The Balkan Languages

Southeast Europe's Balkan peninsula is home to numerous languages that have come to converge structurally and lexically, due to complex social factors involving contact among speakers of these languages, constituting a 'sprachbund'. This volume provides the first comprehensive, book-length survey of the Balkan languages in English. It covers the full range of languages involved in the Balkan convergence zone, including Albanian, Aromanian, Bulgarian, Gagauz, Greek, Judezmo, Macedonian, Meglenoromanian, Romani, Romanian, Torlak, and West Rumelian Turkish. Balkan convergences - 'Balkanisms' - are presented, considering the grammatical domains of phonetics, phonology, morphology, morphosyntax, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and lexicon. It gives attention to relevant notions of contact linguistics and to the history of the field, while also introducing key conceptual innovations. Providing fresh data and perspectives on the most studied intense contact situation, this work is essential reading for anyone interested in Balkan languages. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Brian D. Joseph is Distinguished University Professor of Linguistics and The Kenneth E. Naylor Professor of South Slavic Linguistics at The Ohio State University. Notable publications include The Synchrony and Diachrony of the Balkan Infinitive (1983), Morphology and Universals in Syntactic Change (1990) and Albano-Balkanological Observations (2020).

ISBN: 9780521553490
Format: Hardback
Pages: 1116
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: July 31, 2025