Anastasia Escher

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.

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...

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...

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.

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 nonstandard feature is the best predictor of the others.

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 preverbal pronominal elements in the Balkan languages. With the loss of agreement distinctions on pronouns being characteristic for the last phase in the emergence of object indexing, both processes appear to be closely related. Obviously, in this case, the convergence of various different processes has created a favorable environment for the mutual reinforcement and stabilization of two otherwise highly volatile phenomena.

In a previously published paper [Konior et al. 2019], which thematically
led up to the present article, we explored the possibility of developing a quantitative tool for assessing the intrasystemic dialectal coherence and the degree of dialectal authenticity (preservation) for a particular variety of Slavic (and more broadly Balkan) dialectal speech. In order to do so, we analysed and manually counted all cases of presence or absence of specific phonemes, direct and indirect object reduplication, ways of expressing peripheral cases meaning, presence of a postpositive article, and some other language features. The data used for that purpose was extracted from “Linguistic Atlas of Eastern Serbia and Western Bulgaria” [SAOSWB]; an idiolect of a native speaker of the Timok dialect spoken in the village of Berčinovac (near the town of Knjaževac in the Zaječar district, Eastern Serbia) was chosen for analysis. Subsequently, the following question arose: how can the use of modern technologies for automatic text processing increase the efficiency of dialectologists’ work, and what technical obstacles must be overcome in this regard? In the article, we present a method of (semi-)automatic analysis of phonetic and morphosyntactic features in a dialect text with the use of morphological annotation (the tagger model is based on the ReLDI tagger [Ljubešić et al. 2016] and user Python scripts). An algorithm searching for some important dialect features is described and exemplified. Trying to imitate and automate historical and structural linguistic analysis, we open a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of computer analysis of dialect data as compared with the manual analysis. In the future, the automatic method is expected to be helpful in managing larger amounts of dialect data.

The paper describes three corpora of different varieties of BS that are currently being developed with the goal of providing data for the analysis of the diatopic and diachronic variation in non-standard Balkan Slavic. The corpora includes spoken materials from Torlak, Macedonian dialects, as well as the manuscripts of pre-standardized Bulgarian. Apart from the texts, tools for PoS annotation and lemmatization for all varieties are being created, as well as syntactic parsing for Torlak and Bulgarian varieties. The corpora are built using a unified methodology, relying on the pest practices and state-of-the-art methods from the field. The uniform methodology allows the contrastive analysis of the data from different varieties. The corpora under construction can be considered a crucial contribution to the linguistic research on the languages in the Balkans as they provide the lacking data needed for the studies of linguistic variation in the Balkan Slavic, and enable the comparison of the said varieties with other neighbouring languages.

The aim of the undertaken research is to develop a statistical method that allows to estimate frequency and regularity for the distribution of distinctive dialect features in speakers’ of Serbian non-standardized idioms spontaneous speech, and thus, to discover intrasystem implications between different dialect features creating linguistic profiles of dialect speakers. At a later stage of research, the achievement of this goal would mean obtaining a quantitative tool for assessing intrasystem coherence and degree of dialect preservation for any Slavic or Balkan dialect.
The object of study is Draginja Mikić’s (b. 1906) idiolect. Narrative produced by her was recorded in the village of Berčinovac, situated near Knjaževac in the Zaječar county (Eastern Serbia). This narrative of approximately 5,300 word tokens was published by A. Sobolev in the third volume of his work called “Dialectological Atlas of Eastern Serbia and Western Bulgaria” [1. Vol. III, Ortspunkt 503. Berčinovac. P. 125]. Analyzed data was extracted from the dialect text using the continuous sampling method, and subsequently subjected to etymological, formal and functional semantic analysis. The comparison procedure itself consisted in counting the number of uses of the “correct” (i.e. corresponding to the conventional dialectal reference point) options for dialectal difference implementation. As a result, we could determine as a percentage how close this idiom is to the ideal model of Timok dialect, how “dialectal” it is in general, and how much different it is from the other Serbian dialects and from the standard language.
In order to obtain statistically relevant results based on a sufficient amount of text, we selected twelve most significant dialectal features, which allowed us to oppose all the dialects of the studied region of Eastern Serbia with the Neo-Štokavian dialects underlying the standard language.
We can observe dependence of the experiment results on the frequency of certain lexemes used in the informant’s speech. A dialect Timok word form often comes into opposition with a non-dialect (standard), according to not just one, but to a number of parameters. Thus, the form mačeja ‘stepmother’ corresponds to maćehu-Acc.Sg not only with /ć/, but also with the phoneme /h/, which is not typical of the Timok dialects. Such opposition is quite often implemented not in the same lexical material (cf. mačeja ~ maćeha, dǝn ~ dan ‘day’), but in different groups of tokens (cf. viǯuvali ‘(they)saw’ ~ roʒ́ena ‘(she was) born’); and not in the same word form of the lexeme, but in different segments of its paradigm (the dative forms of pronouns in sg. mene, ńemu against the background of analytical forms pl. na nas). Our data reflects different relative frequency of correlative members pairs of different dialectal features and, therefore, a different degree of regularity of their implementation, regardless of the language level. We hope that applying various modern research methods to sufficiently large amount of material, including linguogeographic, corpus and psycho-linguistic methods, can provide us with the desired result (including in the cases of negative statements concerning features that do not exist in a dialect).

This paper focuses on the Aromanian variety spoken in the microregion of Prespa (Republic of Macedonia) and on its vitality in our days. The Aromanian presence in Prespa was first mentioned in the end of the 10th century, but some sources prove it to be much older-eg. (Кукудис 2013). In the 21st century, the town of Resen (administrative capital of the microregion) and its outskirts have ceased to be an important Aromanian centre. Although some local people admit they have Aromanian roots, the Aromanian variety is now spoken only in one family and only by its senior members in limited contexts. Their speech abounds with examples of interference of Macedonian, which has become the dominant language in relation to Aromanian in almost every domain. This linguistic situation is an example of language death. Therefore, it is unlikely that the Aromanian language in Prespa will be revitalized in the future. Цель настоящей статьи – описать языковую ситуацию и основные черты диалекта арумын региона Преспа. Этноязыковая группа арумын представле-на в данном регионе только одной семьей. Данная языковая ситуация рассма-тривается как пример «языковой смерти», так как младшее поколение уже не владеет арумынским языком, а старшее употребляет его только в ограни-ченных контекстах. Арумынская речь изобилует многочисленными приме-рами интерференции македонского языка, являющегося доминантным по от-ношению к арумынскому в данной ситуации.

The language of the medieval Slavic translation of the Pope Gregory XI’s bull to the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit is usually described as Čakavian. The paper demonstrates this statement on the basis of phonetic, morphological, and lexical features. At the same time, the text of the bull contains a certain number of Church Slavonic elements. Thus, the language of the manuscript can indeed be characterized as Čakavian—Church Slavonic hybrid (“amalgam”).

Krashovani are the Catholic Slavic language minority settled in the region of Romanian Banat. They live in seven villages: Karashevo, Clocotici, Lupac, Nermet, Vodnic, Rafnic and Iabalcea, however, the last one represents an untypical case from the linguists' point of view, the habitants usually communicate in Romanian, though they continue to declare themselves Krashovani. Time and reason of possible switch have not been clarified yet, as well as the Krashovanis' ethnogenesis and detailed history. The most popular scientific theories attach them to Serbians or Croatians. Although their archaic idiom contains more features of Kosovo-Resava or Prizren-Timok dialect areas, recently the locals have started to define themselves as Croatians, mainly due to the influences of the Catholic church and modern Croatian cultural politics. In this paper based on the results of our fieldwork in Karashevo, we analyze some particularities of the contemporary ethno-linguistic situation there, paying special attention to the actual state of both Slavic and Romanian idioms used in this microregion.

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.

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.

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.