
  
• Found in translation: (Semi)structured questionnaires and the grammaticalization of the continuous aspect in non-Albanian dialects in Albania. Balkan Readings, 54-61. Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.
  Makartsev, Maxim M.
  
• Documenting the Slavic Dialects of Albania: a Photographer’s Gaze, a Linguist’s Reflection. Centre of Linguocultural Research Balcanica. Proceedings of Round Tables, 7, 203-229.
  Makartsev, Maxim & Väänänen, Aino
  
• Infinitive reduction in a migrant Shtokavian dialect in Albania: Language contact supporting Balkanization. Linguistica Copernicana, 18, 45-60.
  Makartsev, Maxim
  
• Sacred Practices of the Christian Orthodox and the Muslims in the Mixed Shrines in the Devoll Region (South-East Albania). Centre of Linguocultural Research Balcanica. Proceedings of Round Tables, 7, 106-135.
  Makartsev, Maxim & Dugushina, Alexandra
  
• Some Tendencies in the Morphosyntax of the Migrational Shtokavian Dialects in Albania (Shijak and Myzeqe) and Slavic-Albanian Language Contact. Slavic World in the Third Millennium, 17(1-2), 120-141.
  Makartsev, Maxim & Kikilo, Natalia
  
• "The lexis of the traditional culture of the Slavic enclave in Albania: Prespa Minor” [in Russian: Leksika narodnoj kulʹtury slavjanskogo anklava v Albaniji: Malaja Prespa]. In Slovo i čelovek: K 100-letiju so dnja roždenija akademika Nikity Ilʹiča Tolstogo [The Word and the Human: On the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Academician Nikita Ilyich Tolstoy], edited by Svetlana M. Tolstaja, 540–554.
  Uzeneva, Elena S.
  
• Pseudoarticles in a migrational Štokavian dialect in Southern Albania: On a typological parallel between the Balkans and the Russian North. Balkan Readings, 91-97. Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.
  Makartsev, Maxim
  
• Македонский esse-перфект: лексическая дистрибуция и контекстные ограничения. Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici, 89-106. Firenze University Press.
  Escher, Anastasia
  
• “The development of the Balkan Slavic type of future in the Štokavian migrational dialects in Albania and language contacts” [In Bosnian: Razvoj balkanoslavenskoga tipa futura u štokavskim iseljeničkim dijalektima u Albaniji i jezički kontakti]. Književni jezik 34: 41–69. (Open access. Double-blind reviewed.) English version: “The Balkan Slavic type of future in the Štokavian migrational dialects in Albania.” In Einheit(en) in der Vielfalt von Slavistik und Osteuropakunde: Prvdentia Regnorvm Fvndamentvm, edited by Hauke Bartels, Thomas Menzel, and Jan P. Zeller, 259–294. Berlin: Peter Lang. ISBN (Hardcover) 9783631889886
  Makartsev, Maxim
  
• Lability in Balkan Slavic. Studies in Language, 49(4), 894-921.
  Makartsev, Maxim; Wahlström, Max & Escher, Anastasia
  
• The Elusive Progressive Aspect in the Minority Dialects in Albania: Inherited Structures and the Grammaticalization Paths. Zeitschrift für Balkanologie, 60(2), 194-233.
  Makartsev, Maxim
  
• “The expedition to the Gorans of North Macedonia” [in Russian: Po sledam ekspedicii k goranam Severnoj Makedonii]. Živaja starina 3 (124): 9–12. (Open access.)
  Uzeneva, Elena S.
  
• Albanian-Slavic Language Contact and Infinitive Reduction in Two Migrant Štokavian Dialects in Albania. The Slavic Verb, 207-234. BRILL.
  Makartsev, Maxim