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UNIVERSITETI I EVROPËS JUGLINDORE УНИВЕРЗИТЕОТ НА ЈУГОИСТОЧНА ЕВРОПА SOUTH EAST EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTE “MAX VAN DER STOEL” MULTICULTURALISM AND LANGUAGE CONTACT Proceedings from the international scientific conference “Multiculturalism and Language Contact” organized by the Scientific Institute “Max van der Stoel” and Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts‘ research Center for Areal Linguistics at the South East European University in Tetovo (Republic of Macedonia) on August 31 and September 01, 2017. 2018 Editors of the publication: Prof. Dr. Veton Latifi Prof. Dr. Victor A. Friedman Prof. Dr. Marjan Markovikj Publisher: Scientific Institute “Max van der Stoel” South East European University Camp. Bldg. 201. 01. 01 St. Ilindenska n. 335 1200 Tetovo tel. 00389 44 356 211 e-mail: mvdsi@seeu.edu.mk Table of contents Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...5 Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...9 HEALTHY AND WEALTHY AND WISE: EVIDENCE OF THE BENEFITS OF MULTILINGUALISM FROM NEUROPSYCHOLOGY AND CULTURE, by Victor A. Friedman……………………………….13 MACEDONIAN REFLEXES OF THE COMMON SLAVIC NASAL VOWELS AS PRODUCTS OF BALKAN CONVERGENCE, by Irena Sawicka………………………………………………………………….25 SLAVIC-ALBANIAN INTERACTION IN VELJA GORANA: PAST AND PRESENT OF A BALANCED LANGUAGE CONTACT SITUATION, by Maria S. Morozova and Alexander Yu. Rusakov………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………38 ATLAS OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES, by Yury Koryakov………………………………………………………………..60 MULTICULTURALISM TRADITIONS AND LANGUAGE CONTACT IN AZERBAIJAN, by Mokhsun Zellabdin oghly Naghisoylu and Ayten Elshad gizi Allakhverdiyeva …………75 GENDER MARKING IN L2 ROMANI IN CONTACT WITH HUNGARIAN: THE CASE OF DUNAJSKÁ STREDA ROMANI, by Zuzana Bodnárová…………………………………………………..80 CONATIVE ‘UNTIL’-CLAUSES IN THE BALKAN LANGUAGES AND JUDEO-SPANISH, by Iskra Dobreva and Ekaterina Tarpomanova………………………………………………………………………..92 A SEMIOTIC COMPREHENSION OF THE USAGE OF LOCAL LANGUAGES (EXEMPLIFYING MACEDONIA) by Bujar Hoxha……………………………………………………………………………………110 [-ʧi/-ʧija] or [-ʤi/-ʤija]? Balkan derivatives with a borrowed Turkish suffix -çi / -ci, by Artur Karasiński…………………………………………………………………………………………………….…115 PERSONAL PRONOUNS IN MACEDONIAN AND IN ALBANIAN, by Angelina Pančevska..126 AUSTRIAN ALBANIANS BETWEEN CULTURAL INTEGRATION AND CULTURAL DEFENSE, by Ali Pajaziti and Mevlan Memeti…………………………………………………………………………….137 TURKISH-MACEDONIAN LANGUAGE CONTACT IN OHRID: THE CASE OF PROPENSITY, by Julian Rentzsch, Liljana Mitkovska and Gabriela Nedelkoska………………………………….149 LANGUAGE CONTACT AND LANGUAGE CHANGE IN RESIAN, by Marija Runić…………….165 MULTICULTURALISM AND THE SOCIAL INTEGRATGION OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES, by Liljana Siljanovska……………………………………………………………………………………………………187 ON THE TURKISH ORIGIN OF THE SUFFIX -LIJA IN MАCEDONIAN, by Simon Sazdov…..195 CHALLENGES OF MULTILINGUALISM AT SOUTH EAST EUROPEAN UNIVERITY, by Brikena Xhaferi……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………....207 CONFERENCE PROGRAM…………………………………………………………………………………………….225 Maria S. Morozova and Alexander Yu. Rusakov (Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg State University) SLAVIC-ALBANIAN INTERACTION IN VELJA GORANA: PAST AND PRESENT OF A BALANCED LANGUAGE CONTACT SITUATION Abstract The article investigates the case of Velja Gorana, a small village located in the southern part of Montenegro between the towns of Bar and Ulcinj. The area is adjacent to the Albanian-Montenegrin border and has a mixed Muslim Slavic, Muslim Albanian, Orthodox Slavic and Catholic Albanian population. As it seems, Velja Gorana represents a good example of the balanced language contact situation, generally defined as “a long-standing linguistic area and stable multilingualism without any dominance relationships” (Aikhenvald, 2007: 42). This paper aims at the description of the bilingual scenarios occurring in the families of present-day Velja Gorana and the reconstruction of the patterns of bilingual interaction that were characteristic of the local community in the past. The research data were collected during the 2012–2016 field trips to this area. First, we consider the use of languages in everyday communication of the two ethnically mixed families of Velja Gorana and discuss linguistic competences of their members. Second, we analyze the genealogies of the two biggest families, throwing light on the formation of Velja Gorana and the initial Albanian and Slavic components in its population. The proposed microanalysis of bilingual interaction in Velja Gorana aims at showing and modeling how a balanced language contact situation emerges and is maintained. We may suppose that communities of this kind could have existed in the Balkan area during the attested period of the Balkan Sprachbund and could have played an important role in its formation. The results of our study of Velja Gorana can be taken into consideration in the further research and modeling of those contact processes that took place in the Balkans and beyond. 1. Introduction Since the classical work by Thomason and Kaufman (1988), the establishment of the correlation between the social setting and linguistic outcomes of language contact remains one of the central problems in contact linguistics. In the recent years, situations of so-called “balanced language contact” have attracted significant attention from linguists (see Aikhenvald, 2007; Muysken, 2013; Haspelmath & Michaelis, 2014, et al.). Such situations usually result in mutual influence and various contact-induced changes in all languages involved, and studying them may throw more light on how linguistic areas of different types arise and how areal features originate and diffuse through the area. But the very definition of a balanced language contact situation as well as the classification of such situations is not elaborated explicitly. In the recent works, they can be quite generally described as “a long-standing linguistic area and stable multilingualism without any dominance relationships” in (Aikhenvald, 2007: 42), “power (prestige, range) symmetry” (Haspelmath & Michaelis, 2014), or “cases, both within the individual (as in e.g. simultaneous bilingual acquisition) and the bilingual community, in which no such dominance relation [asymmetry between L1 and L2. – M.M., A.R.] holds” (Muysken, 2013: 726). We may think of at least two additional questions that seem to be important for the better understanding of balanced language contact situations. One is the situation’s homogeneity, i.e. the question of whether, and in what degree, the situation in a community where speakers of both or all languages are bi- or multilingual and the languages in contact influence each other presupposes that a “balance” between the languages exists on the level of individual speakers and small groups of speakers, such as families and neighborhoods. The other is the situation’s stability, i.e. the question of whether the parameters of “balance” and stability really correlate in bi- or multilingual situations. In this article we investigate the case of Velja Gorana, a small village located in the southern part of Montenegro between the towns of Bar and Ulcinj. Velja Gorana is inhabited by speakers of Slavic and Albanian and, as it seems, represents a good example of a balanced language contact situation that has been reproduced in the community for quite a long time and has not yet resulted in a language shift towards either Albanian or Slavic (Sobolev, 2015: 545). We analyze the present-day (socio)linguistic situation in the bilingual community of Velja Gorana as a set of microsituations, or scenarios, developing on the level of families and individual speakers. After that we try to reconstruct the situation that was characteristic for Velja Gorana in the past, based on family stories and narratives of the local people. The results obtained in our analysis can be helpful for the better understanding of balanced language contact phenomena in general and can be used in the reconstruction of the (socio)linguistic setting which is responsible for at least some kind of contact processes in the multilingual Balkans. 2. The Mrkovići and Velja Gorana in southern Montenegro 2.1. Location, history, and the modern sociolinguistic situation in the area The village of Velja Gorana is located in the southern part of Montenegro between the towns of Bar and Ulcinj (see Map 1). The area is adjacent to the Albanian-Montenegrin border and has a mixed Muslim Slavic, Muslim Albanian, Orthodox Slavic, and Catholic Albanian population. The regions of Kraja, Shestan, Ana e Malit, as well as the town of Ulcinj and its surroundings are inhabited mostly by Muslim and Catholic Albanians. The town of Bar has mixed a population, while the territories around it are populated mainly by Slavicspeaking Muslims (Tuđemili, Poda) and Orthodox Montenegrins. Map 1. The village of Velja Gorana in southern Montenegro10 10 The map is drawn by Maria Morozova using the SAS.Planet (v. 190707.9476 Stable) and Inkscape (v. 0.92.1 r15371) software. The coordinates of the settlements are taken from The Interactive Map https://mapcarta.com/. The locals of Velja Gorana (BCMS goranci) identify themselves as part of the Slavicspeaking community (BCMS pleme ‘tribe’) Mrkovići / Mrkojevići, also known as Mërkot in Albanian. Most of the Mrkovići are Muslim. The history of their tribe can be traced back to the fifteenth century. The 1485 Ottoman census of the Sanjak of Scutari mentions the subdistrict Nahija Mërkodlar, with a village of Mërkojeviqi consisting of 140 households11. The names of heads of households listed in the census have native Slavic or Christian origin: Milosh, Ivza, Ivan, Gjuro, Andrija, Damjan, Dabzhiv / Dabo / Dabza, Nikëza. The only name which possibly belongs to a Muslim person is Shaini, i biri i Branurës ‘Shahin, son of Branura’ (in Turkish Şahin is a name of Iranian origin that means ‘falcon’). Several names in the list can be unambiguously interpreted as Albanian: Nuliçi, i biri i Bukmirit ‘Nulich, the son of Bukmir’; Dabza, i biri i Gjonit ‘Dabza, the son of Gjon’; Lekëza (Pulaha, 1974: 141– 143). During the next three or at most four centuries, these Albanians most probably assimilated and intermingled with the Slavic-speaking Mrkovići, and the whole population of the region was gradually converted to Islam. In modern Mrkovići, only some of families originate from the old Orthodox Slavic and Slavicized Albanian population of this region, while the rest descend from people who settled here in the course of the nineteenth century. According to Andrija Jovićević (1922), they fled from various parts of Montenegro, both from the Slavic-speaking areas, such as Ivanovići and Lakovići in the Mrkovići village of Dobra Voda (from Kući), Dapčevići (from Cetinje), and from the currently Albanian-speaking regions, as Dabovići in Dobra Voda and Markići in Komina (from Shestani). Most of the Mrkovići are now monolingual and speak BCMS. Mrkovićki dijalekat ‘the dialect of the Mrkovići’ (see 2.2), is classified as a specific local variety of the Old-Štokavian Zeta-Sjenica (Zeta-Lovćen) dialect spoken in southeastern Montenegro and southwestern Serbia (Ivić, 1994: 191; Sobolev, 2014). Nowadays, this variety is spoken, however, mainly by the middle-aged and older generations. The linguistic behavior of the younger generation is affected by public institutions, such as education and the media, and by communication with the other people outside their native villages. Consequently, they tend to speak crnogorsko ‘Montenegrin’, the Eastern Herzegovinian variety of Ijekavian Neo11 The manuscript was transcribed in Albanian characters, translated, and published by an Albanian historian Selami Pulaha (1974). The personal names and place names in this paragraph are cited after this publication. Štokavian that is spoken across most of Montenegro and used as the basis for the standard Montenegrin language. Several bilingual villages, Velja Gorana among them, are located in the eastern part of the Mrkovići region, close to the Albanian-speaking Ana e Malit. Jovićević claimed in the beginning of the twentieth century that “the Mrkovići, who lived close to Albanians, did not abandon their language, even though they had converted to Islam 200 years ago. Only the population of Pelinkovići, Vukići, Klezna, and partly of Gorana, acquired Albanian, because they used to marry women from the villages of Ana e Malit” (Jovićević, 1922: 113). Luka Vujović who conducted dialectological fieldwork in the Mrkovići region in 1930–1940s noted that at that time bilingualism was not widespread amongst the Mrkovići, but the inhabitants of the “borderline” villages [the villages located next to Ana e Malit. – M.M., A.R.], such as Međureč, Ljeskovac, Vukići, and the “lower” part of Gorana, extensively use Albanian along with the Mrkovići dialect in their everyday communication (Vujović, 2012 [1965]: 20). In 2012–2016, a team of linguists and anthropologists from Saint Petersburg, in which one of the authors participated, conducted fieldwork in this area12. It was observed during our fieldwork that the modern situation in the village of Velja Gorana is similar to that described in the century and more than half a century old works by Jovićević and Vujović. The local men who normally speak both BCMS and Albanian from childhood tend to bring Albanian wives from Ana e Malit, Ulcinj, and from the nearby parts of Albania, and all male and female children in Velja Gorana learn Albanian from their mothers and grandmothers (Morozova, 2017a: 67). 2.2. The dialect of the Mrkovići and the Albanian speech in Velja Gorana: past and present of a language contact situation In Serbian and Croatian dialectology, the dialect of the Mrkovići is known for its interesting combination of archaic features and specific innovations at different linguistic levels. According to Vujović, this variety survived the dialect mixing that was characteristic of the rest of Old Montenegrin territory and preserved specific features in phonology, 12 The participants of the field trips guided by Andrey Sobolev (Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ILS RAS), Saint Petersburg University (SPbU)) were: Alexander Novik (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography “Kunstkamera” (MAE RAS), SPbU), Maria Morozova (ILS RAS, SPbU), Denis Ermolin (MAE RAS), Alexandra Dugushina (MAE RAS), and Anastasia Makarova (ILS RAS). morphology and syntax, with minor effects from the influence of neighbouring dialects (Vujović 2012 [1965]: 16). In addition, contact with non-Slavic languages played an important role in the development of the Mrkovići dialect, especially of its lexicon. A few dialect-specific borrowings of Romance origin may pertain to the period of Venetian rule in the town of Bar (1402–1412, 1422–1429, 1443–1571). During Ottoman rule in Bar and the area (1571–1878), the dialect of the Mrkovići adopted a considerable number of Turkish loanwords related to different semantic groups: household, food, dishes and utensils, clothes, kinship, religion, and others (Vujović (2012 [1965]: 16, 60–64). Borrowed nouns and verbs, and lexical calques from Albanian occur in kinship terminology (Morozova, forthcoming) and in the other semantic fields (Vujović, 2012 [1965]; Sobolev, 2015; Novik and Sobolev, 2016). Some phonological and syntactic changes in the dialect of the Mrkovići may also result from the influence of the Northwestern Gheg Albanian, which is spoken in the northwest of Albania and the south of Montenegro. For example, the Albanian apical alveolar laterals, the velarized /ɫ/ and the non-velarized /l/ (Memushaj, 2011: 79–80), occur in the speech in the Mrković i dialect along with the BCMS lateral approximants, apical denti-alveolar /l̪/ and dorsal palatal /ʎ/ (Simić and Ostojić, 1996: 182–183). The velarized /ɫ/ is found in borrowings, e.g. [bˈoɫa] ‘grass snake’ from Alb bolla (Vujović , 2012 [1965]: 95). It also occurs in some non-borrowed words, instead of the BCMS non-velarized apical dentialveolar /l̪/ ([kɫas] ‘spike’, cf. BCMS klȃs [kl̪as]) or instead of the BCMS dorsal palatal /ʎ/ before back vowels: [debeɫˈan], cf. BCMS debèljak [debˈeʎak] ‘fatty’ (Ibid.: 99). The alveolar /l/ occurs instead of the BCMS palatal /ʎ/: [kral] ‘king’, cf. BCMS k ȃlj [kraʎ] (Ibid.: 98). The interchange of BCMS and Albanian laterals in the borrowed and inherited lexicon of the Mrkovići dialect is subject to a high degree of variation between the villages and individuals, and multiple pronunciations of one and the same lexeme nay occur: [tˈrɫam] / [tˈrlam] ‘I rub’, cf. BCMS ºlja [tˈrʎam] (Ibid.: 99). Among the most striking structural innovations in the dialect of the Mrkovići, we may mention the locative construction with the preposition ge ‘at; to’, which takes the object in Nominative (1a) just as the preposition e(k) ‘at; to’ does in Standard Albanian (1b). (1a) Doš-l-a come-PTCP-F.SG si ge đevojk-a. be.PRS.2SG PREP girl-NOM.SG ‘You have come to the daughter.’ (Vujović, 2012 [1965]: 207) (1b) Ke have.PRS.2SG ardh-ur te vajz-a. come.PTCP PREP girl-NOM.SG.DEF ‘You have come to the daughter.’ Although the majority of the modern Mrkovići are monolingual, it is obvious that such innovations may have appeared in the Mrkovići dialect in the remote or recent past due to the presence of Albanian speakers in several villages of the Mrkovići region and the bilingualism of some part of the local population that shepherded livestock in the same places as Albanians, visited the markets of Bar and Shkodra, and established matrimonial bonds and spiritual kinship ties with their Albanian-speaking neighbors (Morozova, 2017a: 224; Morozova, forthcoming). Mutual influence of the two languages in contact can be at best observed in Velja Gorana. Along with the loanwords, innovative constructions, and phonetic/phonological changes in the local Slavic variety (see above), contact-induced variation can be found in the Albanian speech of the natives of this village. For example, some younger bilinguals from Velja Gorana tend to eliminate the phonemic opposition between the Albanian retroflex /ɽ/ and trill /ɾ/, and substitute both sounds by the flap /r/, which is typical for the Balkan Slavic phonological systems: [ruj] ‘I guard; I shave’, cf. Standard Albanian ruaj, Gheg ru»j [ɾuːj] ‘I guard’ and rruaj, Gheg rru»j [ɽuːj] ‘I shave’ (Morozova, 2017a: 232). The Albanian interdental stop /θ/ can be substituted by /f/, which is present both in Albanian and BCMS: [fˈave] ‘you said’, a dialectal form of aorist from the verb them [θem] ‘I say’ (Ibid.). In the Albanian speech of elder bilingual natives of Velja Gorana, we observed an analogical extension of the devoicing of final obstruents, which is typical for many Albanian varieties (i madh [i maθ] ‘big’, zog [zok] ‘bird’), to the words with a historical, non-pronounced final vowel ë: [i veɾθ] ‘yellow’, cf. i verdhë [i verð] in Standard Albanian and in the majority of Albanian dialects (Ibid.). Cases of grammatical replication where BCMS structures are copied using Albanian forms include, for example, the accusative marking of the external possessor in the context of verbs of pain (2a), which replicates the BCMS pattern (2b). Compare with the dative construction that shall be used in the same context in Standard Albanian (2c). (2a) Asan-in Asan-ACC.SG.DEF e lemp kryt-i. 3SG.ACC hurt.PRS.3SG head-NOM.SG.DEF ‘Asan’s head hurts.’ (Montenegro: Velja Gorana May 2015) (2b) Asan-a boli Asan-ACC.SG glav-a. hurt.PRS.3SG head-NOM.SG ‘Asan’s head hurts.’ (2c) Asan-it Asan-DAT.SG.DEF i dhemb krye-t. 3SG.DAT hurt.PRS.3SG head-NOM.SG.DEF ‘Asan’s head hurts.’ Lexical calques, or loan translations, from BCMS into Albanian and vice versa may (occasionally) occur in the speech of all bilinguals in Velja Gorana. See, for example, the use of the verb ha ‘to eat’ instead of the Alb. kafshoj ‘to bite’, a calque from BCMS ujesti ‘to bite’ < jesti ‘to eat’ in the Albanian speech of a young bilingual speaker (3), and the expression ne cepam glavu, from Alb. nuk çaj kokën ‘I don’t care’ (literally ‘I do not split my head’) in the BCMS speech of an Albanian woman (4). (3) Е 3SG.ACC kɒ hãngər gjarpn-i n #i» . have.PRS.3SG eat.PTCP snake-NOM.SG.DEF in leg.ACC.SG.INDF ‘The snake has bitten him in the leg.’ (Montenegro: Velja Gorana May 2015) (4) Ne cepa-m glav-u za kuhinj-u. NEG split-PRS.1SG head-ACC.SG for kitchen-ACC.SG ‘I do not care about the kitchen.’ (Montenegro: Velja Gorana May 2015) 3. Language contact situation in modern Velja Gorana: looking for “balance” at the micro-level In this paragraph we try to represent the ways how the inhabitants of Velja Gorana use their two languages, BCMS and Albanian, in the family domain by means of diagrams (Figures 1 and 2) that, as we believe, more or less adequately describe the real situation. The diagrams show the linguistic competence of the speakers and the use of languages in the everyday intra-family communication of the two selected families. For the more detailed analysis of the (socio)linguistic situation in Velja Gorana, see (Morozova and Rusakov, forthcoming). In our diagrams, the speakers are represented by circles, which are divided vertically into two parts and colored. The blue color denotes BCMS, and red is used for Albanian. The left side of the circle reflects the “initial” language competence of a speaker (approximately until the age of five), while the right side shows his/her “present” competence, which was registered during 2015 fieldwork in Velja Gorana. For example, if a person was monolingual in BCMS in his/her early childhood and then became bilingual in BCMS and Albanian, the left half-circle will be blue, and the right one will be additionally divided into two parts (blue and red) by a horizontal line. Communication within each of the two families is represented by red and blue arrows. The dotted arrows indicate fluent, but less frequent communication in one of the languages. The vertical alignment of the circles in the diagram corresponds to the different generations to which the speakers belong (elder speakers on top and the youngest speakers in the bottom part of the diagram). Figure 1. Family’s Language Diagram 1 In the family which is shown in Diagram 1, all members are natives of Velja Gorana except for the middle-aged woman, an Albanian from a village near Ulcinj, who spoke only Albanian as a young child, then studied BCMS at school, but came to master it well only after marriage. Her two daughters, 11 and 13 years old, are bilingual since their early childhood. As for the men in this family, they are currently bilingual in BCMS and Albanian, but the age and circumstances in which they acquired Albanian are different. The upper circle in the Diagram 1 represents the head of the family who spoke only BCMS in the early childhood and learned Albanian in his teens while shepherding livestock together with the boys from the neighboring Albanian villages. His little grandson, according to our observations in 2012–2015, spoke only BCMS and, in his mother’s words, “did not want to speak Albanian” until the age of five. We assume that the same was true for his father, whose mother was also Albanian. Our diagram shows that both languages are currently used in the everyday communication within the family, although BCMS slightly dominates Albanian. Male members of the family prefer to communicate with their children and grandchildren in BCMS and usually receive response in the same language. However, Albanian remains the main means of communication for the Albanian woman, and all members of the family to some extent participate in the communication in Albanian. We may observe that her husband and her daughters talk to her mostly in Albanian. Her father-in-law addresses her mainly in BCMS (when the outside observers cannot hear him, he may address her in Albanian as well), while she prefers to reply him in Albanian. As for the youngest member of the family, the 7-year-old boy, the others communicate with him almost exclusively in BCMS, especially if it happens in the presence of the head of the family. Figure 2. Family’s Language Diagram 2 In the Diagram 2, we may see a more “Slavicized” family, which lives in the same quarter of the village. The initial and current linguistic competences of the elder generation, the head of the family and his Albanian wife, show no difference from the situation in the Diagram 1, as well as the competence of their 40-year-old son. Apparently, the “Slavicization” of the family was triggered by his marriage with a woman from Mala Gorana, a monolingual village that belongs to the Mrkovići region. Insofar as the daughterin-law/wife from Mala Gorana has not learned Albanian, BCMS has become the main means of communication for the whole family, and the youngest generation in the family has been monolingual from the early childhood. The example of this family also shows us that, together with the origin of wives, some other factors may have a significant influence on family communication patterns. The linguistic behavior of the elder Albanian-speaking woman in this family probably turns out to be such a factor. In her own words, after more than 50 years in Velja Gorana it became more convenient for her to speak BCMS than Albanian, and she has no need or intention to speak Albanian to her grandchildren (Montenegro: Velja Gorana May 2015). Patterns of inter-family communication in Velja Gorana generally resemble those observed within these two families. Bilingual speakers normally use both languages for addressing different people in one and the same conversation, but the linguistic preferences may vary depending on origin, age, and competence. For example, elder male persons prefer BCMS as the main (but not the only) means of communication in the majority of situations, elder Albanian women tend to switch the codes, young Albanian women would chat in Albanian in their presence, and in the speech of bilingual children, there is a tendency for BCMS to prevail (Morozova, 2017b). 4. Bilingual scenarios and interethnic contacts in Velja Gorana: reconstructing the past situation 4.1. Velja Gorana in a changing world: an historical overview The history of Velja Gorana was not traced in detail by Jovićević (1922), Vujović (2012 [1965]), and other researchers, and we reconstruct it on the basis of our observations and family stories collected during the field trips to Velja Gorana in 2014 and 2015. The village is now inhabited by a bigger family of Kovačevići and two smaller families, Vučići and Osmanovići. The latter family, Osmanovići, appeared in Velja Gorana in 1930s, when an Albanian from the village of Vladimir (Ana e Malit) married a woman from Vučići and came to Velja Gorana na ženino imanje ‘for the sake of the wife’s property’. The other two families have a somewhat older history that can be traced back into the nineteenth century. Vučići probably settled in Velja Gorana in the beginning of the twentieth century or a little earlier. Indirect evidence for this assumption is provided by the observation that marriages between Kovačevići and Vučići appear approximately at that time in their genealogies (see below). It is said about Vučići that they were Catholic when they came to Velja Gorana, and that some men from Vučići used to marry Catholic women, so it is of high probability that the family was of Albanian origin13. The modern family of Kovačevići actually embraces two nonrelated kins. According to our informants, one of them descends from a person called Danila Kovačević from the area of Grahovo, a settlement in the Nikšić municipality in the west of Montenegro, which belonged to the Ottoman Empire for several centuries and became Montenegrin after the 1858 battle of Grahovac. The ancestor of Kovačevići is said to have escaped from a blood feud to the area of Mrkovići. After having found himself in the Muslim community, he converted to Islam, and all his descendants since then have been Muslim (Montenegro: Velja Gorana 2014). The second descent group in the now-Kovačevići family was previously called Tahirovići / Tahiri (i.e. descendants of Tahir), and its founder(s) came to Velja Gorana from the Albanian village of Mide in Ana e Malit. Even now some descendants continue to emphasize the Albanian origin of their ancestors: “our fis (Alb. ‘kin’) is Albanian, we have grandfathers and great-grandfathers from the Albanian side” (Montenegro: Velja Gorana May 2015). We registered several versions of the story of how their patronymic name was changed. The descendants of Tahir themselves say that they had to change their name under the pressure of the Ottoman administration which possessed the southern part of Montenegro until the seige of Bar by Montenegrins in 1878. Their second version says that it was the Montenegrin king Nikola Petrović-Njegoš (1860–1918) who forced them to become Kovačevići (Montenegro: Velja Gorana May 2015). The third version told by our informant from the “real” Kovačevići says that the name of Tahirovići was replaced with Kovačevići, when “the Austrians” came to this region “in 1905” (Montenegro: Velja Gorana 2014)14. 13 See, for example the well-known place from Bogdani’s “Cuneus Prophetarum” (1685) where he writes that the Slavs call the Roman catholic faith “Arbanashka vera” (in modern transliteration in (Bogdani 2005: XVIII)). 14 We can note here that in accordance with the Treaty of Berlin signed on July 1 (13), 1878, Austrians acquired the right to administer Bosnia, most of Hercegovina, and the Sandžak of Novi Pazar and to exercise control over the Montenegrin coast, including the promontory of Spič near Bar (Roberts, 2007: 251–252, 254), so after 1878 Montenegro “found itself effectively ringfenced by Austria-Hungary” (Ibid.: 254). However, we cannot be sure that the Austrian administration could indeed deal with changing the patronymic names of the local population in the early 20th century Montenegro. The Austrian administrative activity most probably developed in this region during the 1915–1916 occupation of Montenegro (Roberts, 2007: 313, 320), and the informant’s memory could have just put these events a bit back on the timeline. The two genealogies from Velja Gorana (see Figures 3 and 4) allow us to suggest that the ancestors of Kovačevići and Tahirovići may have come to this place in the middle of the nineteenth century, probably after the battle of Grahovac (1858). The whole territory in the south of Montenegro, where Velja Gorana is located, at that time remained part of the Pashalik of Scutari in the Ottoman Empire. After the Congress of Berlin (1878), where the namesake treaty was signed, the Albanian villages of Ana e Malit (Vladimir, Bojke, Mide, Klezna) and the whole region of Ulcinj remained in the Ottoman Empire, while the Mrkovići, though almost totally Muslim, were joined to Montenegro. According to the 1879 Census of the population of Montenegro, Mrkovska kapetanija ‘the captaincy of Mrkovići’ included the villages of Kunje, Mala Gorana (sic!), Kriči (now Kruče), Grdovići, Dabezići, Ulići (now Vulići), Dobčevići (now Dapčevići), Kalimani (the present-day Mali or Velji Kaliman), Ljeskovac, Velje Selo, Ravanj, Pečurice, Dobra Voda, Velji and Malji Mikulići (Pejović and Kapisoda 2009 [1879]: 413–450). The villages located in the so-called mrkovsko polje ‘the field of Mrkovići’ (Pelinkovići and Vukići, still known for their tradition of interethnic marriages and bilingualism), and Velja Gorana, are not mentioned in this Census, which means that after 1878 they could have remained in the Ottoman Empire. Velja Gorana is said to have become part of the captaincy of Mrkovići in 1880, after the transfer of the town of Ulcinj from the Ottoman empire to Montenegro (Metanović, 2012). The Albanianspeaking regions of southern Montenegro were part of the Ottoman Empire until 1913 (Jоvićević, 1922: 2), probably together with the aforementioned villages of Vukići and Pelinkovići, now considered part of the Mrkovići region. 4.2. Matrimonial strategies in Velja Gorana: adapting to a changing world We can see from the previous paragraph that since its foundation Velja Gorana belonged to the frontier zone between the Ottoman Empire and semi-independent, and then completely independent, Montenegro. This unstable state border coincided partly with the equally changeable linguistic border between Albanian and BCMS (Morozova, Rusakov, forthcoming). The turbulent historical events in the region accompanied by population movements had a direct impact on the history of Velja Gorana and the character of interethnic contacts in this small community, including the matrimonial strategies of its members. In this paragraph we consider the two descent groups that amalgamated into the modern Kovačevići family in Velja Gorana. The family trees of Tahirovići and Kovačevići, drawn in the genealogy software GenoPro 2016, are shown correspondingly in Figures 3 and 4.15 Male persons are represented by squares, females by circles. The crosses (X) in the squares and circles indicate that the members are dead. The name of the member is displayed under the gender symbol. Personal names of the living members of the families have been concealed for ethical reasons, and only names of the deceased persons are shown on the genealogy tree. If the name of the person (dead or alive) has remained unknown to the researchers, it is indicated by a question mark. The names in Figure 3 reflect the spelling of one of our informants who was asked to sketch the family tree of Tahirovići, e.g. Braim ‘Ibrahim’, Tair ‘Tahir’. The brides from other villages and the men who were born outside of Velja Gorana have their place of birth indicated in parentheses under the gender symbol, right after the personal name. If the place of birth is unknown, it is indicated by a question mark. People born in Velja Gorana have no marking of the place of birth by default. The links of the family tree show marital ties and generational parent and child relationships between a married couple and their child/children. Lack of information about the number and sex of children of a couple is indicated by a question mark. The family trees show patrilineal descent, so only marital ties of males are displayed in detail (girls born in Velja Gorana normally leave the village when they get married, and join other descent groups). Where it was possible we tried to assign certain ethnic and, to some extent, linguistic characteristics to the members of the families. The blue color of gender symbols marks those family members who originate from the neighboring monolingual villages (women) or from Velja Gorana (children in some families) and speak only BCMS. The red color is reserved for men and women who were born in the Albanian villages of the area and master(ed) Albanian as the first (and sometimes the only) language before coming to Velja Gorana. The purple color of gender symbols indicates the bilingual natives of Velja Gorana (BCMS goranac ‘male native of Gorana’, goranka ‘female native of Gorana’). The black color 15 The two families which were described in Section 3 are encircled in the family trees. marks the persons whose ethnic (self)-identification and linguistic competence are unknown or unclear to us. For example, in Figure 4 we used black gender symbols to indicate the children of two men from Velja Gorana who married women from the Albanian villages of Braiše and Bratica, and moved to their wives’ houses. For we have no information about the identity and linguistic competence of these children, we cannot define them here as “Albanians” (red), “Slavs” (blue), or “Gorana natives / bilinguals” (purple). Figure 3. Tahirovići Family Tree Figure 4. Kovačevići Family Tree As Figure 3 shows, the descendants of Tahir tend to establish matrimonial bonds mainly with the neighboring Albanian-speaking areas and particular villages. The wife of one of the first representatives of this descent group was from Mide, the village of their origin, while his son married a girl from another Albanian-speaking village, Klezna. The next generations extended their marriage geography and sought brides mostly in the Albanian villages of Ana e Malit (Mide, Krute, Klezna, Vladimir), in the Mrkovići settlements with bilingual populations, such as Vukići and Pelinkovići, and sometimes in the neighboring monolingual Mala Gorana. Figure 4, depicting the genealogy of the “real” Kovačevići, shows that the wife of the mythic Danilo presumably originated from Mala Gorana and could have been a monoligual Slavic-speaker. In the next generation, Danilo’s son could easily marry a girl from the kin of their close neighbors, Tahirovići. After the two families merged under one patronymic, intermarriage between members of the two kins did not occur for a long time. It has recently happened in one case in which the bridal couple managed to prove to the authorities that in spite of having the same family name they are not close relatives and may get married (Montenegro: Velja Gorana October 2015). Comparison of Figures 3 and 4 shows that several generations of the merged Kovačevići family demonstrate more or less the same matrimonial strategy, with constant predominance of matrimonial ties with Klezna, Krute, Pelinkovići, Mide, and to some extent with Mala Gorana. The Kovačevići also had long-term and intensive marriage relations with Vučići, which started in the beginning of the twentieth century (probably, the time of arrival of Vučići to Velja Gorana). However, at present they avoid bringing wives from Vučići, because, in their own words, after several generations of intermarriage they have certainly achieved a degree of consanguinity with this group (Montenegro: Velja Gorana May 2015). As we may conclude from this section, the community of Velja Gorana represents a recent case of population movements in the west of the Balkans. The ancestors of the community are monolingual or bilingual Albanians and monolingual Muslim Slavs. The tribal and especially “linguistic” exogamy that can be found elsewhere in the AlbanianMontenegrin frontier,16 apparently, was not familiar to the newcomer from Grahovo, but his descendants adopted this way of social arrangement after they found themselves in 16 The best-known example is the case of the Kuči, which had been an Orthodox Serbian tribe until the fifteenth century. From the beginning of the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century several Albanian (Catholic) and Serbian (Orthodox and Catholic) groups from other regions settled in the territory occupied by the Kuči. The population in the area had been (partially) bilingual in Albanian and Slavic for a long time, but after the gradual Slavicization of Albanians, most of the tribe became Slavic-speaking. The only exception is the small area of Koći / Kojë, which is inhabited by Albanians and Albanized Serbs (Erdeljanović, 1981 [1907]: 117, 158–172). The Kuči were exogamous at least until the end of the nineteenth century and had matrimonial relations not only with the neighbouring Slavic groups, but also with Albanians (Rovinsky, 1897: 239). Exogamous marriage patterns existed among the fises (Alb. fis ‘kin’) of the Northern Albania (Ivanova, 1988: 184). close proximity with non-related groups of people, Albanians among them. The phenomenon of “linguistic exogamy”, which is mentioned here, requires further study and analysis, but as a hypothesis it would appear that the presence of an Albanian component in the community may be an important factor in the development of situations like those of Velja Gorana and the tribe Kuči (footnote 8). In the ethnically mixed community of Velja Gorana, the initial presence of Albanians in this community and their inclination to marry Albanian women was an important prerequisite for the natural development, or (re)emergence of the exogamous marriage patterns and for the stable, although internally imbalanced situation of bilingualism and language contact. 5. Concluding remarks From our microanalysis of bilingual communication in the families of Velja Gorana, we clearly saw that our supposed balanced language contact situation results from some different micro-situations, themselves having somewhat unbalanced characters. Our assessment of linguistic competence of some of the community’s members over the lifespan showed that cases of development from monolingualism towards bilingualism with further maintenance of the bilingual competence prevail in Velja Gorana. The analysis of the community’s marriage geography revealed that it is open both for BCMS and Albanian speakers. Constant influx of relatively equal numbers of native speakers of both languages appears to be one of the main factors responsible for the stability bilingual situation in Velja Gorana. From a linguistic point of view, language contact in Velja Gorana leads rather slowly to the rise of the number of lexical and syntactic calques in both languages. We may conclude here that the “balanced” character of the contact situation, along with the “open” character of the community, prevents both languages from undergoing more rapid and radical changes. The family trees and stories told by our informants allowed us to throw some light on the bilingual situation in Velja Gorana in statu nascendi. Although we do not have completely reliable data on the monolingual or bilingual competences of the first generations in Velja Gorana, it is obvious that some of them were of Slavic origin (and most probably monolingual in the very beginning) and the others were Albanian (monolingual or bilingual). It is also clear from the genealogies that the ancestors of the present-day inhabitants of Velja Gorana traditionally or accidentally followed the same strategy of tribal and “linguistic” exogamy, and since that time this factor has been favoring the development and maintenance of bilingualism in Velja Gorana. The findings in Velja Gorana may be helpful for the reconstruction of the past situation in the region of the Mrkovići, whose dialect shows traces of past contact. Taking into account the data from the history of the Mrkovići and especially the fact that some of the Mrkovići villages still maintain matrimonial relations with Albanians, we may hypothesize that at least in the beginning of the Ottoman period the whole region could have had marriage strategies and bilingual micro-situations similar to that of today’s Velja Gorana. However, the tradition of “linguistic exogamy,” as well as the balanced language contact situation itself, disappeared in most villages of the Mrkovići and was preserved in Velja Gorana. This means that balanced language contact situations may have different degrees of stability, depending on a combination of historical and social factors, as well as on the linguistic behavior of individuals. For example, such factors as the intensive influx of monolingual Slavic-speaking populations from different parts of Montenegro, the tendency to create matrimonial bonds with the closest neighbors (not necessarily Albanians), and the non-acquisition of Albanian by the overwhelming majority of the monolingual newcomers may have influenced the gradual loss of bilingualism in the Mrkovići villages. A detailed study of the Mrkovići region will probably reveal its inner diversity and show that families in different villages have different origins and different matrimonial strategies, for example, depending on their location in highland/lowland zones and their position more or less close to Albanian villages. The case of Velja Gorana demonstrates that the sociolinguistic setting in a given community is determined, on the one hand, by general tendencies characteristic for the whole area (e.g. the tendency towards exogamy that is or used to be typical for the whole Albanian-Montenegrin frontier zone) and, on the other hand, by a constellation of some random factors. These factors, as we observed in Velja Gorana, may operate on the level of the individual speaker and his/her family (the linguistic attitudes of a single family member may influence the linguistic profile of the whole family). Such micro-level orientation in the description of as many multilingual situations as possible should allow us to reach a better understanding of the mechanisms of consolidation of larger linguistic areas, in the Balkans and elsewhere. References Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2007. Grammars in Contact. A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. In A. Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon (eds). Grammars in Contact. 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