4.0 Introduction
This chapter treats the most particularly evident outcome in language contact, namely developments involving various sorts of lexical material. Included in this are a consideration of lexical semantics in the Balkans under conditions of contact and the identification of a particular type of loanword of great importance in the sprachbund.
4.1 On the Nature of Balkan Lexical Evidence and Lexical Evidence in General
Shared vocabulary is the most obvious manifestation of language contact, and even with a considerable amount of attention in the Balkanological literature to morphosyntax, the importance of the lexicon for Balkan studies, especially in the earlier days of the field, is clear. Lexical parallels were among the Balkan features noted by Miklosich 1862 (see §2.2.3) and, as observed in §3.4.2.1, so-called culture words were a basic part of Trubetzkoy’s original conceptualization of a sprachbund.Footnote 1 Moreover, Sandfeld 1930 devotes nearly half his work to loanwords as well as parallels in phraseology, something he considers to be “en dehors du lexique” (‘outside of the lexicon’), a characterization – consistent with views of the lexicon at the time he was writing – that depends on a narrow definition of “lexicon” as just involving words (lexical items). Moreover, one can look for confirmation of the value of the lexicon by examining the distributions of coverage in accounts of sprachbund convergences seen in various relatively recent handbooks of Balkan linguistics; the number of pages devoted to the lexicon as opposed to other domains offers an interesting perspective on the importance accorded the lexicon, as seen in Table 4.1.
Table 4.1 Topic distribution in Balkan handbooks 1975–2012
| WORK | PHONOLOGY (# PAGES) | MORPHOSYNTAX | LEXICON | %LEXICON | %PHONOLOGY |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asenova 2002 | 15 | 216 | 33 | 13% | 6% |
| Banfi 1985 | 5 | 31 | 31 | 46% | 7% |
| Sh. Demiraj 2004 | 12 | 76 | 12 | 12% | 12% |
| Feuillet 1986 | 9 | 37 | 13 | 22% | 15% |
| Feuillet 2012 | 22 | 156 | 29 | 14% | 11% |
| Schaller 1975 | 10 | 38 | 19 | 28% | 15% |
| Steinke & Vraciu 1999 | 9 | 18 | 2 | 7% | 31% |
| TOTALS | 108 | 835 | 175 | 16% (AVERAGE) | 10% (AVERAGE) |
These numbers indicate the importance given to coverage of the lexicon in Balkan language contact, but, at the same time, they support Kahl’s 2014 conclusion that the lexicon has been relegated to reduced importance vis-à-vis morphosyntax in recent studies. We, too, consider the lexicon to be important, though as the material presented here shows, for somewhat different reasons.Footnote 2 Our focus here is on lexical aspects of language contact in the Balkans, not on the lexicon in the individual languages as separate synchronic systems. In keeping with this focus, our treatment of semantics is linked to word- and phrase-meaning and not to other aspects of linguistic semantics, e.g., formal aspects of meaning such as truth-conditional semantics, wherein one considers the conditions under which propositions are true or false and the consequences of recognizing such conditions. We do not see how such nonlexical semantics could be shared due to language contact.Footnote 3 Insofar as lexical elements are discourse-related and thus contribute to the pragmatics of the interpretation of utterances, however, they are subject to contact-induced change and so are treated here.
Although the lexicon is the unifying theme in this chapter, the result is eclectic for three reasons. The first stems from our view that one must consider the line between grammar and lexicon to be a fine or even indistinct oneFootnote 4 and that this applies to certain Balkan phenomena.
A case in point is the expression of ‘whether VERB or not’ by means of verbal repetition wrapped around the negative marker,Footnote 5 i.e., VERB-‘not’-VERB (Sandfeld & Olsen 1960: 47; Domi 1975; Banfi 1985: 79; Buchholz & Fiedler 1987: 506):Footnote 6
a.
φύγει δεν φύγει ‘whether one leaves or not’ (Grk) b.
peniš se ne peniš se, šte te jam ‘whether you foam or not, I’ll eat you’ (Blg) c.
spune nu spune ‘whether he says (so) or not’ (Rmn) d.
vjen s’vjen aq më bën ‘whether he comes or not, I don’t care’ (Alb) e.
ladž na ladž o Roma vakerena peske (Jusuf 1974) ‘Shameful or not, people are talking’ (Rmi, Arli)
While this pattern is relatively productive in colloquial registers in each of these languages, there is one specific token that is shared more broadly across all the languages, namely with ‘want’, e.g., Grk θέλει δεν θέλει, Blg šte ne šte, Mac saka nejkje, Rmn vrea nu vrea, Alb do s’do (= domosdo), Aro cu/di vreare, cu/di nivreare, Rmi (Topaanli, etc.) mangeja, na mangeja, Jud kyere, no kyere, Trk ister istemez, all literally ‘wants not wants’ with the basic meaning ‘like it or not.’ This particular instantiation of the ‘whether VERB or not’ expression is likely to have been the starting point for the more general pattern in the Balkans, as indicated by a few key facts.
While the distributional evidence alone points toward this expression as the prototype within the Balkans, the Turkish expression ister istemez is especially significant. In Turkish-internal terms, it presents an irregularity: Turkish grammatically fixed verbal repetitions of the type VERB-gprs.3sg VERB-neg.gprs.3sg normally mean ‘as soon as…,’ e.g., gel-ir gel-mez ‘as soon as s/he comes’ (lit., ‘comes, doesn’t come’).Footnote 7 This fact suggests that ister istemez in Turkish could be a borrowing, as borrowings often stand out as irregular in some way synchronically.Footnote 8 Furthermore, there are non-Balkan parallels to ‘want-not-want,’ especially English willy-nilly, Latin velit nolit(ve), though not so much for other specific tokens of the pattern, making ‘want’ seem like a particularly natural candidate for occurring in such a formation. As such, it would be a good starting point to consider for the entry of such a construction in any language.
One can go even further and suggest that while the Latin expression is a natural source to think of for the Balkan Romance instantiation of this formation, Greek could also be a possible source of the basis for this pattern in Balkan Slavic, if not the other languages, too. The reason for this assessment is that there is a prototype attested in early Postclassical Greek (Arrianus 3.9.16, second century CE), in the form θέλει οὐκ θέλει ‘whether he wants to or not,’ where οὐκ is the indicative negative marker that was current at that time, giving another early source for the pattern in the Balkans. On the other hand, the presence of this pattern in non-Balkan Slavic, e.g., Russ hoćeš’ ne hoćeš’, raises questions either of its typological (“universal”) likelihood or its spread as a learnedism.Footnote 9
This example challenges the line between grammar and lexicon at the point where there was a single token of this type, that involving ‘want,’ as in Turkish. At such a point, one would be inclined to treat the formation as being lexical in nature, given that it is restricted to just one verb. Yet it seems that this single token was the likely basis for the creation of other parallel tokens, by an analogical extension of the model it offered. At some point, the several tokens of VERB-‘not’-VERB, by clustering together, would be treated more economically by the recognition of a pattern in the grammar. However, questions such as how many such tokens are needed or whether those in the lexicon remain in the lexicon after the establishment of a productive pattern cannot be answered readily in a nonarbitrary (nontheory-bound) way. The boundary between grammar and lexicon is thus arguably a fuzzy one.
Therefore, in our discussion of the lexicon, some attention must be paid to phenomena that involve more than just individual lexical items; in some instances, patterns that show some, albeit limited, productivity as well as phrases that have idiosyncratic meanings and uses are considered. This expanded view of the lexicon guarantees a degree of eclecticism in any treatment of the lexical side of the Balkan sprachbund, but, as indicated above, there are two additional reasons for eclecticism here.
The second reason stems from the fact that the vocabulary of any language is never a closed set and will always contain items that reflect speakers’ ability to converse with others on any topic. If one surveys the lexical stock of a language, there will be words that pertain to physical and intellectual culture, to different sectors of human endeavor, to the way humans interact with the natural world (including onomatopoeia), to the range of ways in which humans interact with one another – e.g., intimate, jocular, abusive, conversational, informational, ritual – and to any phenomenon susceptible to linguistic expression. As a consequence, the lexicon necessarily ranges over a wide array of meanings and real-world referents, and any discussion of the content of the lexicon necessarily presents an enormous range of potentially relevant tokens and concepts. Moreover, since we accept the view that no part of a language is exempt from the possibility of transmission through contact (see §3.2.1.7), all sectors of vocabulary are possible material for contact-induced transfer across languages.Footnote 10 The resulting study requires a consideration of a wide range of different types and classes of lexical items, lexicalized phrases, lexically derived patterns, and the semantics associated with all of these.
The third reason for our eclecticism is chronological: since the Balkans have been a major contact zone for millennia, it is important to recognize different chronological layers of loanwords. However, although the discussion here is temporally eclectic, our primary focus is on the formative period for the sprachbund in the medieval and early modern periods, especially the Ottoman Balkans (see §1.1).
Nonetheless, we do draw some lines within this broad view of the lexicon. In particular, morphology per se, that is, the part of grammar that pertains to the form that words take in actual use, clearly has lexical ramifications. At issue are the derivation of new words – traditional derivational morphology or word formation – and the addition of inflectional material to stems in order to mark their relation to other elements in a sentence. Material that is clearly inflectional, i.e., with some relevance to syntax, is treated systematically in Chapter 6. However, some derivational material also has grammatical relevance, e.g., suffixes that derive nominals from verbs such that consequences for argument structure need to be taken into account. Such quasi-grammatical material is noted here but treated more fully in Chapter 6. Only more concrete types of derivation, processes that add truly lexical meaning to a stem, e.g., agentive-deriving affixes, are treated here.Footnote 11
In what follows we therefore consider the lexical side to the Balkan languages in a selective way. There is a huge amount of material that is commonly discussed in treatments of the Balkan languages to which we devote only basic coverage, and at the same time there is one particular group of loans that we introduce here that does occupy our attention significantly. We defer detailed discussion of that type to §4.3, but in essence it comprises loans that are closely tied to conversational interactions, and we refer to these as ERIC loans, i.e., those that are “Essentially Rooted In Conversation.” These conversationally based loans contrast with the loans that are more connected to aspects of material culture. It is this latter type of loan that has commanded the greatest attention of scholars over the years, but it is the former loans, the conversationally based ones, that in our view are more essential to understanding the nature of the formative processes behind the emergence of a convergence area, i.e., a sprachbund, in the Balkans. The bulk of this chapter, therefore, is devoted to motivating this conversation-based loan type and providing a substantial presentation of numerous relevant subtypes. In keeping with our interest in surveying material relevant to a full understanding of the historical inter-relations among the Balkan languages, however, we also provide a brief, chronologically based overview of the various layers of loans in these languages without attempting exhaustive coverage. The reader is directed to any of the standard handbooks mentioned above and specific works referenced below for further discussion of such contentful loans. The result is an overview of the full scope of relevant lexical material.
In discussing Balkan lexis, we must address the issue of register. Since many of the forms we focus on are by their very nature colloquial, normative judgments about their use are basically irrelevant, except insofar as such evaluations come to affect spoken usage. At the same time, however, questions of spatial and temporal distribution, i.e., whether or not a particular lexical item is dialectal in the sense of restricted to certain dialects or obsolete/historical in the sense of restricted to earlier time periods, must be addressed. Issues of social distribution, i.e., whether an item is felt to be pejorative, vulgar, technical, limited to professional jargon, etc., can also be relevant. For our purposes, however, that which is of greatest interest is the movement of vocabulary from one language to another. To the extent that this movement is in some way spatially, temporally, or socially limited, and that such limitation is of immediate relevance, we note it. In general, however, we do not attempt to classify each individual item according to whether or not such limitations hold. Those are the concerns of dictionaries and specialized studies.Footnote 12 Our primary focus is the general fact of occurrence itself.
4.2 Overview of Commonly Discussed Material
Besides the various colloquial lexical effects of contact to be documented in §4.3, the vocabularies of the respective Balkan languages have been augmented by the entry of numerous, mainly contentful, foreign words associated with specialized lexical domains or various sorts of cultural or social contexts. For the most part, these content loans are tied to different historical phases, and no discussion of the Balkan lexicon would be complete without some consideration of them. At the same time, however, these more content-bound borrowings are arguably less indicative of a sprachbund than ERIC loans. The conversational loans are the result of sprachbund-conducive conditions, whereas the other, more contentful loans are not as distinctive by themselves. While traditional content loans have long been taken as characteristic of the Balkan sprachbund, it is in fact the conversational loans that are diagnostic. While the presence of the conversational loan-type presupposes the presence of some nonconversationally based loans, the reverse is not the case. In other words, ERIC loans are a vital component in Balkan linguistics, while these others relate more to the linguistics of the Balkans.
Accordingly, we discuss these contentful loans without attempting an exhaustive coverage of various bilateral and other localized and temporally disparate contact situations that have yielded limited lexical influences in a larger Balkan context. Rather we take a basically chronological approach from ancient times to the present.Footnote 13 Thus, for example the lexical effects of Greek on Arvanitika or on the Romani of Ágios Athanásios (older Ali Bey Köy, now a suburb of Sérres), as opposed to that on the Romani of Agía Varvára (a suburb of Athens), whose speakers arrived from Turkey with the 1923 exchange of populations, or that of Balkan Slavic on Sarakatsani Greek in northeastern Greece and southern Bulgaria, are outside the focus of this chapter unless such contact shows some interesting development or has consequences in other domains, as in the case of ERIC loans or as with the reverse phonological interference in Arvanitika due to contact with Greek (see §5.2).Footnote 14
4.2.1 Borrowing of Content Words – Historically Identifiable Layers of Vocabulary
As noted previously, there is an enormous literature on various types of content words in the histories of individual Balkan language contact situations. We can cite here some of the more important, representative studies. Desnickaja 1963, Svane 1992, Ylli 1997–2000, and Omari 2012 cover Slavic loans in Albanian and Capidan 1925a examines Slavic in Aromanian; the study of the influence of Slavic on Romanian goes back to Miklosich 1862 and Leschber 2012 is a recent contribution; Tietze 1957 treats Slavic loans into Turkish, and Vasmer 1941 is the classic source on Slavic toponymy in Greece, and Meyer 1894 examines Slavic, Romance, and Albanian loans into Greek; Boretzky 2012 offers a comprehensive survey of the Greek lexical influence on Romani; Tietze 1955, 1983; Symeonidis 1973, 1976; and Tzitzilis 1987 discuss Greek loans into Turkish; Tzitzilis [Dzidzilis] 1990 examines Greek loans in Bulgarian; Jašar-Nasteva 1953abc surveys Albanian loans into Macedonian; Vrabie 2000: 71–84 devotes considerable space to the sources of the Aromanian lexicon, including loans from Albanian, Slavic, Greek, and Turkish; and Meyer 1888a, Jokl 1936, Haarman 1972, and Bonnet 1998 consider the Latin element in Albanian. Haarman 1978 examines the Latin element in the Balkan languages in general; Paşcu 1924 surveys Romanian elements in the Balkan standard languages of that period: Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), and Turkish. Stankiewicz 1964 discusses loanwords and derivational affixes of Balkan and Slavic origin in the Judezmo of former Yugoslavia. Also, Bunis 2017 makes the point that while Slavic loans in Judezmo were relatively rare – especially in comparison with Turkisms (cf. Yenisoy 2015) – until the nineteenth century, as Slavic nation-states acquired independence and their respective national languages developed prestige, the number of Slavic loanwords in Judezmo increased. Cazés 1999 and Bunis 1982 are also relevant here. On Judezmo influence on Turkish, see Rocchi 2007.
The influence of Turkish on the various Balkan languages has been of major interest since Miklosich 1884–1890, and today there are specialized dictionaries and studies of Turkisms for almost all the Balkan languages: Boretzky 1975–1976; Dizdari 2005; Latifi 2006, 2012, 2015; Lloshi 2020; Bufli & Rocchi 2021; Lleshi & Rugova 2023 for Albanian; Polenakovikj 2007 for Aromanian; Grannes 1970; Grannes et al. 2002 for Bulgarian; Georgiadis 1974; Kukkidis 1960; Kyranoudis 2007; and Orfanos 2014 (also, de facto, the list given in Dizikirikis 1975, discussed in §4.4, and the index in Georgiadis 1974) for Greek; Jašar-Nasteva 2001 and Cvetkovski 2017 for Macedonian; Șaineanu 1900; Wendt 1960; Drimba 1992–1993, 2001; Altay 1996; Suciu 2010 for Romanian; and Knežević 1962 and Škaljić 1966 for BCMS. We can also note here Graham 2020, which provides unique insight into the adoption of Turkisms by non-Muslims in early modern Bosnia and Bulgaria. For Romani there is Friedman 1989c, which is based on Messing 1988. For Judezmo, Bunis 1999, 2023, and Dobreva 2016 provide relevant discussion, but see also Danon 1903, 1904, and 1913. Finally, we can mention two dictionaries that compare Turkisms across various Balkan languages, Rollet 1996 and Karaağaç 2008, which latter has a much broader range in terms of languages, bibliography, and vocabulary.
Romani lexical elements are to be found in all the Balkan languages, but Leschber 1995 and Bochmann 1999 are among the few works devoted to the study of such elements, and both examine Romanian (see also §4.4.2 and Footnote footnote 372). Finally, Latifi 2015 gives a comparative overview of Balkan Turkisms. We note also in this regard Asenova & Detrez 2021, which is limited to common loanwords in Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Romanian (with some references to the former Serbo-Croatian) but is a useful source of shared vocabulary for those languages and gives etymological information (using Bulgarian headwords) for the various loans, mostly Turkish, but also Slavic, Greek, and Latin. It does not include the Albano-Romanian commonalities as the work is limited to words occurring in at least three out of the four languages studied. Owing to the book’s linguistic limitations, various commonalities that could be seen if other languages with literary standards had been considered are absent. Thus references to Aromanian, Macedonian, and Romani, all of which have literary standards, are ignored in this work. A case in point of the resulting lacunae is Albanian bardhë ‘white,’ which was borrowed into both Aromanian and Macedonian (see discussion in §5.3). Still, within its limitations, this work is useful.
The reader is referred to these works for discussion of details that cannot be treated here, our focus being only the broad outlines of contributions to various historically identifiable strata of lexical borrowing across the Balkans.
4.2.1.1 Non-Greek Paleo-Balkan Vocabulary
There is a layer of vocabulary in various Balkan languages that is identifiable as very old but not Greek (the oldest well-attested language in the Balkans). Under this rubric, there are two types of words that deserve mention: (1) those shared by Albanian, Romanian, and other Balkan languages and (2) those shared only by Albanian and Romanian. We refer to them here as “non-Greek Paleo-Balkan” in an attempt to characterize them as neutrally as possible. They are ancient, but they cannot be dated. Some of them are definitely Indo-European, and some are undoubtedly from the language that is ancestral to Albanian (cf. Hamp 2007: 373–395), but not all can be definitively assigned to any specific ancient non-Greek Balkan language. Some words may be pre-Indo-European. These problems have not prevented speculations regarding specific ancient languages, but we eschew such issues, as they do not bear directly on our purposes here. These words are thus “Paleo-Balkan” and “non-Greek.” Taking them to be old has led them to be assigned to a so-called Balkan substratum, the existence of which is a reasonable assumption, but still it is a concept for which adequate linguistic details are lacking, other than it probably having an Indo-European component itself (see §1.2.1 for related discussion).
Much of the pan-Balkan old layer consists of words that are associated with pastoral life, animal husbandry, and various domestic items and activities (see also §1.2.3.1). The number of such words is around twenty, depending on the judgment of various linguists. (See Neroznak 1978, especially pp. 186–216, and sources therein; for the ancient Balkan languages, Katičić 1976 remains authoritative, though see also Woodard 2004; Hamp 2007 is also an important source. See also Sobolev 2003: 332–349 and Borescu 2018.) We note just an illustrative sampling of forms from various languages, leading with Albanian for purely alphabetical reasons:
(4.2) Alb balgë/bajgë/bagël ‘animal manure,’ BCMS balaga/balega ‘excrement,’ BRο baligă/balegă ‘droppings’, Mac (dial) balega ‘manure’
Alb drugë, Aro drugă, Grk ντρούγα/δρούγα, BSl (dialectal) drug, BCMS druga ‘wooden bobbin, distaff’
Alb shtrungë, Aro strungã, Rmn strungă, Mac straga, Blg străga/stărga ‘enclosure or narrow passage for milking sheep or goats, separating lambs/kids, etc.’; also Mac and WBlg strunga ‘idem’ (from Aro), Grk (Epirus and Sarakatsan) στρούγγα ‘dairy’(see Hamp 1977b)
Alb vatër (def vatra, Geg votër/votra) ‘hearth, fireplace,’ BRο vatră ‘hearth, etc.,’ BSl (dialectal, esp. Mac and WBlg) vatra ‘hearth,’ BCMS vatra ‘fire,’ Grk (Sarakatsan) βάτρα ‘fire, flame, hearth’ (see Hamp 1976, 1981)
As with the next group, there is considerable controversy regarding the precise sources for these words, both within and outside the Balkans. Thus, for example, vatra occurs as ‘fire’ in Ukrainian, ‘hearth, fire, dying ashes’ in Polish (orthographic watra) and Czech (East Moravia), ‘camp fire’ in Slovak (also southern Poland and part of Czech), and ‘poker’ in Slovene (see Udler 2000 and Hamp 2007: 373–382, who argues that vatra derives from the ancestor of Albanian and spread via dialect chains). Regardless of the precise age and provenance of these loans, however, there is not much more to say about them here other than that they do point to ancient language contact.
The other group of words is thematically broader (although still arguably limited to a notional concept of basic vocabulary) but restricted to just Albanian and Balkan Romance,Footnote 15 and thus, as noted briefly in §1.2.1.4, they are taken to be old shared vocabulary that link the ancestor of Albanian, on the one hand, and the language whose speakers shifted to the Latin that became Balkan Romance, on the other. There are perhaps approximately seventy such words, although there is some disagreement concerning how many of these words belong here (see Polák 1958; Kalužskaja 1977; Ismajli 2015: 271–467, and sources cited therein). Some belong to pastoral vocabulary, thus overlapping semantically with the first group, but their restriction to these two languages is taken to be significant. Several of these have clear Indo-European sources, e.g., Alb sorrë – Rmn cioară ‘blackbird’ (from PIE *kwērsnā), and some IE words seem not to be directly inherited from an Italic genealogical predecessor.Footnote 16 For instance, Rmn druete ‘woods’ and Alb dru ‘wood’ clearly derive from the PIE *deru- ‘wood’ (most likely in a zero-grade form *dru-), seen in Eng tree, AGrk δρῦς ‘tree’ and δόρυ ‘spear’, etc., but forms of this word are absent from Latin or any other ancient Italic language, so that the appearance of a derivative of this PIE stem in Balkan Romance is unlikely to be the result of a direct inheritance from Latin; hence, it is judged as a substrate word. A sampling of others is given in (4.3):
(4.3)
Footnote 17Romanian Albanian bucurie ‘joy’ bukuri ‘beauty’ buză ‘lip’ buzë ‘lip’ ceafă ‘neck’ qafë ‘neck’ ciump ‘end, snag’ thumb ‘tack, stinger’ coacăză ‘currant’ kokë(z[ë]) ‘(little) head [blackhead, a poultry disease]’ mal ‘riverbank’ mal ‘mountain’ moş ‘old (man)’ moshë ‘age’ mugur ‘bud’ mugull ‘bud’ țap ‘billy goat’ c[j]ap ‘ billy goat’
As noted in §1.2.1.4, the exact nature of the prehistoric link that these indicate between the languages is extremely controversial;Footnote 18 see also §6.1.2.2.1.3 (Hamp 1982) and §7.9.2 for discussion of some possible morphosyntactic and syntactic matchings between Albanian and Romanian that might be old in the same way as these lexical matchings.
4.2.1.2 Latinity (The Roman Era)
Romans settled the Balkans definitively in the second century BCE with the conquest of the Illyrians and the Macedonian kingdom. In subsequent years, they spread their influence further in the general region. As noted in §1.2.3.3, there is an important historio-geographic construct in the Balkans that has a key linguistic correlate that helps to define aspects of the Roman era. This is the Jireček line (or Jireček-Skok line), running west-east from the Adriatic to the Black Sea across modern central Albania, northern Macedonia, and central Bulgaria then north along the coast to Dobrudja, which demarcates the respective extent of Roman and of Greek influence by reference to the predominant language of inscriptions: north of the line it is mostly Latin and south of the line mostly Greek, with an area of bilingualism between Jireček’s and Skok’s demarcations (see §1.2.3.3). This is not to say that Latin was unknown in the southern Balkans, or that Greek was unknown in the more northerly regions, but it gives an idea of the administrative reach of Latin in the Balkans in the early Christian period.
Not surprisingly, there is a large Latin lexical presence in the entire Balkans. To get an idea of the size of this presence, consider these numbers compiled by Mihăescu 1978: 30ff. in his discussion of words from Latin in the Balkan languages. He notes, for instance, that there are some 3,000 terms of Latin origin in Byzantine (Greek) literature, of which 207 survive into the modern language. When viewed by semantic category, these numbers break down as in Table 4.2.
These items are most concerned with dimensions of public life under the control of Roman governance. The penetration of these words into Balkan languages took place over a period of almost a millennium, and it was particularly intense in the fourth through sixth centuries CE. Many of these words are found as well in Albanian, as loanwords, and in Balkan Romance, as inherited items or via secondary spread, and since the influence lasted into the time of the entry of the Slavs into the area, Latin words are found as well in Balkan Slavic.Footnote 19
A few illustrative examples (4.4) provide instances of different types of words of Latin origin in the Balkans. They are presented here merely as representative; readers are referred to sources such as Mihăescu 1978: 30ff., Skok 1928, and Sobolev 2003: 270–289 for more examples:Footnote 20
(4.4)
Lat acetum ‘vinegar’: BSl ocet (OCS ocьtъ), Alb uthull (cf. oftull in Pulevski 1875: 93) Rmn oțet (< BSl) Lat būbalus (VLat *būvalu) ‘water buffalo’: BSl bivol ‘idem᾽ from BSl into Rom bivol (but Aro buval) cf. Grk βούβαλος, βούβαλις, BER I: s.v.) Lat camisia ‘shirt’: MedGrk καμίσι, ModGrk πουκάμισο (with που- from υπο- ‘under’) ‘shirt,’ Alb këmishë ‘shirt,’ Rmn cămaşă ‘shirt’ VLat coctorium ‘oven’: Rmn cuptor ‘oven, furnace, kiln,’ Blg kuptor (from Rmn), Alb koftor ‘pot-bellied heating stove’ Lat centum ‘100’: Alb qind ‘100’ Lat fossatum ‘military trench’: MedGrk φουσάτο ‘army,’ Alb fshat ‘village’ (originally‘fortified settlement’), Rmn sat ‘village’ (ditto) Lat furca ‘fork’: Rmn furcă ‘pitchfork,’ BSl furka ‘spindle,’ Alb furkë ‘pitchfork, spindle,’ MedGrk φούρκα ‘gallows’ VLat *furnu ‘oven’: Med/ModGrk φούρνος, Aro furnu, BSl furna, Alb furrë, Trk furun Lat hospitium: Med/ModGrk σπίτι ‘house,’ StAlb shtëpi (Geg shpi) ‘house’ Lat imperator: Alb mbret ‘king’ Lat lucta ‘struggle, fight,’ Alb luftë ‘war,’ Rmn luptă ‘war’ Lat paganus ‘peasant (later ‘pagan’)’: OCS poganin ‘pagan, evildoer’ (Mac paganin ‘pagan’ Blg pogan ‘unclean’), Alb pëgërë ‘unclean, dirty,’ pagan ‘pagan,’ Rmn păgîn ‘pagan,’ Aro pîngîn ‘pagan’ (see Duridanov 1999: s.v. for details) Lat pomum ‘apple’: Alb pemë ‘tree,’ Rmn pom ‘tree’ Lat rosalija ‘early summer festival when graves were decorated with roses’: OCSrusalija ‘Pentecost’ Lat sagitta ‘arrow’: MedGrk σαΐτα ‘dart,’ Alb shëgjetë ‘arrow,’ Rmn săgeată ‘arrow’
And, as discussed in greater detail below in §4.3.1.8, late Latin is the ultimate source of two terms that are quite outside of these lexical domains, in an entirely different semantic sphere, namely that of the family: the wide-ranging cluster of related forms exemplified by ModGrk νονός ‘godfather,’ Mac nunka ‘godmother,’ BSl kum ‘godfather, best man etc.,’ Alb kumbarë ‘godfather,’ ModGrk κουμπάρος ‘best man.’
4.2.1.3 Greek in the Balkans
Greek words that must be of ancient provenance are to be found in some of the Balkan languages. In particular, Albanian has, for instance, drapër ‘sickle’ (Geg drapën) from Ancient Greek δρέπανον, lakër ‘cabbage’ (Geg lakën) from λάχανον, mokërë ‘millstone’ (Geg mokënë) from (Doric) μᾱχανᾱ́, and tarogzë ‘helmet’ from θωρᾱ́κιον ‘breastplate, armor,’ where, e.g., the t- of this last form points to its great antiquity, from at least before the Hellenistic Greek shift of ancient < θ > from [th] to [θ] (see Horrocks 2010: 170–171; Jokl 1984). And there are later loans that are still somewhat old, such as Albanian fnazë ‘light fall of snow’ (Newmark 1998: 231) from νιφάδιον ‘snowflake,’ where a post-Classical date is suggested by the f- for ancient < φ >.
There are numerous loans from Greek into Old Church Slavonic that fall into many of the same classes as Latin loans discussed in §4.2.1.2; Vasmer 1907 shows that the categories of Greek loans include names of plants, animals, minerals, humans, body parts, nature, and home-related items, and that they fall into three distinct chronological phases: (1) early borrowings into Common Slavic, e.g., BSl koliba, ‘hut, cabin’ (whence Rmn colibă, Trk koliba, Alb kolibë, cf. Aro cãlivã), Grk καλύβα, AGrk καλύβη (Vasmer 1907: 243; BER II: s.v.), where the realization of AGrk /a/ as CoSl /o/ in the first syllable points to a period before the reinterpretation of quantity as quality; (2) borrowings before the conversion of the South Slavs to Christianity, e.g., OCS kǫponi, Blg kăponi, Mac kapan ‘scales [for weight]’ from MedGrk καμπάνα (Vasmer 1907: 251; SSl kambana ‘bell’ is a later loan from the same source); and (3) those from the Christian era (see items in (4.5)). The emergence of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the first millennium CE, with Greek as its liturgical language, together with the Christianization of the South Slavs in the ninth century and the subsequent spread of Orthodox Christianity in the linguistic Balkans, was in many ways a watershed period for the influence of Greek, as it led to the introduction of Greek ecclesiastical terms into various languages of the region, as seen in (4.5) (cf. Sandfeld 1930: 20–21; Sobolev 2003: 204–269, as well as Budziszewska 1969 on Greek loans in Bulgarian):Footnote 21
(4.5)
Grk ἁγίασμα ‘sanctification’: ChSl agiazma, Blg agiazma/ajazma, Mac ajazma ‘holy water’ Alb ajazmë, Rmn aghiazmă, Aro (a)yeasmó ‘holy water’ Grk ἀναφορά ‘blessed bread’: OCS (a)nafora, BSl nafora ‘holy or toasted bread’ Alb naforë, BRo (a)naforă Grk ἀνάθεμα ‘curse, excommunication’: BSl anatema (also Mac natema go ‘damn him,’ etc.), BRo anatemă, Alb anatemëFootnote 22 Grk εἰκόνα ‘icon’: OCS ikona, BSl ikona, Alb ikonë, BRo icoană Grk καλόγηρος ‘monk’: OCS kalogerъ, Blg kaluger, Alb kallogjër, BRo călugăr Grk ἡγούμενος ‘abbot’: OCS igumenъ, Blg igumen, Mac egumen, Alb (i)gumen, BRo egumen (igumen)
There are also some borrowings from Greek of a more grammatical, nature, such as: Alb anamesa, Aro anamasa ‘in the middle’ from Grk ἀνάμεσα, Aro anda ‘when’ from Grk ὄντα, Alb andis ‘instead of’ from Grk ἀντίς, BSl oti ‘that’ from Grk ὅτι; see §§4.3.3.2, 4.3.3.4 for more details on such loans. Moreover, although many loans from Greek into Balkan Romance, especially Romanian, passed through Slavic (see §4.2.1.4), there are some that are found in all of Balkan Romance without occurring in Slavic, suggesting an early point of entry into Vulgar Latin from Greek, most likely soon after Latin entered the Balkans; Sandfeld 1930: 30 notes, for instance, Rmn proaspăt, Megl proaspăt, Aro proaspit ‘fresh,’ from Grk πρόσφατος ‘recent’ (cf. also Nevaci 2015). Tzitzilis 2001b discusses loans from Medieval Greek into Romani, e.g., kurko ‘Sunday’ from MedGrk κυρικόν (ἧμαρ) ‘idem.’
4.2.1.4 Slavic
As Slavic speakers entered the Balkans in the sixth to seventh centuries, they began to exert lexical influence in the region (see Sobolev 2003: 324–331 for some examples). Svane 1992 and Ylli 1997–2000 documented extensively, for instance, the hundreds of Slavic loanwords of various types and in various domains to be found in Albanian, including farming terms (e.g., plug ‘plough,’ lopatë ‘shovel,’ oborr ‘yard’), foods (e.g., kastravec ‘cucumber’), clothing items (e.g., opingë ‘sandal’), flora and fauna (e.g., sokol ‘falcon,’ ljubiçice ‘violet’), items pertaining to social order (e.g., rob ‘slave’), and other cultural loans (e.g., pusullë ‘note’). Based on the evidence of sound changes in the respective languages that the loans show, or fail to show, it appears that while some seem to be relatively early (c.700–1000CE), e.g., porosit ‘order; request’ (cf. Common Slavic *porõčiti ‘idem; entrust’) and some rather late (post-1500CE), e.g., banak ‘counter’ (cf. Srb banak (stem: bank-) ‘shelf,’ most seem to have entered between 1000 and 1500.Footnote 23
With regard to Greek, apart from Slavic place names (Weigand 1928; Vasmer 1941), only a relatively small number of Slavic loanwords can be identified that are in general use in the standard language or are generally recognizable today (Andriotis 1983: s.vv.; Babiniotis 1998, LKN), e.g., ρούχα ‘clothes’ (Slv ruho ‘rag’), ντόμπρος ‘honorable; noble’ (Slv dobro ‘good, well’), τσαντίλα ‘sack for straining cheese’ (Slv cedilo ‘strainer’), and τσάσκα ‘cup’ (Slv čaška). See, however Filipova-Bajrova 1970 for a number of other examples. Still others occur that are regionally more restricted in their distribution; Weigand 1928: 33 mentions τσέλιγκας ‘shepherd,’ found in the Heptanesia and Acarnania, from Slv čelnik ‘leader of a clan; lead shepherd,’ and Budziszewska 1991 has identified several hundred words of Slavic origin that are reported for various locales, mostly, but not exclusively, in northern parts of Greece, e.g., nouns like ζακόν ‘custom’ (Flórina, Kastoria, Grevena, etc.), from BSl zakon, and numerous words for flora and fauna, e.g., κλένος ᾽maple,’ from BSl klen, γουστέρα ‘large lizard’ (Larissa, Lamia), from BSl gušter(a), and κναβ (= κουνάβι, with northern high vowel loss) ‘marten’ (Thessaly, Thrace, etc.) from BSl kuna.
In the case of Balkan Romance, Slavic had a tremendous direct influence and also served as a conduit for many Greek words entering Romanian, especially those associated with Eastern Orthodoxy. Among the nonreligious terms that passed from Greek to Slavic to Romanian are ieftin ‘cheap’ (ChSl jevtin, Blg evtin [eftin], MedGrk εὐθηνός (ModGrk φθηνός), and a mirosi ‘smell’ (ChSl mirosati, Grk μυρόω, with aorist stem μυρωσ-).Footnote 24 Religious terms include those cited in §4.2.1.3, such as Rmn icoană ‘icon’ (cf. Grk εἰκόνα, OCS ikona, Blg ikona), or Rmn călugăr ‘monk’ (Grk καλόγηρος, ChSl kalogerъ, Blg kaluger). Church Slavonic was the language of literacy in Romania into the modern period, and the process of its being replaced by Romanian begins in documents of the sixteenth century. It took until 1863, however, for the Romanian Orthodox Church to officially change the liturgical language; this was around the same time that the Latin alphabet officially replaced Cyrillic, although the use of Cyrillic continued in Romania until the 1920s. Thus lexical influence from Slavic in the domain of religious terminology continued for longer than in other domains.
4.2.1.5 Romance and the Crusades
The later Middle Ages, covering roughly the period from 1100–1453 in some reckonings (e.g., that of Browning 1983: 69ff.) and also beyond that into the early modern era, saw the Balkans and the languages of the Balkans come into contact with Western Europeans of the day as a result of the Crusades and subsequent events. The Fourth Crusade especially had linguistic consequences, as Constantinople was captured and sacked in 1204, and what is commonly referred to as a Latin Empire was in parts of former Byzantium. Writing about Greek, Browning 1983: 70–71 notes that “the effects of the Latin conquest were complex [as] Latin loanwords flooded into the language.” He considers it important to clarify that “in this context ‘Latin’ refers not to the classical language of Rome, but to the Romance vernaculars spoken in the Mediterranean area.” Thus “Latin” influence on the Balkan lexicon at this stage is actually Romance influence, though due to the somewhat diglossic relationship between medieval Latin and vernacular Romance in this era, the written language continued to exert some influence on the spoken. As the Romance varieties became more clearly distinct languages, it is possible to speak of influence from particular languages as one moves into early modern times, i.e., the sixteenth century and beyond, although specific Romance dialects can sometimes be identified as sources during earlier periods.
The most direct Romance influence was on those parts of the Balkans that came under the dominion of various Romance rulers. Thus, in addition to Western European control of Constantinople, by the end of the thirteenth century the Franks controlled much of the Peloponnesos, and other parts of Greece, including strategic harbors on the Peloponnesos, and the islands of Euboea, Crete, and some of the Cyclades came under the dominion of Italian states, primarily Venice but also in some instances Genoa.Footnote 25 There was also Venetian and central Italian control and influence along the coast of the Adriatic Sea and the Ionian Sea, thus affecting Albanian, and, even though it is a language area generally outside of the purview of this book, also along the Dalmatian coast, affecting BCMS. Some lexical influence on other languages can be seen, but it is indirect, mediated via Greek, Albanian, or BCMS. Moreover, a considerable amount of maritime and nautical terminology spread from Italian and Venetian all over the Mediterranean, and thus throughout the Balkan languages, including Turkish.
Among such “Romance Latinisms” are (Middle) Greek ἐξόμπλιον ‘example’ (cf. Frn exemple), μισἰρ ‘sir’ (cf. Frn monsieur), τσάμπρα ‘room’ (cf. Frn chambre), ῥόη ῥόι ‘king’ (cf. Frn roi), among many others.Footnote 26 Venetian influence, distinguishable by characteristic lexis and phonology, is seen in Grk βελούδο ‘velvet’ (Vtn veludo, vs. Itl velluto), τζογος ‘gambling, card-playing’ (Vtn zogo, vs. Itl giuoco), αϊδάρω ‘help’ (Vtn aidar, vs. Itl aiutare), and κουζίνα ‘kitchen’ (Vtn cusina, vs. Itl cucina). For Albanian, one can note rrugë ‘road’ (Itl/Vtn ruga), kanal ‘canal’ (Vtn canal), kasellë ‘storage chest’ (Itl cassella), and frat ‘brother in a monastic order, friar’ (Itl frate), inter alia. Some of the Albanian forms are now nonstandard, and Italian forms especially entered Geg, since the historically Catholic population there was in direct contact with Italian Catholics, and northern Geg coastal regions were ruled by Venice. In some instances, phonological differences pointing to differential time of borrowing – and thus differential language source – can be observed; for example, beside the early Albanian borrowing lter ‘altar’ (Newmark 1998: 466) from (Late) Latin altare, there is also altar ‘altar’ from Itl altare.
Examples of the indirect influence, showing spread of Latinate/Romance loans from one of the directly affected languages into another language, also occur. For instance, Blg pogáča, Mac pógača ‘round white loaf’ are from BCMS pògača/pogȁča, but there are also Rmn pogáce (dialectal bogáce), Aro pugace, puγace, Alb pogaçë (dialectal pugaçë) ‘pogacha,’ MedGrk μπογάτσα/μπουγάτσα (late MedGrk πογάτσα) ‘a kind of dairy pie,’ Trk poğaça, dialectal boğaça ‘small round roll,’ as well as Hung pogacsa and dialectal Grm Pogatsche, all ultimately from OItl focācea = focaccia ‘cake’ (Lat focacius ‘[bread cooked in the] fire/hearth’); see BER V: 421–422 for discussion of various possible routes. It is generally accepted that BCMS is the source for BSl, which in turn is suggested for Aro and Alb; the Romanian could be from BCMS or Bulgarian or even Hungarian, whereas the Greek is thought to be from Turkish. Similarly, Aro γăzetă ‘change in coins’ and Megl gazetă ‘counterfeit coins’ derive ultimately from Venetian gaz(z)eta ‘two-cent coin,’ via Grk γαζετα ‘change’ (Banfi 1985: 99; Papahagi 1974: 617) and/or BCMS gazeta ‘two-cent Venetian coin.’
In some instances, Romance, especially Venetian, lexical items entered the Balkans via Turkish, e.g., BSl mandža ‘a type of main course made with a sauce of peppers, tomatoes, and/or potatoes’ < Trk manca ‘food, usually for pets’ < Vtn prisoner’s slang mangia ‘mucus’ < NItl mangia ‘fodder’ (BER III: 645).
As for Italianate/Venetian nautical vocabulary, among the general terms found in the Balkans are Alb barkë, Sln, BCMS (esp. Dalmatia), Blg, Trk barka, Grk βάρκα, Blg varka ‘boat, dinghy,’ from Vtn/Itl barca (see Skok 1971: 113); Alb rem ‘oar,’ from Vtn/Itl remo; and Alb shërok, Grk σιρόκος ‘southeast wind,’ from Vtn sirocco. More on this terminology, with additional examples, is to be found in §4.4.3, discussed from the point of view of occupational jargon.
4.2.1.6 Turkisms and Islam
The role of Turkish in shaping the Balkan lexicon was huge. There are dictionaries of Turkisms in BSCM and Bulgarian that contain 6,878 and 7,427 headwords, respectively (Šklajić 1966; Grannes et al. 2002).Footnote 27 While dictionaries of Turkisms for the other Balkan languages (see §4.2.1) are not as voluminous, in some cases owing, perhaps, to the lesser abundance of literary sources or limitations on the sources considered, they nonetheless attest to a profound lexical impact. In fact, it was the presence of this Turkish loan vocabulary that was considered one of the most striking features of the Balkan languages – a key component in Trubetzkoy’s 1930 Kulturwörter. In the various subsections of §4.3 and §4.4, this influence is treated in more detail, focusing on the ERIC domains and issues of style and register, respectively. Here, a brief overview of some of the non-ERIC vocabulary is both useful and revealing.Footnote 28
All those words that entered the various Balkan languages via Turkish can be considered as Turkisms. Thus, for example, although Turkish efendi ‘sir’ (archaic) is itself from Greek αὐθέντης ‘perpetrator’ (see footnote 274), its presence in various Balkan languages is counted as a Turkism and not as a Hellenism, since Turkish was clearly the immediate source. The same can be said of Arabic and Persian words that entered via Turkish, e.g., BSl, BCMS, and archaic and dialectal Albanian (mutatis mutandis; Hamp 1973) džiger ‘liver etc.,’ which is ultimately from Persian (cf. also mandža cited in §4.2.1.4 above). There are also ambiguous cases where it is difficult to determine whether or not a word entered various Balkan languages via a Turkish intermediary, e.g., if Turkish has borrowed from Greek or Romance but the phonology of the item is such that the source of the word in other Balkan languages may be uncertain (cf. Boretzky 1975: 135–169). Thus, for example, Ancient Greek μάνδαλος ‘bolt’ is the ultimate source of Med/ModGrk μάνταλος, Trk mandal, Alb mandal, mandall, BCMS màndal, BSl mandalo, etc. The precise route by which this word entered the various modern Balkan languages, however, is moot.
Given that the Ottomans exerted control for periods ranging from one to more than five centuries over all of the Balkan peninsula except some parts of today’s Slovenia and Croatia, it is not surprising to find Turkisms in all areas of Balkan vocabulary (see Friedman 2003a and references therein). Thus, just as the influence of Latin was felt strongly on Byzantine Greek as detailed by the list in §4.2.1.2, so too did Turkish influence all these areas in all the Balkan languages. For administrative terminology, Ottoman terms (mutatis mutandis with respect to orthographies and regional variants) such as vilayet ‘province’ and kaymakam ‘governor’ are found in all the Balkan languages to refer to Ottoman institutions, and kaymakam is still used in Turkish today for approximately the same rank, although vilayet is now strictly historical. Terms such as aga ‘[Turkish] lord’ (StTrk ağa) are likewise found in all the Balkan languages – Grk αγάς, all others aga – and remain current, but have a specifically Turkish referent.Footnote 29 Similarly, asker ‘soldier’ (Grk ασκέρι, Rmi askeri, Rmn ascher) is now archaic or historical and refers to Turkish soldiers.Footnote 30 Turkish barut remains the word for ‘gun powder’ in all the Balkan standard languages (Grk μπαρούτι, everywhere else spelled exactly as in Turkish).Footnote 31
In urban commercial life, derivatives of dukkân, e.g., Mac dukjan, Blg djukjan, Alb dyqan, still mean ‘shop,’ while sokak ‘alley, street’ (same spelling in Alb and BSl, BRο socac, Rmi sokako, ModGrk sokaki) means only the more marked, lower, ‘alley.’ This last shift illustrates Kazazis’ 1972 observation that many Turkisms that were not eliminated were pushed down stylistically, as also with BSl gjol, from Turkish göl ‘lake,’ for it is now archaic except in Bulgarian in the meaning ‘puddle’; cf. also Kazazis 1975 and Sejdiu-Rugova 2017, as well as §4.4.1, on register. Turkisms are still current in many words for everyday objects: çorap ‘stocking,’ giving e.g., Alb çorap, Grk τσουράπι, BSl, Jud čorap, BRo ciorap; tencere ‘pot; cooker,’ giving e.g., Alb tenxhere, BSl tendžere, Grk τεντζερές, Aro tengire, Rmn tingire, Jud tendjere; in names of foods: BSl, Rmi, Jud čorba, BRο ciorbă, Grk τσορβάς in features of the physical world, e.g., hendek ‘ditch,’ giving e.g., Blg hendek, Mac endek, Grk χαντάκι, Aro endec/hãndac, Rmn hindichi/hendechi/hândechi, Jud hendek.
Since Islam entered the Balkans via Turkish, like Latin and Greek it was also the vehicle of a new religious vocabulary (see §§4.2.1.2, 4.2.1.3, and 4.2.1.4), e.g., minare ‘minaret,’ cami ‘mosque,’ and imam ‘(Muslim) priest’ (e.g., Alb minare, xhami, imam, Grk μιναρές, τζαμί, ιμάμης, Mac minare, džamija, imam, Aro minare, ǧimie, imam). Further, some Turkisms associated with Islam, but not specific to it, were adopted into other languages. For instance, BRο işalá, Alb ishalla, Mac inšala, Blg inšalla ‘hopefully, may God grant it,’ from Trk inşallah ‘if it is God’s will,’ and Aro ilealá ‘God forbid’ (Papahagi 1974: 675), from Trk illâ allah, and Bunis 1999: 629, for instance, notes such phrases in use in Judezmo as Ala belani versin! ‘May God curse [you]!’ from Trk Allah belânı versin!, and Alah shukyur ‘Thank God!’ from Trk Allaha şükür!, the last element of which is the source of Mac and Rmi šukjur, Alb shyqur, Aro shucur, which all correspond fairly closely to English ‘thank goodness!’ or ‘finally/at last!’.
Turkish even penetrated the realm of Christian religious terminology, which, given the identification of Turkish with Islam, demonstrates that religions as well as languages can show contact-induced change.Footnote 32 Thus, as indicated in Footnote footnote 29, we find in nineteenth-century Balkan Slavic texts kurban ‘Eucharist’ (Trk kurban ‘sacrifice’), as well as kurtulija ‘the Savior’ (Trk kurtul- ‘save’), sajbija ‘the Lord’ (Trk sahib ‘master’); cf. Gołąb 1960; Jašar-Nasteva 1970; Miovski 1980; Koneski & Jašar-Nasteva 1989; Grannes 1996:9; Graham 2020.Footnote 33 Of particular cultural significance is BSl (h)adži[ja], Grk χατζής, Alb haxhi, BRo hagi[u], and Jud hadji, all from Turkish hacı (WRT [h]aci) ‘pilgrim’ (ultimately from Arabic).Footnote 34 While the hajj to Mecca is one of the five pillars of Islam, among Balkan Orthodox Christians, and also Ottoman Jews, the title was (and sometimes still is) used for those who make an analogous pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Izmirlieva 2012/2013, 2014 notes that the title was already in use in in the Balkans by the early sixteenth century. We can also note here that the celebration of a Muslim circumcision (Trk sünet, BSl and Rmi sunet, Alb synet), which, in the Balkans, involves a large celebration (as also in Turkey), is often referred to as a ‘wedding’ (BSl svadba, Rmi bijav, Alb dasmë), referring to the feasting and dancing. Such usage is a calque on Turkish usage, where düğün normally refers to wedding feast but can also refer to the feast associated with a circumcision.
4.2.1.7 Great Power Languages and Balkan Vocabulary (Late Eighteenth to Mid Twentieth Centuries)
Beginning with the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, successive and varied waves of lexical influence from non-Balkan European languages entered the Balkans via the dominant languages of the Great Powers.Footnote 35 These influences are not directly relevant to the sprachbund since they entered after its formative period and in the context of general Western European and Russian imperial and colonial expansion. Moreover, in keeping with competing European expansive intensions aimed at Ottoman territory, the languages of different European powers dominated different regions of the peninsula and at different times.
Thus, for example, in the case of Albanian, Italian influence was stronger in what became the independent state of Albania while German influence was stronger in territories incorporated in Serbia, Montenegro, and (later) Yugoslavia owing to Austrian and German interests (and railroads) in the region and BCMS as an intermediary of innovation. Ideology and timing also played roles. Romanian was heavily influenced – especially in its lexicon and particularly in connection with standardization – by French and Italian in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (cf. Close 1974), as these languages were both politically prestigious and genealogically related. For similar reasons, Latin, too, was drawn upon. Aromanian and Meglenoromanian were not so influenced, a fact that correlates with a higher degree of core Balkan features in those latter languages than is found in contemporary Romanian, although the causality is connected with social, geographic, political, and ideological factors as well as lack or delay of standardization.Footnote 36 Similarly, Russian was a source of lexical (and some grammatical) innovation in Bulgarian during this period. Owing to the fact that Russian itself turned to Church Slavonic for lexical and grammatical enrichment during the eighteenth century, a kind of Russianized South Slavic was re-imported into Bulgarian.Footnote 37 In the case of Macedonian, owing to the later date and political circumstances of standardization, the influence came from BCMS rather than Russian. With regard to Modern Greek, Ancient Greek, largely via the high-style archaizing Katharevousa variety, has been the source of vocabulary. For Romani, attempts to use Sanskrit or Hindi have met with only limited success, and in parts of the Balkans, Turkisms have been promoted (see Friedman 1989b).
As indicated above, these are more internal issues in the development of particular standard languages, and they are therefore of only minimal concern here (see Friedman 1986b, 2004c on Balkan standardizations). Moreover, since our focus here is on the results of speaker-to-speaker interactions, standardization is less significant for demonstrating the effects of Balkan-internal language, i.e., speaker (see §§3.2 and 3.2.1), contact. An interesting and illustrative example of such differential influence relates to automobile part terminology. For instance, Albanian has kandelë ‘spark plug’ from Italian candela, whereas Greek μπουζί, Romanian bujie, and Turkish buji are from French bougie, with both Romance sources meaning ‘candle’;Footnote 38 Macedonian šoferšajba ‘windshield’ is based in part on German Windschutzscheibe, whereas Romanian and Greek have parbriz and παρμπρίζ, respectively, from French pare-brise.Footnote 39 BCMS, Macedonian, and Bulgarian all use auspuh (from German Auspuff) for ‘muffler,’ whereas the other Balkan languages (and Slovene) have native coinages, in some instances translational equivalents, or other borrowings, e.g., Greek σιγαστήρας (lit., ‘silencer’), though its source, silansié, from French, can also be used, or Albanian (in Albania) skapamento, from Italian (versus auspuh, ultimately from German but here via Macedonian/BCMS, in Albanian of former Yugoslavia). Albanian makinë from Italian macchina, versus Romanian maşină and BSl mašina from French machine, all meaning ‘car’ or ‘machine,’ is another example.Footnote 40 The Romance borrowing lavazh ‘[car] wash’ is typical of Albanian in Albania, whereas in Kosovo the native larje is typical. Such loans speak more to economic ties in the period in question than to shared culture per se, except insofar as modern technology helps to define shared experiences on the part of members of many speech communties. In terms of the kind of shared culture to be discussed below (§4.3), we can note that mersi (from French merci; see Popescu 2020 on this word in Romanian, along with a few other Gallicisms) is a colloquial expression for ‘thank you’ in both Bulgarian and Turkish (as well as Persian and elsewhere). As the language of international diplomacy until World War Two, as well as the vehicle of education in schools sponsored by the Alliance Israélite Universelle, French had significant impact on the Balkans, and especially on Judezmo (Şaul 1983). As noted above, for Romanian, both Italian and French were important sources of vocabulary because of the genealogical and therefore ideological relationship. In the nineteenth century, the political prestige of French was especially important (Close 1974). Nonetheless, these phenomena, despite their common source, usually come from independent developments.
4.2.1.8 English Loans and “Internationalisms” in the Late Twentieth/Early Twenty-First Centuries
Words of wide diffusion that are associated with aspects of current modern culture are often referred to as internationalisms, and while the precise definition may be problematic, it is a useful heuristic term.Footnote 41 With regard to the Balkans, Friedman 2003a: 30 notes:
The adoption of so-called internationalisms, i.e., words of Greco-Latinate or West European origin, by the languages of the Balkans has led to a new commonality of vocabulary. This commonality, however, is not one specific to the Balkans but rather reflects a more global West European-based hegemony.
Thus, for example, the lexeme in Alb batari, BSl baterija, Grk μπαταρία, Rmn baterie, Trk batarya – all ultimately from English battery, cf. Frn batterie, Grm Batterie, Itl batteria – occurs in essentially this form in languages all over the globe, e.g., Hausa báatìr, Arabic baṭāriyyah, Hindi beṭri, Malay bateri, etc.Footnote 42 In a Balkan context, the fact that many such words have entered from English prompted Friedman’s 2011a: 6 observation that “English is the Turkish of the 21st century.” His point there, however, is that puristic anxieties about the supposedly pernicious influence of English are misplaced, a point to which we return in §4.4.4.Footnote 43 Friedman 2003a: 6 also observes that more people in the Balkans now know English than know a neighboring or co-territorial language, which potentially adds a new dimension to the investigation of the Balkan sprachbund.Footnote 44 In this context, it is interesting to note that at the ninth AIESEE (Association Internationale d’Études du Sud-Est Européen) Congress (Tirana, 2004), a large number of papers dealt with such words in the Balkan languages.Footnote 45 By the time of the tenth AIESEE Congress (Paris, 2009), however, attention had returned to the investigation of the Balkans in their own context, the importance of which was Friedman’s 2011b point (see now, e.g., Niculescu-Gorpin & Vasileanu 2020 on developments with Anglicisms in Romanian). Despite more than a century of borders, Balkan language contact continues, and the Balkan sprachbund is an on-going phenomenon. At this point in time, global terminology adds little to our understanding of the structural and historical dimensions of the Balkans as a linguistic convergence area; its study is more concerned with the respective standard languages of this and other parts of the world, and while these terms have a bearing on issues such as language attitudes and purism, our observations in this section suffice for our purposes here.Footnote 46
4.2.2 Entry of Foreign Affixes
Besides fully lexical material that is borrowed between languages in the Balkans, especially as discussed above in §4.2.1 and below in §4.3, various derivational affixes entered into and became productive in different languages. As noted in §4.1, the focus here is on derivation with lexical content, while the more grammatical sorts of derivation and the incorporation of foreign inflexional affixes are covered in §6 (e.g., §§6.1.4.1 and 6.2.1.1), as part of morphosyntax. We use the term entry of foreign derivational affixes in order to be neutral on the question of whether affixes themselves are borrowed or are imported into a language as part of a full lexical form and then extracted out of that form. It is clear that some material enters as part of another item and then becomes productive. Our interest lies simply in identifying foreign derivational material from one Balkan language that has come to be incorporated into another Balkan language. For that reason too, we do not – and cannot – go into all the details of derivation in all the languages but rather concentrate on some key instances where borrowing is involved, resulting in a sampling of trans-Balkan contact in this area of the lexicon.Footnote 47
Various languages can be identified as the sources of derivational material in and around the Balkans. Turkish is the biggest contributor, but other languages also play a role. We discuss here, in turn, Latin, Greek, Slavic, and Turkish. The important and somewhat controversial affix -ica/-itsa, which has Slavic roots and can be used to derive feminine nouns, is dealt with in §4.3.8, since it also pertains to diminutive formation.
4.2.2.1 Latin
The Latin lexical influence discussed in §4.2.1.2 allowed also for the entry of various Latin derivational suffixes into the Balkans. In some instances, the spread is not from Latin directly but from Latin into one language and from that one into others. We mention here a few of the more widely represented ones.
Mihăescu 1978: 237–238 documents the widespread occurrence of the agentive/occupational noun suffix -arius throughout Balkan Latin of the earliest period, i.e., beginning in the second century BCE, based on inscriptional evidence. It continues in modern Balkan Romance in, for instance, Romanian and Aromanian, e.g., Rmn/Aro căşar ‘cheesemonger’ (Lat casearius), Aro cărbunar ‘coalman, coal-deliverer’ (Lat carbonarius), Rmn fierar / Aro hirar ‘smith’ (Lat ferrarius), among many others. Similarly, as Newmark et al. 1982: 164 show, Albanian has this suffix productively as -ar, and also an extended form -tar, e.g., lopar ‘cowherd’ (cf. lopë ‘cow’), qytetar ‘city dweller’ (cf. qytet ‘city’), kopshtar ‘gardener’ (cf. kopsht ‘garden’), luftëtar ‘warrior’ (cf. luftë ‘battle’), këngëtar ‘singer’ (cf. këngë ‘song’). Browning 1983: 38–39, gives -αριος as one of the “new suffixes first appearing in Postclassical Greek” that “extended [Greek] vocabulary” and that, in some instances, “became extremely productive,” being used with native Greek stems, e.g., μηχανάριος ‘engineer’ (cf. Grk μηχανή ‘machine; engine’). This suffix continues in Modern Greek in the form -αρης / -aris (by regular sound change), e.g., in περβολάρης ‘gardener’ (cf. περιβόλι ‘garden’), ογδοντάρης ‘octagenarian’ (cf. ογδόντα ‘eighty’). The related neuter suffix -arium, used in nouns of instrument, is found in Greek in a Hellenized form in nouns such as Middle Greek αλφαβητάριον ‘alphabet book’ and συναξάριον ‘catalogue of saints listed by anniversary.’ Some of these words entered Slavic from Greek, e.g., SSl sinaksar ‘synaxarion’ (from the Greek), OCS dinaŕь ‘dinar (coin)’ (Grk δηνάριον, from Latin denarium). The CoSl suffix *-aŕĭ is found throughout modern Slavic and is sometimes thought to have entered Slavic from Latin via a Gothic intermediary (Skok 1972: 49), but it is, in any case, especially productive in BSl and most of BCMS, e.g., BSl ribar ‘fisherman’ (cf. OCS ryba ‘fish’), ovčar ‘shepherd’ (cf. OCS ovьcь ‘sheep’), SoSl žen[s]kar ‘womanizer’ (cf. žena ‘woman,’ Sln ženskar, others ženkar), BCMS and Mac političar ‘politician’ (politika ‘politics,’ Sln and Blg politika > politik), etc. We can also note here a specific extension of Albanian use of -ar to SW Macedonian in the use of names of people from a given village, which is typical of Albanian but not Macedonian, e.g., Nestramár ‘person from Nestram’ (Vidoeski 1999a: 112 as cited in Friedman 2018a).
Weigand 1926, in discussing the wide range of suffixes in Balkan languages with the shape [-ul-] but with quite varying functions and origins, notes a few instances involving a Latin source, especially Alb -ull from Latin -ulus; in §4.3.8, there are examples of the related Latin diminutive suffix -ulla in Balkan languages.
4.2.2.2 Greek
Greek provides some affixal enrichment of its neighboring languages, but the most extensive involvement here comes in the more grammatically related derivation of various nominal and verbal stems. Thus, for example, the Greek aorist marker -σ- is productively attached to Turkish verbal borrowings, which use the 3SG DI-past as the base, e.g., Aro kurdisire, Rmn curdisi, Alb kurdis, Mac kurdisa, Blg kurdisvam, ‘wind up, set up, etc.’ all from Turkish kur- ‘idem’ with 3SG DI-past kurdu, WRT kurdi.Footnote 48 Cf. Grk μπαϊλντίζω < Trk bayıldı (WRT bayıldi) ‘faint’ (see §6.2.2.2). The Greek verbal derivational mopheme -Vz-, apparent in the word for ‘faint,’ is borrowed into many Romani dialects as the loan-verb adaptor, with other dialects using -Vn- and/or -ev- which are also Greek verbal morphemes (-υ/αν-, -αιν-, cf. Matras 2002: 128). Another Greek affix in Romani is the masculine nominative singular marker -s, which Greek inherited from Indo-European, but which was borrowed into many Romani dialects, e.g., the Balkan II group, in loanwords, e.g., native čhavo ‘boy,’ but dajos ‘uncle (mother’s brother)’ from Trk dayı ‘idem.’ A further affix of Greek origin occurring widely in Romani is the noun-forming suffix -ima/-ema/-imos, etc. which competes with native -ibe[n]/-ipe[n] in deriving deverbal nouns (occasionally also deadjectival), e.g., native Skopje Arli ha- ‘eat,’ habe ‘food,’ šuži ‘pretty,’ šužipe ‘beauty,’ mar- ‘beat,’ maribe ‘beating, fight, war’ but Ágios Athanásios (Sechidou 2011: 35) marima ‘idem,’ Kalderaš (Boretzky 1994: 276) marimos ‘idem.’ In some dialects, the nominative uses the native marker and the oblique cases use the Greek affix before the native case inflection, e.g., xaben ‘food,’ dat. xamaske (Sechidou 2011: 26).
4.2.2.3 Slavic
The productive suffix -itsa/-ica is dealt with in §4.3.8, since the most common meaning is diminutive (Asenova 2002: 62). Here, however, we note that this suffix has other uses as well, e.g., in toponyms (often themselves of Slavic origin), e.g., Alb Goricë, Grk Kastánitsa, Rmn Dîmbovița. The suffix can also derive feminines from masculines, e.g., Alb gomar/gomaricë ‘donkey M/F,’ Rmn bucătar/bucătăriță ‘cook M/F.’ This latter usage also occurs in WRT (along with the Slavic suffix -ka), e.g., Gostivar Turkish dayo ‘maternal uncle’ → daytsa ‘aunt [dayo’s wife]’, Muzafer ‘Muzafer’ → Muzaferitsa ‘Muzafer’s wife,’ yalanci ‘liar’ → yalancitsa ‘female liar,’ arkadaş ‘friend’ → arkadaşka ‘female friend’ (Tufan 2007:104, cf. also Jašar-Nasteva 1970). This last phenomenon, while not importing grammatical gender in West Rumelian Turkish (WRT), does import a morphological real-world gender distinction that is otherwise absent from Turkish, which must use lexical ‘male’ and ‘female’ (or related items) when disambiguation is required, e.g., kardeş ‘sibling’ ~ erkek kardeş ‘brother,’ kız kardeş ‘sister’ (cf. also §6.1.3.1).
According to Asenova 2002: 63 there are more than twenty suffixes of varying productivity of Slavic origin in Albanian and Balkan Romance, e.g., -ьkъ, -ište, -okъ, -[j]an, -ъka, as in Alb çunak ‘little boy,’ baltishtë ‘muddy place,’ malok ‘hillbilly (pejorative),’ Shkodran ‘person from Shkodra,’ çupkë ‘little girl’; Romanian ciorac ‘little corvid,’ porumbişte ‘cornfield,’ bucureştean ‘person from Bucharest,’ româncă ‘Romanian woman.’
The Slavic suffix -nik, which forms agentive and other types of nouns, has entered productively into Albanian and Balkan Romance, which share the innovation of using the suffix for denominal adjectives (and, in Romanian, adverbs, albeit rarely) as well, e.g., Alb drithnik ‘granary,’ qullanik ‘corn pone,’ but also fisnik ‘noble, of good family,’ sojnik ‘of good family, pure-blood,’ prishanik ‘crazy, cracked, screwy,’ Rmn fățarnic ‘hypocrite/hypocritical,’ târzielnic ‘lazy[bones], slow[poke],’ puternic ‘strong,’ zilnic ‘daily.’ As Gălăbov 1966: 307–312 (cf. Asenova 2002: 63; Croitor 2019) points out, the productivity of these affixes attests to intimate contact that began with the arrival of Slavic speakers in the Balkans.
Another influence of Slavic on Albanian and Balkan Romance which in terms of borrowing is lexical but in terms of the receiving languages affects morphological classes is the tendency to assign loanverbs to a particular conjugational class. In Albanian, Slavic verbs tend to be adapted to the sigmatic conjugation, while in Aromanian they are added to the fourth conjugation, 1sg -escu (Nevaci 2003–2004), and in Romanian to the formerly productive class in -i (Nedelcu 2013a: 21), e.g., BSl čuka/čukne/čuknuva ~ čukva ‘hit, knock, etc.’ (3sg IPFV/PFV/derived IPFV [Mac~Blg]) > Alb çukit, Aro cicãnescu Rmn ciocăni.
A few Slavic prefixes have also entered Albanian and Balkan Romance, e.g., Alb po- in pomendore ‘monument’ (cf. mendor ‘mental, thinker’), Rmn prea- in preafrumos ‘exceedingly beautiful’ (Asenova 2002: 63). Slavic aspectual prefixes in languages such as Romani and Meglenoromanian are treated in §6.2.2.2.
Finally we can note that the Slavic suffix -av ‘-ish,’ has been borrowed into some Greek dialects in Epirus and Greek Macedonia as -αβους, e.g., πρασνούλιαβους ‘greenish’ < πράσινος ‘green’ + diminutive -ούλη- + -αβους, a calque + borrowing on Macedonian zelenikav ‘greenish,’ where -ik- is interpreted as a diminutive affix (Margariti-Ronga & Papadamou 2019a: 139 and sources cited therein). Citing Rempelis 1953: 251, Margariti-Ronga & Papadamou also give ασπρούλαβος ‘slightly white,’ κοκκινούλαβος ‘slightly red,’ μαυρούλαβος ‘slightly black,’ ξινούλαβος ‘slightly sour,’ and πικρούλαβος ‘slightly bitter’ for Konitsa in Epirus.
4.2.2.4 Turkish
By far the most important source language for derivational material in the early modern period was Turkish. There are seven suffixes with concrete lexical meanings that spread widely in the Balkans. Four of them became productive to varying degrees in at least some of the languages: occupational -CI, abstract -lIK, adjectival -lI, and locatival -(h)ane; the other three, the privative -sIz, the personal -man, and the agentive -kâr show interesting developments even though they are usually limited to stems of Turkish origin. We take each of these up in turn.Footnote 49
Occupational or agentive -CI in Turkish is found in a range of meanings such as ‘one who does X’ or ‘one who is associated with X,’ and is often translatable as English -er, e.g., yolcu ‘traveler’ (cf. yol ‘road’), lokantacı ‘restaurant owner’ (cf. lokanta ‘restaurant’), and its meanings in neighboring languages are quite similar. Although the suffix takes high vowel harmony (i/ı/ü/u) in standard Turkish, the form in the Balkan languages is always front-unrounded (i). This represents the WRT situation, in which high vowels in final position are all neutralized to /i/. In Turkish, the alternation c ~ ç is determined by progressive assimilation of voicing, and this can also be reflected in the borrowing languages (as discussed in §5.6 and illustrated in Table 4.3). Some languages (Grk, BSl) also have distinct feminine forms based on inherited material (e.g., BSl kavgadžija/kavgadžika ‘quarelsome man/woman,’ with a Slavic feminine suffix -ka, and Grk καβγατζής / καβγατζού ‘idem,’ with a feminine suffix seen in ModGrk φωνακλού ‘loud, coarse woman’ or γλωσσού ‘gossip girl’). In the case of Balkan Slavic and Greek, there is also a terminal desinence that is added for morphological adaptation.
Table 4.3 Turkish -CI suffix in the Balkans
| Alb | -xhi / -çi |
| Bro | -gi/ -ci [-u] |
| BSl | -džija / -čija |
| Grk | -τζης / -τσης |
| Jud | -ǧi/ -či |
| Rmi | -dži/ -či |
Besides its wide use in Turkish-derived vocabulary, such as Alb bojaxhi ‘painter, dyer,’ Grk μπογιατζής ‘painter,’ BSl bojadžija, Rmn boiangiu/boiengiu, Aro boiagi, Jud boyadji (cf. Trk boya ‘paint,’ boyacı ‘painter’), Alb jabanxhi ‘stranger,’ BSl jabandžija ‘foreigner,’ BRo iabangi[u], Jud yabandji (Trk yabancı), this suffix has passed over into more general productivity in all of the languages. This productivity is shown by several details of its use: it combines with native roots, e.g., Balkan Slavic lov- ‘hunt,’ the basis for BSl lovdžija ‘hunter’; Rmn drâmbagiu ‘Jew’s harp-player’;Footnote 50 Aro ghelagi ‘inn-keeper’ with ghela ~ njela ‘lamb,’ whence ‘one who prepares lamb [for guests]’ (Polenakovikj 2007: 54); Bugurdži Rmi asjav ‘mill,’ the basis for asjavdžis ‘miller’ (Boretzky 1993), Sepeči Rmi mindžardžis ‘womanizer’ from mindž ‘vagina,’ xoxamdžis ‘cheater’ from xoxavel ‘cheat,’ Sofija Erli Rmi vurdondžis ‘cart-driver’ from vurdon ‘cart’ (ROMLEX);Footnote 51 Jud palavra ‘word’ gives palavradji ‘chatterbox.’Footnote 52 It also occurs with recent loans, neologisms, and in phrasal and slang formations, e.g., Alb partiakçi ‘party hack,’ Grk ταξιτζής ‘taxicab driver,’ Mac fudbaldžija ‘inept soccer player,’ Rmn duelgiu ‘someone crazy about dueling’; the Greek acronymic base ΠΑΣΟΚ (Πανελλήνιο Σοσιαλιστικό Κίνημα ‘the Panhellenic Socialist Movement’) gives ΠΑΣΟΚτσής ‘an adherent of PASOK,’ Albanian thashethemëxhi ‘gossip-monger’ (< thashë ‘I said’ + e ‘and’ + them ‘I say’), Mac drkadžija ‘jack-off’ (person < drka ‘to jerk off’). Even in Judezmo, which was not subject to the standardizing ideologies of most Balkan languages, Turkish suffixes could be used as a form of lowering, e.g., sedakero ‘charity donor’ (Heb ṣ[e]daqa ‘charity’ + Sp -ero) but sedakadji ‘beggar’ (Bunis 1999: 81).
The Turkish abstract noun formative -lIK is the source of Alb -llëk, Aro -lãke/-lik, Blg -lăk, Grk -(ι)λίκι, Jud -lik, Mac -lak, and Rmn -lîc/-lâc, all with the same function. As with -CI, this suffix takes high vowel harmony in standard Turkish. In WRT, however, the front/back opposition is neutralized in favor of the back vowel in final closed syllables if the vowel is unrounded, i.e., i > ı.Footnote 53 The suffix occurs in words of Turkish origin, e.g., Alb pashallëk, Aro pashalãke, Blg pašalăk, Grk πασαλίκι, Jud pašalik, Mac pašalak, Rmn paşalâk ‘the quality of being a pasha, the territory ruled by a pasha, the high life.’ The formative also combines with native and old non-Turkish stems, e.g., Alb njerëzillëk, Jud benadamlik ‘humaneness’ (Alb njerëz ‘people,’ Heb ben adam ‘son of man’), Grk προεδριλίκι ‘presidency’ (cf. πρόεδρος ‘president’), Mac lošotilak ‘nastiness’ (cf. loš ‘bad’), Blg vojniklăk / Mac vojniklak ‘military service [colloq.],’ Jud. hanukalik ‘Hanukkah present’ (Heb Ḥanukah ‘the Feast of Lights’), Rmn varvarlîc / Aro varvarlike ‘barbarism,’ Megl sotsluk ‘friendship’ (Asenova 2002: 62), and they combine with recent loans, e.g., Alb avokatllëk, Rmn advocatlâc ‘advocacy (ironic; regardless of the actual merits of the case),’ Mac asistentlak ‘assistantship’ (ironic), Blg doktorlăk ‘doctorship’ (ironic). Many of these forms have a marked stylistic value, at a lower level than the Turkish sources (see §4.4.1).
The adjectival -lI forms adjectives from nouns and has the general meaning, as described by Göksel & Kerslake 2005: 194, of “‘possessing’, ‘characterized by’, or ‘provided with’ whatever is expressed by the stem.” It is of more limited productivity in general. In Alb -li/-lli is restricted mainly to words of Turkish origin, e.g., borxhli ‘debtor’ (cf. borxh ‘debt,’ Trk borç ‘debt’). The chief exception appears to be words that denote inhabitants of certain towns, e.g., skraparlli ‘person from Skrapar,’ prishtina-li/lli ‘person from Prishtina,’ and even hyperforms such as shkupjanali ‘person from Skopje,’ dibranali ‘person from Debar’ (StAlb Shkup/shkupjan ‘Skopje/person from Skopje,’ Dibër/dibran person from Debar). There are also substantives of origin in -λη- in Greek, e.g., Βαρνα-λή-ς ‘(person) from Varna.’ Macedonian -lija and Greek -λη- show the hallmarks of productivity, occurring with native roots, e.g., Mac vošlija ‘lousy’ (voš ‘louse’), Grk μουστακα-λής ‘mustachioed’ (cf. μουστάκι ‘mustache,’ ultimately from AGrk μύσταξ ‘mustache’), and with non-Turkish loanwords, e.g., Mac pubertetlija ‘teenager’ (ironic), Grk μπεσαλής ‘one who keeps his word’ (based on μπέσα, a borrowing from Albanian besa ‘faith; honor,’ itself a loanword in all the Balkan languages in direct contact with Albanian). In Modern Bulgarian, kuražlija ‘having courage/strength’ appears to be the only non-Turkism with the affix (Andrejčin 1975). Turkish-origin words also occur in Grk σεβνταλής ‘lustful; passionate’ (cf. Trk sevda ‘love, passion’), Mac kasmetlija, Blg kăsmetlija ‘lucky’ (cf. Trk kısmetli), Jud (u)gurli ‘auspicious,’ kokuli/kokulu ‘perfumed,’ Salonikli ‘Thessalonian (note that Trk Selânikli often implies ‘Sabbatean’ (Trk Dönme)), Rmn tabietliu, Blg tabietlija ‘persnickety, pedantic’ (Trk tabiat ‘nature, habit’), Aro hairli, Mac airlija, etc. ‘lucky, blessed with good fortune’ (Trk hayır ‘good, auspicious’).
The most restricted of these suffixes is -(h)ane, which forms nouns of location in Turkish, e.g., kütüphane ‘library’ (cf. kütüb, learned plural of kitab ‘book’). It is not at all productive in most Balkan languages, occurring in words with Turkish sources like kafehane, now archaic in Albanian except in the meaning ‘dirty, rundown coffee house’ (whereas kafene is ordinary colloquial for pub or coffeehouse) or mejhane ‘tavern’ (Mac meana, Blg mehana; also, pejoratively, ‘noisy smoke-filled saloon’). It seems not to occur in Greek. It is productive, however, in Macedonian, in the form -ána, being found in words of Turkish origin, e.g., kafana ‘pub’ (ordinary colloquial), meana ‘tavern’ (archaic), with native words, e.g., pilana ‘sawmill,’ and with recent loanwords, e.g., energana ‘heating plant.’
Other Turkish suffixes occur on a more limited basis, at least in current usage, but deserve special mention here nonetheless.Footnote 54 The privative suffix -sIz ‘without, -less’ occurs only with words of Turkish origin, but is found in all the Balkan languages. Macedonian, for instance, currently has such forms as arsaz ‘crook,’ teklifsiz ‘unceremoniously,’ and ugursuz ‘no-goodnik’ (Trk hırsız ‘thief,’ teklifsiz ‘without ceremony,’ uğursuz ‘inauspicious; rascal’), and Grannes et al. 2002: 540–541 give nearly fifty forms in Bulgarian with -siz/-suz/-săz, many of which, however, are now obsolete, dialectal, or highly colloquial, such as hărsăz(in) ‘soundrel, useless’ (Trk hırsız), kapasăz(in) ‘good-for-nothing’ (Trk kapısız ‘gateless; unemployed’), kitapsăz(in) ‘illiterate’ (Trk kitapsız ‘without a book’), hairsăz(in) ‘scoundrel, good-for-nothing’ (Trk hayırsız ‘useless, good-for-nothing’). For contemporary Albanian, Snoj 1994: 474 lists only four words with -sëz, all with exact sources in Turkish: sojsëz ‘(person) of poor stock,’ apansëz ‘unexpectedly,’ edepsëz ‘shameless,’ and nursëz ‘sad, lightless’ (Trk soysuz, apansız, edepsiz, nursuz). Judezmo has apansiz, edepsiz, and soysuz ‘of bad lineage’ (as well as soyli ‘of good lineage’ based on Trk soy ‘lineage’). Greek has this suffix in just in a few words, most notably γρουσούζης / γουρσούζης ‘ill-fated; bringing bad luck’ (Trk uğursuz), where -sIz ends up as an isolated piece with no real value that merely adds to the phonological “bulk” of the word (like some of the etymological inflections discussed in §4.2.2.6.2). According to ILB 1957, Romanian has only [h]ursuz (< Trk uğursuz cited above). Given the ideology of excluding Turkisms in all the Balkan standard languages, it is not unreasonable to assume that the suffix was considerably more widespread prior to the twentieth century (cf. Grannes 1969 regarding Bulgarian).
Further elements to mention here are -man and -kâr. In fact, -man is not even a suffix in the strict sense in Turkish, but it occurs in a number of words mainly for individuals, such as duşman ‘enemy’ (from Persian), kahraman ‘hero’ (from Persian), Müslüman ‘a Muslim’ (from Persian), peşiman/pişman ‘penitent’ (from Persian), and tercüman ‘interpreter’ (from Arabic). This individual-marking usage is taken up in some of the Balkan languages in whole-word borrowings from Turkish, e.g., Blg kahraman and terdžuman, Alb mysliman and pishman, Rmn duşman, Mac dušman, pišman, and Muslimán. Significantly, it is even extended in Macedonian and Albanian, combining like a suffix with some native bases, e.g., Mac lažoman ‘liar’ (cf. laga ‘а lie,’ laže ‘(he) lies’), grkoman ‘Hellenizer,’ and Alb gjataman ‘tall, lanky person’ (cf. gjatë ‘long’), pordhaman ‘person who farts a lot; full of hot air’ (cf. pordhë ‘loud fart,’ pordh- aorist stem of pjerdh- ‘fart’). Also, Mac has one word, utman ‘dullard’ that is either a Mac creation based on (dialectal) Albanian ut (StAlb hut) ‘owl; dullard’ or borrowed as a whole from dialectal Albanian. There may be some secondary influence in each language from the Greek-based suffix -mán ‘-maniac’ that occurs in each in, e.g., Mac and Alb kleptomán ‘kleptomaniac’ and megalomán ‘megalomaniac,’ since these words designate individuals too. The Macedonian use of -man with names of nationalities, e.g., grkoman ‘Hellenizer’ (also Alb grekoman ‘idem’), srboman ‘Serbianizer,’ may also belong here. Thus -man appears to have a mixed origin in the Balkans, but there has been some Turkish involvement. (For more details, see Friedman 2003a.)
The Turkish suffix -kâr, a borrowing from Persian, is agentive, e.g., hizmetkâr ‘servant’ (hizmet ‘service,’ cf. BSl izmekjar). It appears to be productive only in Albanian, which combines it with some native or old loan roots, e.g., mundqar ‘hard worker’ (mund ‘effort’), grabitqar ‘predator’ (grabit ‘capture, pillage’), ziliqar ‘envious person’ (zili ‘envy’) (cf. Boretzky 1975: 265–269).
We can also mention here the suffix -lAmA, in which the -lA- is used to derive verbal stems from nonverbs and the -mA forms deverbal nouns, as in Turkish temiz ‘clean, adj.,’ temizle- ‘clean (verb),’ temizleme ‘cleaning (noun).’ In Macedonian (and, mutatis mutandis, elsewhere in Balkan Slavic), the noun zavrzlama ‘tangle, plot, meddling, etc.,’ from zavrze ‘bind, twist, knot,’ is still in common usage, albeit strictly colloquial. Cf. also nineteenth-century Macedonian daskalaisa ‘teach’ (< /daskal-la-isa/), ugursuzlaisa ‘behave badly,’ etc. (Markovikj 1996), which combine Turkish -la- with Greek aoristic -(ι)σ- (cf. §4.2.2.2). Similarly, čuvadar ‘guardian’ combines čuva ‘protect, keep’ with -dar, a Turkism of Persian origin used to form agentive nouns. Unlike zavrzlama, however, čuvadar is archaic.
4.2.2.5 Western European Affixes
Continuing in the contemporary period a trend begun in the twentieth century, Western European languages have come to be more widely known in the Balkans, and as a result, lexical borrowings have occurred, in some lexical fields massively. This in turn has led to derivational material associated with some of these borrowings becoming available in the recipient languages and taking on new life in their new linguistic environment. We mention just a few here by way of illustrating this relatively recent trend in the Balkans. It should be noted that some of these could be considered internationalisms (see §4.2.1.8) of an affixal nature.
One English suffix that is itself of relatively recent origin in English that shows up in some Balkan languages is -gate referring to a public scandal of some sort, often involving politicians.Footnote 55 This suffix has gained currency in English and it has spread to other languages, being found, for instance, in Hungarian (Kontra 1992) and in contemporary Russian, e.g., Putingejt, referring to President Vladimir Putin’s suppression of anti-establishment journalists and the suspiciously timed murders and poisonings of his political opponents.Footnote 56 As far as the Balkans are concerned, Joseph 1992b documents it for Greek in 1987 in the forms Τόμπρα-γκεητ and ΠΑΣΌΚ-γκεητ, referring to a scandal involving the then-head of the national telephone system, a Mr. Τόμπρας, who had been appointed by the then-ruling party ΠΑΣΟΚ (see §4.2.2.4); he also cites an example from the Serbian press, Agrogejt for a financial scandal involving the agricultural conglomerate Agrokomerc, and more examples can be found in the Bulgarian press, e.g., from 2012, both SRS-gejt and Tanovgejt, both referring to a scandal involving bugs (“SRS,” i.e., ‘special intelligence devices’) and a Mr. Tanov, then-Chief Executive of Customs.Footnote 57 In both the Greek and the Bulgarian examples, there are multiple labels for the scandal in question, suggesting a degree of productivity for the suffix in a way different from what the mere coining of novel instances reveals. Macedonian shows what may mark the beginnings of the entry of this suffix, since an American situation involving espionage and shopping carts is referred to in an online articleFootnote 58 as “količkata-gejt,” translating ‘shopping cart’ with the definite količkata but leaving gejt untranslated, presumably because it carried some meaning as such.
Another modern Western European suffix with some extension through the Balkans is the Italian suffix -ese in nouns and adjectives of ethnic or geographic origin, e.g., Francese ‘French,’ ultimately from Latin -ē(n)sis. A suffix with roughly this form, though consistently with a voiced [z] suggesting perhaps Venetian mediation, is found in Albanian, e.g., senegalez ‘Senegalese,’ jordanez ‘Jordanian,’ eskimez ‘Eskimo,’ and nepalez ‘Nepali,’ among numerous others, and in Greek, e.g., Κινέζος ‘Chinese,’ Φιλιπινέζος ‘Philippine,’ and Σκωτσέζος/Σκοτσέζος ‘Scottish,’ among many others. Cf. also Mac Kinez ‘Chinese [person],’ as in BCMS but Blg Kitaec ‘idem,’ which is from Russian. Romanian, too, shows -ez in abundance, especially for more “exotic” ethnica, e.g., japonez ‘Japanese,’ chinez ‘Chinese,’ somalez ‘Somali,’ and finlandez ‘Finnish,’ inter alia, but deriving it directly from Latin -ē(n)sis is difficult, so that some Italian, Venetian, or even French or possibly learnèd Latin influence in its development and spread is likely.Footnote 59 It may have entered with specifically Italianate nouns, e.g., Calabrese ‘Calabrian,’ and spread from there in each language. Moreover, there are sufficient numbers of other such forms in each language to suggest a good degree of productivity for the suffix; Snoj 1994, for instance, lists more than thirty for Albanian.
As noted in §4.2.1.8 about internationalisms at the word level, none of these suffixes has any relevance to the sprachbund per se, but rather they speak to modern developments with the standard languages.
4.2.2.6 Miscellaneous
Besides the derivational material discussed so far that can be categorized insightfully by source and thus use, there are some borrowed elements that come to serve derivational functions but do not fit into neat categories overall; thus, their treatment may have a more scattered feel but they are no less important and no less interesting.
4.2.2.6.1 Prefixes
We have mostly chronicled here various foreign suffixes with a derivational role in various languages, largely because suffixes are far more common in the languages involved. But there are some prefixes that enter on specific words. A case in point is seen in Greek μπαμπέσης ‘an unscrupulous or evily clever man,’ a transformation of Albanian pabesë ‘disloyal, dishonest,’ from pa- ‘without’ plus besë ‘word of honor; trust.’Footnote 60 Albanian pa- also was cited by Sandfeld 1930: 116 as influencing a particular use of Aromanian fără ‘without’ as essentially a word-forming prefix, as opposed to its usual prepositional use, in the phrase cu fără nimfricoşatu suflit ‘with an intrepid soul’ (lit., ‘with (a) without fear soul’), that occurs in the Codex Dimonie.Footnote 61 Sandfeld ibid. further suggests that the Albanian use of the preposition pa ‘without’ as a word-forming prefix may be due to external influence, as he compares the similar dual use of bez in Slavic. This is in contrast with Balkan Romani, which borrows Slavic bez(o) as a preposition but uses the early borrowed Indo-Iranian bi- as a privative prefix. One can speculate as well, though, that Turkish might have played a role, since the Turkish privative adjectival formative -sIz, as in şekersiz ‘without sugar’ (lit, ‘sugar.without’), is a suffix, and thus forms a single word with what it attaches to while also carrying out an adpositional function; it therefore, like Slavic bez, provides a model for the same form being both a word-formative and an adposition, just like pa/fără.Footnote 62 Note also, from Slavic, Albanian kolo/kollo- and po-, e.g., kollofruth ‘incantation against measles,’ kollotumbë ‘somersault,’ kollofis ‘gulp down, swallow up,’ polem ‘people, crowd (< len ‘be born’), pomendore ‘monument, memorial’; Rmn ne-, răz-, po-, prea-, e.g., nesaț ‘insatiable,’ răsfoesc ‘leaf through,’ ponegru ‘very black,’ poneagră ‘evil woman,’ preafrumos ‘very beautiful’ (Xhuvani & Çabej 1976: 161, 174; Asenova 2002: 63). We can also cite here the use of Grk κοντο- ‘short’ as a prefix in Aegean and Pirin Macedonian, Thracian Bulgarian, and Aromanian (Papadamou 2019b, cf. BER III:kunde). See also §6.2.2.2 on the borrowing of Slavic perfectivizing prefixes. Romani dialects in Kosovo, e.g., Bugurdži (Boretzky 1993: 83) borrow the (Geg) Albanian gerund marker tuj (Standard duke), which, unlike the Albanian, which is prefixed to a nonfinite form, in Romani is prefixed to the inflected present, e.g., tuj dzav, tuj džal ‘while going.1SG, while going.3SG,’ etc. Finally, see §4.3.7.2.1 for a Turkish intensive reduplicative prefixing construct that has diffused in the Balkans.
4.2.2.6.2 Etymological Inflection
The entry of whole words from one Balkan language into another has led to the situation in which a borrowed element can contain inflectional material. Such donor language inflection can end up as inflectional material in the borrowing language, even if slightly altered, as documented in §6.1.4.1 and §6.2.1.1. However, in what is perhaps the more typical case, donor language material that happens to be inflectional is simply treated as donor language material with no special status; the fact that a part of the word is etymologically inflectional is of no import to the borrowing speakers. The material can thus end up serving no inflectional function in the borrowing language. In some instances it becomes derivational, and in others just part of the “phonological bulk” making up the word;Footnote 63 in this latter case, it is of inflectional interest only from an etymological standpoint. We survey here a few such instances involving nominal suffixes; there are some verbal suffixes that are treated in this way but as they have a grammatical value or show effects that are tied to grammar (see §4.1), they are discussed in §§6.2.1.1 and 6.2.2.2.
The best illustration of such noninflectional incorporation of inflectional material comes in forms borrowed from Turkish, mostly nominal case endings that occur in fixed expressions. For instance, Albanian has borrowed Turkish hava ‘air’ to mean ‘open air, weather’ and for the meanings ‘out in the open’ and ‘up in the air,’ it has both the native në hava (lit., ‘in air’) and the Turkish ablative havadan, both of which can also be used with native verbs like mbet ‘remain’or qëndron ‘stay’ to mean ‘hover’: mbet/qëndron në hava/havadan ‘hovers.’ So here there is no synchronic recognition of -dan as an ablative case maker. The Turkish ablative, in this instance with the shape -ten due to Turkish phonological processes, is found also in the BSl adverb hepten ‘totally,’ as well as Blg dipten ‘from the bottom; completely, fully,’ and BSl birden ‘at once (suddenly),’ literally the ablative of bir ‘one’ (Grannes et al. 2002; Jašar-Nasteva 2000). This last Turkism has also given rise to calques in Macedonian, Romani, and Aromanian, although the calquing languages use ‘once’ rather than ‘one’: od ednaš, taro jekvar, di nã oarã ‘at once,’ respectively. In addition, Bulgarian dokuzda, a Rhodopian dialect expression for ‘angry, gloomy, hypersensitive,’ looks like the locative of Turkish dokuz ‘nine’ (Grannes et al. 2002). However, a more plausible explanation is that it is related to the Rhodopian dokuzdisan, the past passive participle of dokuzdisam, a variant of dokundisam ‘affect, insult’ from Turkish dokun- ‘touch’ and thus with the same semantics as English touchy.
Another expression like this is one that occurs in Greek, αναντάμ μπαμπαντάμ (also αναντάμ παπαντάμ), meaning ‘in the distant past,’ in Albanian, in the form denbabaden, meaning ‘since ancient times, forever’ (sometimes spelled den baba den or dem baba dem, as in the song entitled (jam) fisnik dem baba dem ‘[I’m] a noble since days of old’ popularized by Ylli Baka; cf. also the song Korba Çeço), and in Judezmo, in the form anandan babandan (Bunis 1999: 629). In each case, this is an alteration of a Turkish anadan babadan ‘mother.ABL father.ABL.’Footnote 64 The forms with -m show assimilation of the first final -n to the following initial b- and then a distant assimilation to give … m … m. The Albanian presumably underwent a fore-clipping eliminating ana-, and the front harmony could be the result of native generalization (cf. Jud dunyade ‘world.loc,’ cited below).Footnote 65 The Judezmo medial nasality (-nd-) probably reflects Greek phonotactics pertaining to the pronunciation of medial voiced stops, though Spanish phonotactics cannot be ruled out. Given that the nouns in this phrase include the Turkish ablative case ending -DAn, this is more likely borrowed directly from Turkish as a ready-made phrase than constructed by Greeks or Albanians who might know Turkish. Interestingly, though, available lexicographical sources, e.g., Redhouse 1968, Akalın & Toparlı 2005, Ayverdi & Topaloğlu 2006, TDK 1963–1977, TDK 1963–1982, do not contain this phrase, but there are speakers, generally of an older generation, who recognize it; younger urban speakers, however, seem not to know the expression as such.Footnote 66
A phrase from a Judezmo humor column published in Thessaloniki, cited by Bunis 1999: 91, Yo se una koza ke yok yok dunyade ‘I know something that’s like nothing else in the world’ (dunyade < dünyada ‘world.loc [-DA]’), also involves a case ending.Footnote 67 In this example, Turkish laws of vowel harmony are violated, which could reflect the kind of Turkish used in some Balkan Turkish dialects or the speaker’s relative competence in Turkish. The example is arguably midway between a codeswitch and an expressive part of the speaker’s Judezmo competence, i.e., given the speaker’s imperfect knowledge of Turkish.
On the other hand, Romani akanadan ‘from now on’ (Romani akana ‘now’ + Turkish ablative -dan) is a clear instance of the borrowing of the Turkish ablative case marker -DAn. Nonetheless, this is really a matter of derivation rather than case inflection, since the Turkish suffix has not replaced the native Romani ablative in -tar in those dialects where akanadan occurs. (See also §4.3.3.2 on the copying of the Turkish ablative together with a postposition.)
Other nominal inflection has entered Balkan languages in a similar way, being reanalyzed as simply a part of a stem. Thus for example the English plural -s occurs occasionally in some borrowings into Balkan languages. For instance, Greek has the indeclinable forms κλιπς ‘clip’ and τανκς ‘tank’ as singulars (thus, e.g., το τανκς ‘the tank’) but with the -ς reflecting the English plural -s.Footnote 68 The status of English -s as part of the stem is especially clear in the Bulgarian form kets for ‘sneaker, tennis shoe’ (from the American brand name Keds), since it can be overtly pluralized as kets-ove, with the usual plural suffix. The same phenomenon is observed in the borrowing of Turkish -lAr into the various Balkan languages (see §6.1.4.1).
4.3 Adding to the Typology of Loanwords: ERIC Loans
Having covered the historical content loans, however briefly, we can turn our attention to the type of loanword that gives the greatest insight, in our view, into the nature and origin of the Balkan sprachbund. We start by elaborating on the term introduced above in §§4.1 and 4.2, “ERIC loans,” as it gives substance to a key distinction in the assessment of lexical borrowings, certainly in the Balkans and arguably more widely too. As noted, this new term is actually an acronym, though we write it simply as ERIC henceforth.Footnote 69 It is to be taken as a modifier of “loans” or “loanwords,” thus standing for “(loans that are) Essentially Rooted In Conversation.” The concept emanates from a particular set of conditions under which certain classes of loanwords crossed linguistic boundaries in the Balkans.
ERIC loans are those loans that depend crucially on speaker-to-speaker interaction of an on-going and sustained kind, the sort of contact that can be characterized as intense and at the same time intimate, as opposed to occasional and casual. As noted already (see, e.g., §3.1), borrowing can occur without any speaker contact, as with loanwords from Latin into English or from Old Church Slavonic into Russian and thence Bulgarian, where the medium is literary, rather than conversational, in nature, or as with the coining of new names for new technological or medical or scientific advances using (neo-)Latin or Greek roots. But even when speaker contact is involved, there can be different degrees of contact; this fact is recognized explicitly in the Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 74–76 “scale of borrowability,” where the borrowing of different types of linguistic material is said to correlate with different levels of intensity of contact among speakers. It is our contention, consistent with this scale, that certain types of loanwords, especially those embedded in interpersonal discourse and conversational use and those that go beyond simple exchange of information and/or association with goods and products, correlate with the intense, sustained, and intimate contact, in a bi- or multilingual milieu, that is necessary for the formation of a linguistic area with structural convergences, i.e., a sprachbund, as described in §3.2.2.10 and §3.4. (See Gast & Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2022 for another perspective on degrees of borrowability.)
We thus draw a distinction between loanwords that are concrete and informational and rooted in specific areas of interactions related to material culture (foods, goods, and the like), which can pass among speakers under very casual contact situations, and those that are essentially rooted in conversational interactions and which need considerable direct speaker interaction in order to be transmitted across languages – the “object-oriented” versus “human-oriented” interaction distinction, in the terminology of §3.1. In this way we are amplifying upon our speaker-plus-dialect approach outlined in §3.1 and §3.3, applying it directly to the area of lexis. For this study of Balkan lexis in particular, we follow and build on the work of two key scholars before us (though Friedman 1986c (see below) and Joseph 1994d foreshadow this approach): Kjetil Rå Hauge and Yaron Matras, who emphasize, in different ways, a conversational basis for borrowings that go beyond terms for concrete material objects. Hauge 2002 draws attention to the borrowing of pragmatic and discourse markers in the Balkans and notes various kinship-related practices and terminology as well as some expressive usages that speak to “a considerable degree of intensity of language contacts” in the region, a notion we amplify below. Matras 1998 offers a cognitive basis, founded in bilingualism and conversational interactions, for the borrowing of elements of grammar that he calls “utterance modifiers,” and Matras 2009 with its extensive survey of different types of word-classes (along various dimensions – part of speech and function as well as semantic class), observes, in discussing the borrowing of adverbs, e.g., Romance certu ‘certainly’ into Maltese, or Arabic belki ‘perhaps’ into Turkish (and on into the Balkans, see §4.2.4.2.1 below), that “all of these may have a lexical core in structural terms, but the label ‘adverb’ applied to them is misleading, since we are dealing with relatively grammaticalised items that operate at the interaction level, not at the level of straightforward naming or labelling, which is the property of content-lexical items.” Matras thus recognizes a discourse basis for much of the borrowing of items he surveys at the level of grammar, as do we. As he puts it, regarding the diffusing (for him via “replication”) across languages of greetings: “the replication of matter around discourse-level, para-linguistic gestures also satisfies the need to simplify the management-apparatus of conversational interaction within the bilingual repertoire, and to establish uniform or at least compatible modes of reacting and intervening at the interaction-management level.”Footnote 70 It is such discourse-related interaction-based items that constitute a significant portion of our ERIC loans; this is not surprising, under the reasonable assumption that due to their conversational salience and frequency, discourse phenomena might well show a greater degree of diffusibility (i.e., borrowability).
Still, it is not just that ERIC loans are rooted in discourse, but also, as suggested by Hauge’s invocation of “intensity” and as the discussion and examples below make clear, that they reflect certain kinds of interactions, including those of a playful, friendly, bantering nature, with good will among the participants in the conversational exchanges. Consequently, we see them as being “sprachbund-consistent,” as well as “sprachbund-conducive,” since they represent those lexical elements that most directly reflect the sort of language contact that is consistent with the emergence of a sprachbund and conducive to its emergence: contact on a day-to-day basis, in a multilingual milieu, that is sustained and intense, yet rooted in interactions that are mostly good-natured in intent – that is to say, intimate.Footnote 71 Of course, speakers in all contact situations interact verbally, and forms that are typically resistant to borrowing do get borrowed in other than sprachbund-consistent/conducive contexts.Footnote 72 However, verbal interaction alone is not the issue, but rather the nature, the intensity and the character, of the verbal interaction. Thus, the preponderance of ERIC loans in the Balkans is what we see as particularly striking. All of this means, moreover, that these ERIC loans are not just incidental as far as the sprachbund is concerned, but rather are diagnostic signs of the social circumstances that lead to the structural convergence that most linguists take as pointing to a linguistic area, a sprachbund.
We see ERIC loans as adding to existing typologies of borrowings, though intersecting with some of them. For instance, it provides an overarching rubric for the types of contact influence that Hauge mentioned, drawing together expressives, gestures, kinship practices, and pragmatic markers in the discourse, along with much else. Moreover, the notion of ERIC loans cuts across a taxonomy of borrowing by word-type, as is implicit in the presentation in Matras 2009 where “lexical borrowing” and “grammatical borrowing” are treated in separate chapters,Footnote 73 encompassing certain types of lexical items as well as certain grammatical categories.
Among other widely cited and fairly standard loanword typologies in the literature, the influential studies by Einar Haugen deserve particular mention. They offer classifications that focus primarily on the form of the loan; Haugen 1950 distinguished between “importation” and “substitution,” based, as Winford 2003: 41–46 puts it in his own survey of loanword types, “on the presence or absence of foreignness markers,” while Haugen 1953 drew a distinction between “lexical borrowings” and “creations,” that is between what may be referred to (Winford 2003: 41–46) as the “imitation of some aspect of the donor model,” in the former case, and forms that are “entirely native [with] no counterpart in the donor language” even if based on some nonnative material, in the latter. As Winford notes, these distinctions recall Betz’s 1949 categories of Lehnwort (loanword) and Lehnprägung (loan coinage). We can also mention here the concepts of additive and substitutive borrowing (cf., e.g., Lusekelo 2017) depending on whether a loanword adds to or replaces native vocabulary. These notions are similar to Desnickaja’s 1988 cultural-historical and ethno-historical types respectively (see also Kahl 2014). Here we can note that standardization processes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Balkans (and elsewhere) actually involved substitutive neologisms to erase the effects of borrowing (cf. the discussion of Turkisms in §4.4.1).
Another important typological schema for loans is that of Bloomfield 1933, based largely on the content of the borrowed word. He distinguished between, on the one hand, “cultural borrowings,” those arising via the often-mutual exchange, between speakers of different languages, representing different cultures, of terminology associated with those cultures, and, on the other, “intimate borrowings,” those not obviously linked to cultural objects and that seep into a borrower’s usage due to repeated exposure on a regular basis. In that way they are tied to interaction, and it is this sense of “intimate” that we summon up in our ERIC characterization. Yet another typology, offered by Hockett 1958: 403–407, focuses mainly on the motivation for the loan. Hockett contrasts “need-filling borrowings,” essentially Bloomfield’s cultural type, though the motivation of “needing” a word for a (new) cultural item is at issue,Footnote 74 with “prestige borrowings,” where the motivation is the “prestige” that the borrowing language speakers accord to material from the donor language.
All of these typologies are useful and the positive attention given especially to Bloomfield’s and Hockett’s over the years is well deserved, as the distinctions they embody are important and real. Moreover, they are applicable to various borrowing situations in the Balkans. For instance, the borrowing of Greek ecclesiastical vocabulary along with what became Orthodox Christianity into Slavic fits well under the rubric of cultural loans, and thus were additive, and the entry of Turkish words into the various languages was not just a matter of the “need” generated by Turkish administrative terminology during the Ottoman period. And, to a large extent, the rather remarkable degree to which Turkisms occurred in Greek of the Ottoman period, at least into the early twentieth century, in what is now Edirne (Grk Adrianoúpoli),Footnote 75 as described by Ronzevalle 1911, 1912, for instance, or in Bulgarian, as catalogued in Grannes et al. 2002, and for Macedonian as in Jašar-Nasteva 2001 and Cvetkovski 2017, can be attributed to Turkish being viewed as a fashionable, and thus prestigious, language in Balkan urban centers at the time (cf. Herbert 1906: 152; similarly, Turkish-style clothing was fashionable among Christians in some Albanian urban centers such as Shkodra and Elbasan, cf. Marubi et al. 2009). Turkish remained an urban prestige language in what is now Kosovo and North Macedonia until well into the second half of the twentieth century, and that attitude has persisted among some old town dwellers into the twenty-first century.Footnote 76
Still, these classifications are not without problems. For instance, by focusing on form, Haugen’s does not build in the social context for the loans, even though, except in the case of learnèd borrowings (and the like), borrowing implies interaction between/among speakers. Moreover, the types listed above are not necessarily discrete – a cultural/need loan might be undertaken for reasons of (Hockettian) prestige or be associated with (Bloomfieldian) intimate contact, as seen in the shifts in religious vocabulary discussed in §4.2.1.6. Furthermore, noncultural/nonneed loans do not always involve prestige, at least not obviously so; for instance, as described in Joseph 1985b, drawing on Fourikis 1918, the Greek of Megara (in the area of Corinth) shows the borrowing of the Albanian diminutive –zə in forms such as λιγάζα ‘a little’ (cf. Greek λίγο ‘little (N); a little’), even though it is not at all clear that speakers of Albanian or their language ever had any prestige in that, or indeed any, part of Greece.Footnote 77 Moreover, as this Albanian loan in Greek shows, along with the numerous other loans discussed below, this sort of borrowing at an intimate level can go in all directions, contrary to Bloomfield’s view; Bloomfield 1933: 461 saw intimate borrowing as essentially a one-way process: “intimate borrowing is one-sided … the borrowing goes predominantly from the upper language to the lower.” Recognizing conversational interaction as the basis for the loans, instead of local prestige and relative relations of “upper” and “lower,” makes the two-way, bi-directional nature of these loans seen in the Balkans readily understandable.
What these typologies are missing (as Matras 2009 recognizes) is the full dynamics of the environment in which borrowing occurs and the medium through which borrowing takes place. This is a particular concern for the Balkans, since the lexical side of the Balkan sprachbund is only one dimension of the contact-related effects, inasmuch as there is massive structural convergence evident too.
What is needed, therefore, is the recognition of a type of loan phenomenon which is consistent with what is known about contact in the Balkans, the contact that gave rise to the structural convergence that in part defines the sprachbund, namely sustained, intense, intimate contact among speakers, with multilateral, multigenerational, mutual, multilingualism. Identifying a class of ERIC loans does just that, as they are based on the mutual interaction, specifically on conversational interaction, between speakers. Thus, we see our “ERIC loans” as extending existing typologies, especially as to the notion of “intimate loans,” but without entirely endorsing the traditional and still quite prevalent rubrics for analyzing loans and all that they entail, such as Bloomfieldian “one-sidedness.”
These ERIC loans are similar in certain ways to Trubetzkoy’s culture words, a class of loanwords that reflect a shared cultural milieu for the languages in question. In a sense, ERIC loans are a type of culture words, namely those associated with the culture of conversational interaction among speakers. Their connection to Trubetzkoy’s conceptualization of the relevance of loanwords to recognizing a sprachbund, then, provides a basis for their characterization here of being both “sprachbund-consistent” and “sprachbund-conducive.”
As an extension of this comment on the relevance of loanword evidence, culture words and ERIC loans explain why the label of “Balkan language” is not a typological notion as far as the sprachbund is concerned. That is, while it has been claimed that English could be counted as a Balkan language (see Aronson 2007), since it shows case mergers, a volitionally based future, retreat of an infinitive (though with the emergence of a new one with to), and so on,Footnote 78 such a claim only makes sense if understood as a typological statement that the language has such and such features. It is meaningless historically (as Aronson himself of course recognizes), and in examining the Balkan sprachbund, we are examining the history of the languages in the area, how the convergences emerged, what conditions gave rise to them, and so on. Trubetzkoy’s culture words and our ERIC loans are part of the determination of the sprachbund, and a language like English can be excluded not based on the features it shows, but on the fact that it shows no signs of participation in the diffusion of culture words as well as ERIC loans. Similarly, arguments that the Balkan sprachbund is just part of a larger European convergence zone (e.g., Haspelmath 1998; see §3.4.1.3 and §7.7.2.1.5) fail on this lexical dimension. In this sense, then, the lexicon can prove diagnostic as to sprachbund “membership.”
Moreover, as discussed further in §6.2.5.11 and Chapter 8, the conversational nature of ERIC loans serves as a basis for understanding various Balkanisms that are more pragmatic in nature, as with inferences about information source (“evidentiality” – see §6.2.5). Such effects depend to a large extent on conversational interaction between speakers and the inferences that are drawn in the full context of conversation.
To return to ERIC loans per se, the acronym “ERIC” is motivated in two ways. First, as alert readers may have already noticed, it serves as a suitable homage to Eric P. Hamp, who not only provided the authors with invaluable guidance, insight, and advice on the Balkans countless times in past decades, but also offered the same level of sagacity and wisdom to untold numbers of Balkan scholars over the years through his literally hundreds of articles and presentations treating all aspects of Balkan linguistics. We are pleased to be able to offer this homage since our mentor Eric passed away in 2019, on February 17.
However, this is not just an idle way of honoring a scholar and mentor we learned much from. There is a second motivation, namely, that as the brief review of loanword typology above demonstrates, there is a need for distinguishing between loans that take place under sprachbund-conducive conditions and those that take place under casual contact situations. In our view, face-to-face interaction, of the sort that would necessarily have occurred under the intense and on-going contact among speakers in the Balkans, when coupled with multigenerational, multilateral, mutual multilingualism, is essential for creating and propagating the structural convergences typically taken as diagnostic of a sprachbund.Footnote 79 The fact that certain kinds of loanwords occur in such a social milieu is an additional factor, and it means that such loanwords can be both another indicator of contact conducive to the formation of a sprachbund and, therefore, a result of such contact. Thus, these are loans that tell us about speaker contact and about the sociolinguistics and socio-history of the region. For that reason, we give our primary emphasis here to these borrowings and in the sections that follow we survey different types of ERIC loans in the Balkans.
Although extensive documentation of these loans comes in the following sections, a brief, and particularly telling, example of some ERIC loans in the Balkans, can be offered here: the entry of Turkish words into Macedonian, where, as described in Friedman 1986c, virtually all categories of lexical items, covering virtually all sectors of the vocabulary, have been affected:Footnote 80
The large number of Turkish lexical borrowings belong to all levels of vocabulary and almost all parts of speech, e.g., džeb ‘n. pocket’ (ceb), bendisa ‘v. please’ (beğen-), taze ‘adj. fresh’ (taze), badijala ‘adv. for nothing’ (bâdihava), ama ‘conj. but’ (amma), karši ‘prep. opposite,’ (karşi), ič ‘pron. nothing’ (hiç), sikter ‘excl./interj. scram’ (siktir), keški ‘part. if only’ (keşke). The only Macedonian traditional part of speech lacking Turkisms is the numeral, although there are Turkisms in numerical expressions, e.g., čerek (çeyrek) ‘quarter,’ and Turkish numerals in other parts of speech, e.g., bešlik (beşlik) ‘five-grosch silver coin’ … Turkish vocabulary has penetrated every facet of Macedonian life: urban and rural, e.g., duḱan, ‘shop’ (dükkân), sokak ‘street, alley’ (sokak), ambar ‘barn’ (hambar), endek ‘ditch, furrow’ (hendek); man-made and natural, e.g., tavan ‘ceiling’ (tavan), šiše ‘bottle’ (şişe), zumbul ‘hyacinth’ (zümbül), taftabita ‘bedbug’ (tahtabiti); intimate and abstract, e.g., džiger ‘liver, lungs’ (ciğer), badžanak ‘brother-in-law (wife’s sister’s husband)’ (bacanak), rezil ‘disgrace’ (rezil), muabet ‘conversation’
The ERIC loans to be surveyed here fall into these sorts of categories, and more. We classify the subtypes of ERIC loans in Table 4.4.
It can be noted that some of these ERIC types are not lexical borrowing in the strict sense. We include the spread of expressive phonology here and also onomatopoeia because, for one thing, these phenomena spread under the intimate and intense contact we see as crucial to the Balkan sprachbund and, for another, they have lexical effects, adding to or altering the shape of a given word as listed in the lexicon. Moreover, they reflect the fact that what goes on in interpersonal discourse, and conversational interactions in particular, is not just for the exchange of information; there is an emotive and expressive side as well. Further, some phenomena of a morphological nature, in particular vocatives (§4.3.5, §6.1.1.4), and even a morphosyntactic and pragmatic nature, in particular ethical datives (§6.1.1.2.5), evidentiality (§6.2.6), and narrative imperatives (§7.8.2.2.8), fit into the conversationally based rubric that ERIC loans determine, vocatives through their connection to address and thus conversation, ethical datives through the speaker and interlocutor involvement that they mark, evidentiality through the importance that speakers accord to information source or speaker attitude in conversational exchanges, and narrative imperatives through the vividness and immediacy they impart to oral-based narratives.
We include as well some processes that apply to and operate on words, such as reduplication, given that they augment both the form and the meaning of particular lexical items. Interestingly, and importantly, as others have done,Footnote 82 Hauge 2002 blends the expressive with the reduplicative in including expressive reduplication with m-, discussed below in §4.3.7.2.2, as relevant to his treatment of Balkan “pragmatic and paralinguistic isomorphisms.” We note, though, that he does so without a framework that connects the pragmatic with the paralinguistic, except via “intensity of contact,” a connection that our concept of ERIC loans does achieve.
Further, in the case of idioms and phraseology, the traditional notion of calquing is evident, inasmuch as these contact-induced cases involve native-language material arranged according to patterns in another language as the models. As discussed in §3.2.1.7, the distinction between traditional borrowing and traditional calquing is not an issue for our focus here, in that in either case, foreign language material, whether the form itself or just the semantic framework for a form, finds its way into the recipient language. We thus discuss in §4.3.10 several parallels that fall under the rubric of isosemy, a term for parallel semantic structuring in a contact situation.Footnote 83 The one way in which the distinction does matter, however, is that in calquing (again, see §3.2.1.7), one has to assume at least minimal knowledge of the donor language and its structure and/or morphemic divisions on the part of a recipient language speaker. Since multilingualism is a crucial condition for the emergence of a sprachbund, the fact that calquing points to bilingualism is a crucial indicator of sprachbund-conducive/consistent conditions.
Returning to ERIC loans, we observe that many of them are members of closed lexical classes, including function words, and many represent vocabulary domains generally held to be somewhat resistant to borrowing. Swadesh 1950, for instance, developed this notion and with it, a list of 207 words for what he saw as generic and pan-cultural concepts that seemed particularly likely not to be borrowed.Footnote 84 Many have questioned the underlying assumption behind Swadesh’s list, especially, Matras 2009: 166–167, who says “given that the list is rather short, it is difficult to use it as a basis for statements about the stability of either individual semantic domains or word-classes.” Nonetheless, it is much cited as an important early statement about borrowability and offers Swadesh’s educated opinion on the resistance of certain words to replacement by borrowing. Moreover, Thomason & Kaufman 1988, in their “borrowing scale,” assign to level three contact (out of five levels) – the level of “more intense contact”Footnote 85 – various of the word classes listed above, including “adpositions … personal and demonstrative pronouns and low numerals,” as well as function words more generally, a class which would take in complementizers and negation markers. And, as published in 2009–2010, work conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, through the development of a Loanword Typology database,Footnote 86 offers a statistical basis for borrowability, and, significantly for the concept of ERIC loans, some of the categories listed under our rubric fall within the semantic spheres claimed as least likely to be involved in borrowings. Finally, while Matras 2009: 193ff. surveys cases of borrowing involving word-classes believed to be generally resistant, he is comfortable with the idea that such classes resist borrowing just under “usual circumstances” (our term, not his), since he says (p. 165) that “often … the counter-example … can be explained as resulting from a local, language-particular constraint that impedes the realization of common patterns in a particular instance.” Thus, the occurrence of such loans in languages in the Balkans speaks to the nature, and intensity, of the local contact situation.Footnote 87
Of course, not all closed class items are resistant to borrowing, as certain discourse-related reasons can favor the borrowing of some such words. In all instances, though, the dynamics of discourse, and of conversational interaction, are key to understanding the borrowing that occurs.
In what follows, we survey the classes of ERIC loans identified above in Table 4.4. We start with the closed class items, both lexical and grammatical, and then move towards the more expressive end of the ERIC typology including shared formulaic usage and phraseology. Some of these subtypes receive fuller treatment elsewhere; vocatives are discussed further in §6.1.1.4, and expressive phonology in §5.7. Still, they are included here as they contribute an important dimension to the overall concept of ERIC loans and thereby to the sprachbund. The forms given here, then, are intended to be more illustrative of the patterns of borrowing than exhaustive; still, we aim to provide as full a range of the languages showing these borrowings as possible based on available sources. Their existence is their relevance for the sprachbund, but so too are the sheer numbers of such loans in the region; Matras 2009 gives examples of loans here and there from around the world that are like some of the subtypes of ERIC loans surveyed here, but what makes the Balkan situation so striking is that so many different types of conversationally based loans are represented in the region in such a concentrated way – in our view, that strengthens the claim that they represent a dimension that was crucial to the formation of the Balkan sprachbund.
Table 4.4 ERIC loanword categories
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A cautionary note is needed. When convenient, we often cite modern standard forms from the languages involved; especially in the case of Turkish, as Johanson 2002: 108 cogently points out, the relevant source was often colloquial Balkan Turkish, in which words, meanings, and sounds can differ greatly from modern standard forms. We recognize this problem but argue that tracking down every pre-modern and dialectal form is beyond the scope of what we are trying to demonstrate here. Thus any serious etymological work that might emerge out of our discussion below needs to consult specialist literature regarding the details on the likely earlier source words.
4.3.1 Kinship Terms – General Concerns, Exemplified with ‘(Grand)Father’
Kinship terms are universally recognized as a closed set of lexical items bound to their cultural context. As such, they tend to be resistant to borrowing, and to be sure, the terms ‘father,’ ‘mother,’ ‘child,’ ‘wife,’ and ‘husband,’ occur on the “Swadesh list” (see Footnote footnote 84).Footnote 88 Such terms would be covered by level 3 (“more intense contact”) in the borrowing scale of Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 74–76. Matras 2009: 169 argues that immediate kin terms resist borrowing, since they are part of the “general stability of concepts pertaining to the immediate surroundings [which includes] orientation in space, time and quantity, the private domain of mental and physical activity, and the nearest human environment (body and close kin)”; he refers to this characterization as a “proximity constraint” and gives a hierarchy (p. 161) in which “more remote kin > [=are more easily borrowed than] close kin.” The sort of contact needed for the acceptance of borrowed kinship terms into wide usage would thus be intense and sprachbund-conducive and thus associated with ERIC loans.
And indeed, in the Balkans the borrowing of kinship words has taken place numerous times, involving several different pairs of languages and a variety of terms, both close and more distant kin. In many instances, where it is possible to tell from an etymological standpoint, the source of Balkan kin-term borrowings is Turkish, but almost all of the languages – Slavic, Greek, and Albanian in particular – figure in kin-term borrowing. The need for etymological caution here is dictated by the fact that the presence of similar-looking kin-terms in some of these languages may well represent nursery terms that were independently arrived at in each language. For example, while Aromanian tatã (Cuvata 2009: s.v.) looks like the widespread Greek τάτας and Epiros Greek τάττος (both cited, with references, by Papahagi 1974 and Vrabie 2000) and the Albanian tatë ‘papa’ (given as “colloquial” in Newmark 1998) and Macedonian tatko, voc tate (although Bulgarian has bašta), the cross-linguistic prevalence of CaCa words, especially with coronal (and labial) consonants, for intimate kin-terms (so-called “nursery words,” and cf. English dada, daddy, dad) means that any given instance of form like this in the Balkans could simply have arisen within that language on its own; contact and borrowing need not be involved.
Still, there are cases where borrowing must be the explanation for a particular kin term in a given language. For instance, Albanian, Aromanian, Greek, and Romani all have babá (Grk μπαμπάς; also Geg bábë, with typical retracted stress in Turkisms, and Bugurdži bábi (Boretzky 1993: 34), probably influenced by the Geg definite) for ‘father’; even though seemingly derivable independently in each language as a nursery word, it most likely is a borrowing from Trk babá, since the stress placement, in Greek at least, points to Turkish as the source, and in Albanian, this word uses a Turkish plural marker: baballarë.Footnote 89 Moreover, contemporary Macedonian sources give baba ‘father’ as an archaism (Velkovska 2003: s.v., Derebaj & Filipov 2019: s.v.), suggesting that it was in wider use in earlier times, and similarly, Bulgarian lexical resources cite it as dialectal (see Grannes 1996: 164).Footnote 90
It should be noted too that in each of these cases, the languages do have other words in use, e.g., for ‘father’ Greek has πατέρας, Aromanian has néni, and, rarely (mostly in speech communities in Greece) patéra, Macedonian has tatko, and Albanian has atë as well as a form lalë, given by Newmark 1998: 437 as having one meaning, marked as “colloquial,” that is relevant here, ‘young father: daddy’ (also in Çabej 2014: s.v.); interestingly, this last word has many other kinship-related meanings (see §§4.3.1.1, 4.3.1.2, and 4.3.1.4).Footnote 91 At least one of these is a clear loanword, namely Aro patéra, from Greek, and Alb lalë is claimed to derive from Trk lâla ‘manservant assigned to the care of a child’ (ultimately from Persian). The remaining forms other than the Greek may well have nursery-like origins if not as a new creation within the language itself then in an earlier stage; Aro neni, for instance, derives from a presumed Lat ninna, which originated as a nursery form.
Importantly, by way of showing another dimension to the examination of these words, it can be noted that these various forms are (or at least at one time were) stylistically differentiated from the loanwords, much as nursery daddy is from formal father in English, with the loanword being relegated to a more intimate and colloquial register of use.Footnote 92 While Albanian atë, for instance, can simply be ‘father,’ it is also found in metaphorical use in atdhe ‘fatherland.’ And, the current Macedonian and Bulgarian situation reveals the nature of lexical competition in words for ‘father’: for ‘father’ there is otec, which is used just as ‘father’ in Church titles (OCS had the broader meaning; see BER IV: s.v. for discussion). In Macedonian, the vocative form tate is the intimate term akin to daddy, while tatko is the “normal” (unmarked) register word for ‘father,’ and is the basis for the derivative tatkovina ‘fatherland.’ Derivatives of the tat- root are widespread in Bulgarian (BER VII: s.v.), including tatkovina for ‘fatherland,’ but ‘father’ per se is bašta, which, etymologically, is related to ‘older brother’ (BER I: s.v., cf. the next paragraph).
The terms for ‘father’ in the older generation, that is, ‘grandfather,’ also show some contact effects. Among the meanings for Albanian lalë/lalo is ‘grandfather,’ according to Meyer 1891: 236; but Mann 1948: s.v. gives only ‘elder brother, (paternal uncle) daddy, godfather, term of endearment for bishop.’Footnote 93 Çabej 2014: s.v. glosses lalë as ‘older brother, father, brother-in-law’ and notes the comparisons with Greek, Aromanian, Turkish, and BCMS. He notes those scholars who claim it as a Turkism in Albanian and those who consider it a nursery word. He also observes that it is more common in the south and center of Albania than in the north and is used as a nickname for inhabitants of Myzeqe (cf. the same for inhabitants of Vojvodina in BCMS, usually with an exaggerated rising tone). Basing himself on the fact that Lala is a family name among the Arbëresh of Sicily and an Arvanitika toponym in Greece, Çabej argues against the Turkish origin.
A different Albanian word is the source of a term for ‘grandfather’ in Aromanian; the form given as ghiuş in Vrabie 2000: 345 and in Papahagi 1974: 614 as gjiuşŭ for ‘grandfather,’ occurring beside the inherited or nursery words tat, bunic, and pap, is a borrowing from Albanian gjysh (cf. also aush in Cuvata 2009).Footnote 94 Similarly, dialectal Macedonian (Steblevo, Debar region) has gjuša, and Mrkovići Montenegrin has vocative đišo, both from Albanian gjysh. Further, Macedonian of Gorno Papradnik (Debar region) has kodžo for ‘grandfather,’ from Turkish koca ‘elder.’ Finally, we can note BCMS čukund[j]ed/šukund[j]ed ‘great-great-grandfather’ (i.e., the father of prad[j]ed ‘great-grandfather’), where the prefixal element is from Turkish kökün ‘root, foundation, basis’ (Škaljić 1966: s.v.). The same prefix produces čukunbaba/šukunbaba ‘great-great-grandmother.’Footnote 95
Following on these details about ‘(grand)father,’ we present here a sketch of further relevant kinship term loanword evidence in the Balkans. This evidence is organized by semantics, starting with the most immediate relatives and working “outward” from there, rather than by language.
4.3.1.1 ‘Mother’ (and ‘Grandmother’)
The sememe ‘mother’ in the Balkans appears to be somewhat more stable than ‘father,’ in the sense that it shows less evidence of borrowing.Footnote 96 There are some forms for which borrowing is plausible, but, as with ‘father,’ there are etymological puzzles also with ‘mother’ involving teasing apart nursery origins from loanword origins.
For instance, StAlb nënë (Geg nânë) could in principle be a nursery word in origin or a borrowing from Turkish nene ‘grandmother,’ a variant of nine ‘idem’; the etymological dictionaries that mention this word (Çabej 2002; B. Demiraj 1997; Huld 1984) side with the nursery-word hypothesis,Footnote 97 and this is certainly reasonable. Turkish is not even mentioned, presumably because of the meaning difference between nene/nine and nënë (and the nasality in Geg); however, there is an Ancient Greek form of nursery origin, μάμμη, that means both ‘mother’ and ‘grandmother,’ so that parallels do exist for generational shifts in meaning involving female parents (and see below regarding Albanian dadë).Footnote 98 The situation is similar with dialectal Macedonian nana/nona/năna, which some see as a Turkism and others reckon as native Slavic (Stoevska-Denčova 2009: 37). In fact, however, given that the Macedonian dialectal forms are from the Debar region (Stoevska-Denčova 2009: 187), the obvious source is actually Albanian, where these various reflexes of Geg (and Common Albanian) â appear in the Albanian word for ‘mother.’ A similar ambiguity obtains for Mrkovići Montenegrin neana, nana ‘mother’ (Morozova 2019). Relatedly, Greek has νενέ in the meaning ‘granny, grandmother,’ and this is best taken as a borrowing directly from Turkish, an account (endorsed by Andriotis 1983: s.v.) that explains the position of the stress. Similar considerations apply to the other Albanian words for ‘mother,’ ëmë (Geg amë) and mëmë, which are generally taken (so Çabej 2002; B. Demiraj 1997; and Meyer 1891) as nursery words, perhaps of considerable age, though interestingly there is at least one divergent opinion: Paşcu 1925: I, 823 takes ëmë/amë to be a borrowing from Latin amma ‘wetnurse.’
This ‘nurse’ connection may or may not be right for ëmë/amë,Footnote 99 but it is interesting that the Aromanian word for ‘mommy,’ dádă, has parallel forms in neighboring languages with meanings that include ‘nurse (for a child)’: Trk/BSl/BCMS dada ‘older sister,’ Alb dadë ‘female servant,’ Trk dada/dadı ‘child’s nurse’ (said to be ultimately from Persian), and Grk νταντά ‘nanny.’ These surrounding forms may or may not be related to Aro dádă, though the range of meanings for Alb dadë (from Newmark 1998: s.v.) is suggestive since ‘mommy’ is included: ‘wetnurse; pet name in baby talk for the baby’s female caretaker; grandma, mommy, big sister.’ Still, sources that cite them are generally noncommittal; Papahagi, for instance, notes these forms without saying specifically that any are borrowings or donor forms.
Further, Turkish lâla, cited above in §4.2.1, figures indirectly in this sememe, in that there is a Greek form λαλά ‘grandmother’; given that the Turkish word refers to males, this Greek form is most likely a derivative within Greek from the attested masculine λαλάς ‘uncle, grandfather, mentor,’ which is directly from Turkish (Andriotis 1983: s.v.). The Greek pattern of masculines with a nominative in -Vs and a corresponding feminine in -V, e.g., αδερφός ‘brother’ ~ αδερφή ‘sister,’ δάσκαλος ‘(male) teacher’ ~ δασκάλα ‘(female) teacher,’ πατέρας ‘father’ ~ μητέρα ‘mother,’ is thus responsible for the feminine form here. The word for ‘grandmother’ itself can be borrowed: Slavic baba is probably the source of North Albanian babë (definite: baba) ‘grandmother, aunt, form of address to old women’ (Mann 1948: s.v.; cf. Curtis 2012: 79).
Finally, there is one interesting use for Alb ëmë/amë that does show borrowing, but from Albanian into Bulgarian. Çabej 1996: 118 reports that within Albanian, amë acquired an initial t- from a preposed particle of concord (të), possibly as an accusative, t(ë) amë, or via a resegmentation involving jot ‘your,’ where the -t is etymologically connected to the root for ‘you,’ and this new form tamë took on the meaning ‘fountainhead, source’ (i.e., presumably a metaphor, the ‘mother of the waters’). Further, Çabej continues, tamë has been incorporated into the secret language of Bulgarian-speaking bricklayers in the village of Smolsko in the Pirdop region of Bulgaria as tama ‘mother’(Kănčev 1956: 402).Footnote 100
4.3.1.2 ‘Brother’
Turkish ağa ‘master, patron’ (older and dialectal aga, which is its shape in the Balkan languages) is also a provincialism meaning ‘older brother’ (StTrk ağabey) and was used colloquially in this meaning in Bulgarian (Grannes et al. 2002: s.v.).
The versatile and seemingly ubiquitous (in these sections at least) Albanian term lalë offers another case. For Albanian, Meyer 1891: 236 states that this word, which is a borrowing from Turkish lâla (see §4.3.1.1), has the meaning ‘elder brother’ in Kavaja and in Myzeqe in general; further, Arbëresh of the Bova region has leḍḍé for ‘brother’ (and a derivative from that, leḍḍá, for ‘sister’), which, according to Meyer, is from this word.
Aromanian baci is given in Vrabie 2000: 173 under the lemma for ‘brother,’ for which the regular term is fráte (from Latin frater). The word baci is labeled as a ‘term of respect for an elerly [sic] brother.’ It is thus not a primary kinship term, despite the fraternal meaning, but it is connected to kinship terminology. A similar word, bac[ë], is a Geg regionalism meaning ‘older brother, father, or father’s brother’ (Newmark 1998: s.v.). The term is used regularly for ‘older brother’ in Kosovo. The source is the identical bac in South Slavic (cf. BCMS bac, Mac bate, with an affective affrication of t to ts; cf. example (5.31b) in §5.7).Footnote 101
4.3.1.3 ‘Sister’/‘Daughter’
Aromanian dódă for ‘older sister,’ is given in Papahagi 1974: 497 as being of unknown etymology. This form means not just ‘older sister’ but also ‘aunt’ or ‘grandmother’ or ‘wet nurse.’ While it could well be merely an Aromanian-internally derived nursery form, it does show some formal and semantic connections with words in neighboring languages that should not be ignored; these include Trk/BSl/BCMS dada ‘older sister,’ Alb dadë ‘big sister; grandma’ (see §4.3.1.1). The polysemy of the Albanian word is striking when compared with the parallel polysemy of the Aromanian, making a borrowing hypothesis appealing, even if the direction of the borrowing cannot be definitively determined, and even if some internal influence, perhaps a nursery-related effect, was responsible for the vocalism of the initial syllable in dódă (which is also attested in Moldavian). Similarly, Romanian, based on Meyer 1891: 236, has lele in the meaning ‘older sister,’ seemingly connected with the Turkish lâla form cited above (as a feminine derivative of a presumed masculine borrowed form), but taken, more compellingly, by BER III: 357 as a loanword from Bulgarian lelja ‘aunt’ (on which see below, §4.3.1.5), despite the difference in meaning.
Further, along these same semantic lines, there are words that can mean ‘daughter’ – as well as ‘young girl,’ so that they are not necessarily primary kinship terms – that are common across several of the languages and for which a borrowing origin is generally accepted. Albanian has çupë in the meaning (from Newmark 1998: 148) ‘girl, lass; little girl, daughter; unmarried woman, maiden,’ and it is borrowed into southwestern Macedonian as čupa ‘girl’ and Aromanian čiup ‘small child’ (Papahagi 1974: 451) and the meaning of the related čiúpră ‘daughter,’ a word that appears to come from an Albanian collective in -r- *çup[ë]ra, cf. çupëri ‘girlhood; girls taken collectively, the world of girls’ (Newmark 1998: 148).Footnote 102 The Macedonian form can also be used for ‘daughter’ (as, however, can the Slavic-derived word for ‘girl’, devojka).Footnote 103 Similarly, Greek shows both τσούπα and τσούπρα, in the meaning ‘young girl, daughter,’ also clear loanwords from Albanian (or via Macedonian), again with the occurrence of the Albanian collective marker -r- (here -ρ-) as a telltale sign of borrowing.Footnote 104 Turning to a different word with a similar meaning, Albanian bijë ‘daughter’ is the source of (dialectal) Macedonian, Kosovo Serbian, and Montenegrin bija.
4.3.1.4 ‘Uncle’
There are some borrowings to be noted among words for ‘uncle’ in the Balkan languages. First, the Turkish word dayı ‘maternal uncle; mother’s brother’ is clearly the source of Alb dajë, which has the same specific meaning the Turkish word has. This holds as well for Balkan Slavic, where Macedonian has derivatives (diminutives of endearment) dajče and dajko, and Bulgarian has daija and the derivative dajčo, occurring alongside the native Slavic vujko for ‘mother’s brother, maternal uncle.’Footnote 105 Also, in some Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects, especially among Muslims, dajo occurs for ‘maternal uncle’ (BER I: 314).Footnote 106 Greek has νταής ‘bully,’ cf. StTrk kabadayı ‘bully’ (StTrk kaba ‘rough, coarse, crude, vulgar’; cf. also BCMS da[h]ija ‘renegade janissary, tyrant’). Further, Meglenoromanian has daiã, Romani has dajos, and both Bulgarian and Macedonian show, dialectally (Stoevska-Denčova 2009: 94), kalèko and kal’eko/kăl’eko for ‘aunt’s husband,’ from Greek καλο- ‘good’ (quite likely from the vocative καλέ ‘(my) good (man)!’) with a diminutive suffix. Finally, Albanian (Geg) has bac[ë] ‘uncle, older brother, etc.,’ from Slavic (cf. Curtis 2012: 79).
The occurrence of diminutives with this word is not surprising, given that they can fall under the realm of intimate kin terms. Indeed, within Turkish, a diminutive suffix -ca seems to figure in the derivation of the widespread word for ‘father’s brother; paternal uncle,’ amca, composed of a word of learnèd usage from Arabic (so Redhouse 1968: 55–56) am (Arabic ‘amm) ‘paternal uncle,’ with a diminutivizing -ca (usually found on adjectives).Footnote 107 Turkish amca is important in the Balkans as it is the source of Bulgarian amudža and the most likely source of the Albanian words for ‘paternal uncle,’ xhaxha and axhë, and of Macedonian adžo (found in Tetovo and elsewhere) for ‘father’s brother; older man,’ as well as BCMS adža, amidža, adžo (VOC), ‘idem,’ which occur alongside the native Slavic form striko.
Regarding the Albanian, only Meyer 1891: 79–80, among the various Albanian etymological resources, says anything about xhaxha, and he is noncommittal, citing only OCS dědъ ‘grandfather’ and Russ djadja ‘uncle,’ for which latter CoSl *dēdŭ is the etymon, but for which the reflex ja from *ē results from an East Slavic assimilation of a front nasal and is not related to anything West Balkan (cf. Vasmer 1986–1987: s.v.). Although Meyer writes that “the word may be present even in the Slavic Balkan languages,” the word in question woud have to be ded or djed. It is not straightforward to derive either xhaxha or axhë from amca, but the key may be the form xha, a “respectful title used in addressing an older man by his first name” (Newmark 1998: 946). This form conceivably was abstracted out of amca, which can also be used as a “term of address to an older man” (Redhouse 1968: 56), and then reduplicated within Albanian, perhaps as a nursery effect, to give xhaxha. Still, even under this account, contact with Turkish was involved in the derivation of xhaxha. Axhë and adžo, then, are either from amca via a phonetic reduction in the borrowing of the otherwise unusual cluster [mdž], or else abstracted out of xhaxha, as if it were segmented xh-axha.Footnote 108 The Macedonian form could thus be an Albanian loanword, though with the -o as the result of it being drawn into the morphology of hypocoristic kin terms (cf. striko, tetko).
The Turkish word çiçe ‘aunt’ seems to be the connected to Slavic čičo ‘uncle’ – thus with a now-familiar change of gender: BSl and BRo have čičo, čičko, čiča, čika (BCMS) / cică, cicio (regional), čiča, tsitsă, respectively, cf. also Alb çeço ‘daddy, eldest brother.’ These could in principle be independent, Slavic-based creations, and Stoevska-Denčova 2009: 86–87, though inclined towards the Turkish etymology, equivocates as to the source (Skok 1971 does not give a source, reflecting uncertainty in the relevant literature).
Albanian offers another case of a loanword for ‘uncle’ in the general term ungj, as this is a borrowing from Latin avunculus. The contraction of awu- to u shows a regular sound change of (post-)Roman-era Albanian, and the -ngj derives from the syncopated -ncl- with regular voicing induced by the nasal and the expected -gj- outcome of a -gl- sequence.
In Romanian, besides inherited unchi, also from Latin avunculus, the form nene and variant nea and diminutive neică all mean ‘uncle’ as a term of respect rather than kinship. The source is Slavic (cf. Skok 1972: s.v. naja, BER IV: s.vv. nena, nenjo, Vasmer 1986–1987: s.v. njanja). Aromanian, however, has lálă for ‘uncle’ (Vrabie 2000: s.v.), possibly a loanword although its origin is hardly certain. Papahagi suggests a connection with Latin lalla ‘lullaby’ (not attested as such in Latin but presumably based on the verb lallo ‘sing a lullaby’) but that seems rather far-fetched as a source for ‘uncle.’ A better starting point for the Aromanian is Albanian lalë ‘elder brother; (paternal) uncle; godfather,’ itself probably a borrowing from Turkish lâla ‘manservant assigned to the care of a child’ (ultimately from Persian). This Turkish word is also the likely source of a nineteenth-century Macedonian form lală for ‘uncle’ cited by Meyer 1891: 236 but not current through much of the twentieth century (see §§4.3.1, 4.3.1.1, and 4.3.1.2 for other ways that lâla has had an impact on Balkan kinship terminology).
4.3.1.5 ‘Aunt’
A word for ‘aunt’ has been discussed, in §4.3.1.3 above, with regard to Aromanian dódă, meaning ‘older sister’ but also ‘aunt’ (and ‘grandmother’); this word seems best taken to be a loanword from Albanian, although the Albanian source does not show the ‘aunt’ meaning.
There are, however, clear cases of loanwords for ‘aunt’ in the Balkans. Aromanian offers two other words for ‘aunt’ that are likely borrowings: tétă, taken by Papahagi 1974: 1176 to be from Bulgarian (or Balkan Slavic more generally) teta, and ţáţă, from Greek τσάτσα. The Greek may reflect a reduplication within Greek of a form based on θεία/θειά ‘aunt,’Footnote 109 but it is hard to separate it from the Turkish slang term çaça ‘woman who keeps a brothel.’ Interestingly, though, çaça is said (Redhouse 1968: 235; Tietze 2002: s.v.) to be from the Greek τσατσά for ‘old woman’ (derived by an accent shift from τσάτσα ‘aunt(y)’), which can also have the ‘brothel’-related meaning of çaça;Footnote 110 thus the directionality of the borrowing may not be clear. For Bulgarian, Gerov 1895–1908: s.v. gives čičjá for ‘father’s brother,’ and číčja for ‘father’s brother’s wife.’ It is possible that Turkish çiçe ‘aunt’ played a role here, although the accentuation makes this hypothesis problematic.
Turkish itself distinguishes in its kinship terms between ‘maternal aunt (mother’s sister),’ teyze, and ‘paternal aunt (father’s sister),’ hala. These words – and the associated semantic distinctions – were borrowed into Albanian as teze and hallë, occurring alongside the more general terms emtë ‘aunt (paternal or maternal),’ itself a loanword from Latin amita ‘paternal aunt,’ and teto ‘aunt,’ a likely borrowing from Macedonian, though a nursery origin cannot be ruled out. Dialectally, Macedonian and BCMS have ala from Turkish hala (Stoevska-Denčova 2009: 178, citing Jašar-Nasteva 2001; Morozova 2019), while Kratovo and Tetovo Macedonian have teza, though not hala. For BCMS, Bjeletić (1995: 208–209), cited in Morozova 2019, notes that both ala and teza/teze mean simply ‘aunt’ in most BCMS dialects where they occur, and it is only in Mrkovići and the Catholic village Janjevo in Kosovo that father’s and mother’s side are distinguished. Similarly, Bulgarian has tejza, teze (dialectally tize), from Turkish, though these are now considered to be obsolete; interestingly, Bulgarian ale, hala are cited as ‘maternal (sic!) aunt’ in Morozova 2019, as are teza, teze.Footnote 111 Many dialects of Romani in the Balkans have tetka, and Macedonian Arli and Kosovo Bugurdži also have teza in addition to tetka. Native Romani is bibi, a form also widely used in the Balkans.Footnote 112
Albanian is a source of words for ‘aunt’ in various Macedonian dialects, as documented in Stoevska-Denčova 2009: 90–91. In various villages in the Debar region, džidža and džedža occur, apparently borrowed from, or better, based somehow on, Albanian xhaxhkë ‘aunt.’ Similarly, in Slimnica (Grk Trílofos) in the Kostur (Grk Kastoria) region, Kunovo in the Gostivar region, and Suho in the area around Thessaloniki, nana, nane, and nača occur, respectively, based on Albanian nënë ‘mother.’
A familiar etymological puzzle also arises here. Bulgarian has a form lelja for ‘aunt’ that would seem to have something to do with Turkish lâla, perhaps involving a feminine derivative of a(n unattested) masculine form taken directly from the Turkish. However, Meyer 1891: 236, writing that lelja should be separated from the lâl-related forms, urges caution here, appropriately enough since, as BER III: 356–357 shows, forms related to lelja are to be found all over Slavic and Baltic as well, revealing it to be a Balto-Slavic lexeme of long standing.
The lâl- word in Albanian, lalë, which otherwise has male meanings (‘young father; elder brother,’ etc.) does show a gender-shifted meaning to ‘aunt’ in Geg, according to Meyer ibid., where the form is jajë (marked as nonstandard by Newmark 1998: 334). The exact mechanism for this shift is not entirely clear but may involve an internal derivational process.Footnote 113 Meyer 1891: 91 notes that this form shows an interesting development in the Berat (Tosk) dialect, where the form is thjajë; Meyer accounts for the unusual form by appealing to influence from Greek θεία ([θjá]}, giving a form that is a phonological loanblend or hybrid.
Finally, Turkish has figured heavily in the borrowed kinship terminology documented in the preceding sections, but as the donor language in case after case. There are, of course, kin terms in the Balkans borrowed from donor languages other than Turkish, as shown by various examples throughout. Still, one such case deserves mention here involving Turkish as the recipient language. Turkish as spoken in North Macedonia has borrowed the Macedonian word tetko ‘aunty,’ for use as a vocative. Many dialects of Romani also have tetka/tetko. Thus donor and recipient language in the Balkans are not predetermined roles; rather they depend on the local social circumstances.
4.3.1.6 ‘In-Laws’
As with other kinship terms, words for various in-laws in the Balkans also yield instances of loanwords. For instance, Bulgarian and eastern Macedonian have baldəza (with a variant baldəzka, standard Mac baldaza); BCMS (in Muslim contexts) has balduza (Škaljić 1966: s.v.) or balgaza (Morozova 2019) for ‘wife’s sister,’ and Macedonian Arli Romani has baliska (Halwachs et al. 2007) thus a type of sister-in-law, a borrowing from Turkish baldız ‘sister-in-law, wife’s sister.’ Kratovo and Tetovo Macedonian gelin, Montenegrin and Shkodran Geg gjelinë, and Mrkovići Montenegrin đelina, as well as Pomak Bulgarian gelina (Morozova 2019: 333), all refer to both ‘bride’ and ‘daughter-in-law,’ from Turkish gelin ‘bride; daughter-in-law’ (absent from Škaljić 1966). Dialectal Macedonian nusa (in Gora, both nusa and nuse) from Albanian nuse ‘bride; daughter-in-law’ also occurs in parts of southern Montenegro (Morozova 2019). In Kratovo one finds jenga ‘sister-in-law,’ from Turkish yenge ‘(woman’s) sister-in-law; aunt-in-law’ (‘husband’s brother’s wife’); Škaljić 1966 gives the following forms for BCMS: [j]enđa, [j]enga (with both ȅ and é), [j]enđija, [j]engija (with è) with meanings varying from ‘husband’s brother’s wife’ to the equivalent of ‘maid of honor at a wedding’ (who is usually a female relative of the equivalent of best man kum, stari svat). For Bulgarian, Grannes et al. 2002: s.v. gives engé ‘father’s brother’s wife,’ and Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 88 notes jengja for ‘father’s brother’s wife’ in Kratovo Macedonian.
Dialectally in Macedonian forms such as kain and kaim (Trk kayın) occur for ‘wife’s brother’ and BCMS has ka[j]in (Škaljić 1966: s.v.) as well as diminutive kainče. In Bulgarian, there are the variants kaínče, kaínčo ‘idem’ and also kaína, kájna, and kaína, and kaínla (<? kayin abla = kayın + abla ‘sister’[?]) ‘husband’s brother’s wife’ (see below for more on ‘brother-in-law’).
Greek is involved here insofar as forms based on πεθερός ‘father-in-law’ occur dialectally in Macedonian (Stoevska-Denčova 2009: 115): p’efir in Negovan (Grk Ksilópoli), near Thessaloniki, with f for θ and an -i- that reflects the usual northern Greek pronunciation; pehjar in the Sérres region, with h for f; and peăr, also in the Sérres area, with (regular) loss of /h/.
Perhaps the most widely distributed Turkish kin term in the Balkans is the word for ‘husband of one’s wife’s sister; brother-in-law’ (and derivatives from it). The Turkish word is bacanak ‘brother-in-law (wife’s sister’s husband),’ and it has yielded Mac, Blg, and BCMS badžanak, Alb baxhanak, Aro baginac, bãginac, Megl baginac, bãgiãnac, and Grk μπατζανάκης (cf. Morozova 2019). The meaning in Albanian, Macedonian, and South Danubian Balkan Romance (SDBR) retains the specificity of the Turkish form, whereas in Bulgarian and Greek the meaning has been generalized (so BER I: s.v.) to cover ‘sister’s husband’ as well (thus competing, for Bulgarian, with the inherited Common Slavic term: OCS šurinъ, šurь, Mac šura, Blg šurej, Russ šurin, etc.). The standard Turkish form is as given above, but there is a variant form given in Redhouse 1968: 116 as bacınak that might explain more directly the SDBR forms with a medial high front vowel. Similarly, the variants with schwa in the first syllable, could represent vowel reduction or, perhaps, dialectal Turkish.
The “success” of the spread of this foreign word in some of the Balkan languages could be a consequence of there being no inherited Indo-European term for this particular relation; the Indo-European form continued in AGrk δαήρ, Lat levir, Mac/Blg dever, etc., meant ‘brother-in-law,’ but, based on the precise meaning for these cognate forms, it was ‘brother-in-law’ as ‘husband’s brother,’ and thus different from the Turkish form.Footnote 114 Balkan Slavic, however, already had a specific native term in place by the time of contact with Turkish. One can speculate, however, that during the Ottoman period this particular affinal relationship took hold in promoting networks of solidarity, a role that badžanak continues to have in North Macedonia to this day.Footnote 115
Finally, some Balkan terms for other in-laws are derivatives of these or reflect other borrowed kinship words. For instance, ‘sister-in-law’ in Aromanian is bãginacã, a feminine form derived from the masculine bãginac. And, in Bulgarian (Grannes 1996: 164) and dialectal Macedonian (Stoevska-Denčova 2009: 128), babalăk occurs for ‘father-in-law,’ taken directly from the Turkish babalık ‘fatherhood; stepfather; father-in-law; adoptive father’ (Redhouse 1968: 115).
4.3.1.7 Larger Kinship Units
The data in this section are taken from Sobolev 2006: 14 and are intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive. In English, the term family can be nuclear, extended, or in reference to a larger group of kin. Terms such as clan and tribe tend to be ethnographic or informal, often with humorous connotations in the latter case, while lineage is a technical term. In the Balkans, as in most of the world, degrees of group familial relationship were, and in some places still are, denoted by specific terms. Thus, for example, Albanian fis is still a significant larger kinship unit in many regions. The Slavic equivalents are pleme and rod. Of interest here is the fact that in the Aromanian, Greek, and some of the Balkan Slavic dialects documented in Sobolev 2006: 14, Turkisms either coexist with or are the sole expressions of such larger family units. Thus in Turia (Grk Krania) Aromanian, in the Pindus region, the Turkism soy co-exists with rădătsină and riză (this last a Hellenism meaning root). Soy is also used in both the northern and southern Greek points (Erátyra and Kastélli, respectively), and the other term, damar/ndamari is likewise from Turkish. In northeastern and Rhodopian Bulgarian (Ravna and Gela, respectively), the Turkism džins (Trk cins) co-exists with native rod (although the Turkism is now archaic in Ravna).
One other Balkanism involving larger kinship units, based on Sobolev 2006: 14, is worthy of note here. The data for Albanian give only fis for the kinship unit equivalent to Slavic rod. In Albanian, vllazni (Geg), a collective derived from vlla ‘brother’ (StAlb vëlla), is a sub-unit of fis roughly translatable as ‘clan.’ The Slavic etymological equivalent of vllazni, however, bratstvo, is the term used for the larger descent group in Zavala (Montenegro), while rod is normally used for the bride’s family. Given that this usage occurs precisely in Montenegro, we can posit Albanian semantic influence.
4.3.1.8 Fictive Kinship
As K. Brown 2005: 45 writes: “Anthropologists working in [Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, Albania, and Bulgaria] have documented the importance of what they term fictive kinship, whereby people unrelated by blood [or marriage –VAF/BDJ] forge bonds that are enduring and sacred.” The example Brown cites is that which is termed kumstvo ‘godfatherhood’ in Balkan Slavic. The term kum can be translated ‘best man [at a wedding]’ but also as ‘godfather,’ as he takes on responsibiities for the children resulting from the wedding.
Late Latin (Balkan Latin?) compater and commater ‘co-father/co-mother’ seem to be the ultimate source of BSl kum/a, (whence Arli Rmi kum), Alb kumbar/ë, Grk κουμπάρ-ος/α (whence kirvo, etc. in many Romani dialects, Boretzky & Igla 1994: s.v.), Rmn cumar, and Aro cumbar/ă, in part through OCS kъmotrъ and in part through Venetian compare, though the specific paths of diffusion within the Balkans are probably lost to history.Footnote 116 The synonymous kalitata, found dialectally in Macedonian (Stoevska-Denčova 2009: 166), appears to derive from Greek καλή τάττα (lit., ‘good aunt’), probably influenced by Macedonian tate ‘daddy.’ The Albanian form kumbara has also been borrowed into the BCMS of Kosovo (Morozova 2019 and sources cited therein). Ultimately, Latin nonnus ‘monk,’ nonna ‘nun, childcarer’ (cf. Itl nonno ‘grandfather,’ nonna ‘grandmother’) is the source of Grk νουν(ν)ός, dialectal νούννος ‘best man and subsequently godparent of first child, one who holds a child at baptism, one who gives child first haircut, etc.’ (also νονός, νονά), also Alb nun ‘godfather, best man’ and nunë ‘godmother, mother of baby getting its first haircut from its godfather,’ and from one of these sources, Mac nun(ko)/nunka ‘godfather/mother,’ Blg (Svilengrad region) nunjo/nuna, Aro nun/nună ‘idem’ (BER IV: s.v.).
The abovementioned Latinate word complexes relate to life cycle events associated with marriage and birth (see §4.3.11), but another socially important fictive kinship relationship in the Balkans was that of blood-brotherhood or -sisterhood. Such fictive kin relations were an additional way to increase solidarity in interpersonal relations. In general, the various Balkan languages have terms of native origin for this culturally shared institution, e.g., for ‘blood-brotherhood’ SSl pobratimstvo, Grk αδελφοποιΐα, Aro fãrtãtsilje, fãrtãtliche (with Turkish -lik), Megl fărtățília, Rmn frăție de cruce (‘of the cross’), StAlb vëllami. It is therefore of interest to note the distribution of borrowed terms for this institution in Albanian: for ‘blood-brother’ (StAlb vëllam), the Slavic pobratim is used throughout Kosovo and Northern Albania as far south as the Mat River as well as in Zajaz (Kičevo/Kërçova), while most of Central and Southern Geg as well as scattered Tosk points as far south as Muzhakat (Grk Mouzakéïka) in Çamëri/Epirus use the Turkism byrazer/burazer/birazer (cf. StTrk birader; Gjinari 2008: Map 265).Footnote 117 We can also note here that the Macedonian dialect of Shulin (Lower Prespa region, Albania) has kušer for ‘cousin’ (Stoevska-Denčova 2009: 82), a clear borrowing from Albanian kushëri ‘idem’ (itself a borrowing from Latin), which, while denoting a genealogical rather than a fictive kin relationship, pertains to a similar social function of extending familial solidarity. Similarly, adžovci ‘paternal cousins’ (from the Turkism adžo ‘paternal uncle’ with Slavic suffixation) occurs among Muslim speakers of BCMS (Morozova 2019).
Another type of fictive kin relationship is seen in the shift of meaning from Grk παραμάνα ‘wetnurse’ as the source of the dialectal Macedonian hybrid form para-majka ‘stepmother’ (Stoevska-Denčova 2009: 142).Footnote 118 Here the cultural connection is that understood by the term milk-mother, a concept present in both Islam and Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
4.3.1.9 Miscellaneous
There are other Balkan instances of borrowing involving kinship-related terms, beyond what has been given. As they do not have a particular unifying theme, they are treated here just as the miscellaneous occurrences that they are.
For instance, there are some nonkinship-related Balkan formations that derive from Turkish kinship terms. The expression discussed above in §4.2.2.6.2 that is found in Greek as αναντάμ μπαμπαντάμ (also αναντάμ παπαντάμ), and in Albanian as denbabaden, meaning ‘in or since the distant past’ but built on ‘mother’ (ana/anne) and ‘father’ (baba), is one such case. Another is Bulgarian babanlăk, cited in Grannes 1996: 164 as meaning “passé éloigné” ‘distant past.’ Grannes derives it via assimilation from a putative Turkish babam-lık, which, like anadan babadan, does not occur in authoritative Turkish lexical sources (Redhouse 1968; Akalın & Toparlı 2005; Ayverdi & Topaloğlu 2006; TDK 1963–1977; TDK 1963–1982).Footnote 119 Here babam is ‘my father’ and -lık the Turkish abstract noun-forming suffix, so that the sense is originally “de temps de mon père” ‘from the time of my father.’ He notes, though, that baban occurs dialectally in Bulgarian (BER I: s.v.) in the meaning ‘papa,’ presumably from Turkish babam with final -m becoming -n; thus, babanlăk could be a Bulgarian creation, since the suffix -lIK was borrowed into Bulgarian and is quite productive (see §4.2.2 above). Still, as argued in §4.2.2.6.2, the absence of such expressions from contemporary Turkish lexical resources need not be decisive here since they may well be dialectal or colloquial phrases of a hundred or more years ago.Footnote 120
Finally, as a somewhat secondary use of a term for a kin-determined relationship, we note Albanian bir ‘son’ occurs in Greek folk songs and folk poetry of the Greek communities in Southern Albania; in those works, bir refers specifically to the son of an aga ‘lord.’Footnote 121 The word in this case is borrowed but in a highly specialized context that is related to the kin use but removed from the immediacy of close kinship. A different, and less specialized, use of borrowed bir (from Albanian) occurs in dialectal Macedonian (Stoevska-Denčova 2009: 58), specifically Nestram (Grk Nestório), Kostur (Grk Kastoria) region), where it is used alongside of sin, the native word for ‘son.’ (See also §§4.3.4.2.2, 4.3.8.)
4.3.1.10 Summary Regarding Kinship Terms
The facts about these kinship terms are interesting in their own right. There is an intriguing versatility in semantics for some, especially the words related to Turkish lâla. Moreover, the fact that so many loanwords are detectable in this general semantic domain is striking, and the import of these kinship loans should be clear. Their occurrence is consistent with everything that is known about the intimate and intense contact situation in the Balkans, especially involving Turkish, coupled with widespread bi- and multilingualism.
Examples of borrowings involving kinship terms can be found even under circumstances that appear at first to be quite different from those in the Balkans. The entry of words like aunt, cousin, and uncle into English, from French,Footnote 122 provides a ready case in a familiar language, probably motivated, as Matras 2009: 170 puts it, by the fact that “the use of French words for family relations … [was] fashionable in Medieval English due to … an association with the terms used by the French-speaking social elite.” The social mixing between English and French speakers in the Middle English period might be characterized by some as sustained and intimate contact,Footnote 123 but interestingly, as Matras emphasizes, “this fashion was not extended to closer kin”; this, he suggests, shows “a reluctance on the part of speakers to compromise certain familiar, intimate terms of everyday life,” indicating a difference with the more intimate and intense Balkan situation. The chiefly British English use of Latin mater and pater for ‘mother’ and ‘father’ respectively, especially by schoolboys and sometimes facetiously (as some dictionaries indicate; see also Footnote footnote 88 and note the Turkish Persianism peder ‘father’), may thus be a better example of the borrowing of kin terms in a context of nonintimate contact, but there the special relationship of Latin to upperclass British English speakers may have played a role (like that of Persian to Ottoman Turkish), in a Hockettian prestige-related way; alternatively, when used facetiously, we should recall the insight implicit in Weinreich 1968: passim about bilingualism extending a speaker’s expressive range.Footnote 124
Still, when coupled with other indications of borrowing based on everyday conversational interactions, such as the stylistic lowering of the Turkish loans seen here, assigning these instances of borrowing in the Balkans to the ERIC loan class introduced and advocated here is reasonable.
4.3.2 Numerals
Numerals constitute a particularly telling area of study in language contact, as numeral borrowing may well be limited in contact situations. As Matras 2009: 201 puts it “Given that quantifying objects is considered a very basic human cognitive ability, it might seem surprising that many languages do, in fact, borrow numerals.” And, there is the evidence of second language learners having difficulties with numerals, in counting in general but especially in the context of learning or using arithmetical skills in a second language.Footnote 125 Moreover, “quantity,” a notion that presumably takes in numerals, is one of the semantic fields covered in the Leipzig Loanword Typology project (Haspelmath & Tadmor 2009; see Footnote footnotes 86 and Footnote 87 above), and as a field it ranks relatively low – in the lower half of those surveyed – in terms of conduciveness to being borrowed. This status for numerals is reflected too in the fact that the low digits occur on the Swadesh list.
It is thus of some interest not only for the Balkan lexicon but for the study of language contact in general that there are both numeral loans as well as numeral word-formation patterns in the Balkans that show contact effects. Numeral loans in the Balkans are mainly concentrated on numerals higher than the low digits ‘one’ through ‘five.’ Thus it might seem that numeral loans in the Balkans do not indicate anything special regarding contact in the region. We would argue to the contrary, however, and claim that loans involving numerals are significant here in that they show the depth of the penetration of contact languages into the surrounding languages. That is, even though there are languages with relatively restricted numeral systems, where low digits might be all that can be judged as basic, the Indo-European Balkan languages all have numerals up to ‘ten’ that are unanalyzable units, and thus on morphological grounds constitute “basic” elements of vocabulary; and even higher numerals, while built in a compositional way (except for StAlb and Aro ‘20’), nonetheless contain unanalyzable elements and have idiosyncrasies of internal ordering that give them a basic character. Thus, their involvement in transfer across Balkan languages is consistent with the intimate nature of much of what is surveyed here.
Numerals therefore represent a coherent lexical domain in which ERIC-type loanword contact effects can be discerned. We survey here the relevant evidence, consisting of some localized effects between two languages and a somewhat more widespread one that has been much discussed in the literature.
4.3.2.1 Localized Numeral Borrowing
There are several different pairs of languages in the Balkans involved in localized borrowing of numerals, as outlined in the following sections.
4.3.2.1.1 Romani and Greek
In all Romani dialects, for instance, the numerals ‘seven,’ ‘eight,’ ‘nine,’ and ‘thirty’ are borrowed from Greek εφτά, οχτώ, εννιά, τριάντα, respectively, giving, e.g., in Agía Varvára Romani (Messing 1988), efta, oxto, inja, tranda (but for ‘thirty’, note Dolenjski Rmi trideset [<Slavic], Welsh Rmi trin deš [native ‘three ten’], ROMLEX). This is true not just for Balkan Romani but for almost all European varieties of Romani (except as just noted), due to what Matras 2002: 210 calls “a qualitatively unique” impact of “Greek … during the Early Romani phase,” suggesting that the language entered Europe through the Balkans during the Byzantine period. Specifically about numerals, Matras 2009: 202 notes that “Romani tends to retain an inherited word for ‘twenty’ and for ‘hundred,’ but often has Greek words for the numerals in-between, though many dialects tend to replace these higher numerals through loans from their contemporary contact languages.” Various Balkan and South Vlax Romani dialects show this pattern, but ‘forty’ and ‘fifty’ tend to have Greek forms even outside of Greece, e.g., Arli Romani in North Macedonia and Kosovo saranda ‘forty,’ pinda ‘fifty’ from Greek σαράντα, πενήντα (ROMLEX,Footnote 126 cf. Boretzky 2003: 51; Messing 1988). The use of saranda in Romani even occurs in North Russian (ROMLEX). Matras 2009: 211 also documents the borrowing of the Greek ordinal suffix -το- into Romani, e.g., dujto ‘second,’ from (native) duj ‘two.’
4.3.2.1.2 Turkish Numerals in Balkan Slavic, Romani, Albanian, Aromanian
Turkish numerals are used in various ways in some of the Balkan languages. For instance, in the Balkan Slavic dialects spoken in geographic Thrace and Macedonia, Slavic-speaking Muslims – and Christians, to a lesser extent (Kodov 1935) – use Turkish numerals to varying degrees in regions with significant Slavic-speaking Muslim populations. In Pomak villages in present-day Greece, Turkish numerals are used for ‘five’ and above, with on-going competition between the Slavic-derived and the Turkish-derived forms for ‘ten,’ désit and on, respectively (Theocharidēs 1996a: 53). Šiškov 1936: 11 reports that in Dovan-Hisar (Dugan Hisar, Grk Aisými), in the Dedeagach (Grk Alexandroúpoli) region, all the numerals were Turkish. A similar situation obtains in some of the Romani dialects of eastern Bulgaria, e.g., (Varna) Gadžikano, Varna (Xoraxane) Kalajdži, and Kaspičan, where all the numerals above three are Turkish (Elšík & Matras 2006: 170; Gilliat-Smith 1944). Šiškov 1936: 11 also reports that in villages and towns with Christian Bulgarian (and Macedonian) speakers, such as Gjumjurdžina (Trk Gümülcine, Grk Komotini), Smoljan, Nevrokop (now Goce Delčev), and Drama (Grk Dráma), Turkish forms of ‘100’ (yüz) and ‘1/2’ (yarım) are in use, and Grannes et al. 2002: s.v. list Turkish bir ‘one’ as “colloquial” in Bulgarian. For Macedonian, Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 113 cites safar ‘zero’ < Trk sıfır ‘idem,’ although the Macedonian usually means ‘nothing.’ Other numerals occurring mostly in nineteenth-century folklore cited by Jašar-Nasteva ibid. are elli ‘50,’ on ‘10,’ beš ‘5’ onsekis (StTrk on sekiz) ’18,’ on iki bin ‘12,000.’
Friedman’s observation cited in §4.3 above is worth repeating here: “the only Macedonian traditional part of speech lacking Turkisms is the numeral, although there are Turkisms in numerical expressions, e.g., čerek ‘quarter’ [cf. also Alb çerek], and Turkish numerals embedded in other parts of speech, e.g., bešlik ‘five-grosch silver coin.’” Regarding this last form, note also Grk (Cretan) μπεσλίκι ‘idem’ (Orfanos 2014: 274), Alb beshlëk, Aro beshlîc, BCMS bešluk, BSl bešlik, Rmn beşlic (Polenakovikj 2007: 87), and the now-obsolete BSl ikilik ‘Turkish coin of two kuruş’ (Grannes et al. 2002: s.v.; Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 114), as well as Aro and Rmn iuzluc, Blg juzluk ‘100 para’ and Mac juzluk ‘100 denar note’ from Trk yüz ‘100’ (Polenakovikj 2007: 144; Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 113). Moreover, some specialized counting practices have Turkish numerals, such as in Balkan Slavic backgammon, dice- or card-playing terms, e.g., birlik (in Galičnik, birlok) ‘ace,’ Aro birlic ‘idem’ from Turkish birlik ‘unity,’ cf. also Albanian birllëk, Rmn berlic (Grannes et al. 2002: s.v.; Polenakovikj 2007: 90; Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 113).Footnote 127 Some derivatives of Turkish numeral forms occur in Cretan Greek (Orfanos 2014: 276–277), e.g., from bir ‘one’: μπιρίς ‘self,’ μπιρί (in μπιρί σου και μπιρί μου ‘one for-you and one for-me’), and μπιρί μπάχι ‘at once’ from Trk bir baş ‘at once’ (lit., ‘one head’), inter alia, and from bin ‘thousand’: μπιν κερατάς ‘(someone) cuckolded a thousand times over,’ μπιν κατεργάρης ‘a huge trickster.’ Similarly, in older or dialectal usage, Bulgarian and Macedonian show lexicalized forms containing Turkish numerals, such as seksen sekis ‘much, many’ (from Trk seksen sekiz ‘88’), doksan-dukus ‘much, many’ or the related oksan-dokus ‘too much, an excess’ (from doksan dokuz ‘99’), dokuzbablija ‘born out of wedlock’ (lit., ‘having nine fathers’), dokuzda ‘angry’ (lit., ‘in nine,’ probably from an expression like ‘[having fallen] into nine [bad moods]’ or dokuz dağı ‘[taking on a load of] nine mountains’; BER I: s.v.), birki ‘some; a number of’ (from bir iki ‘one two’), among many others (Grannes et al. 2002: s.vv.; Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 113). Colloquial Alb birinxhi, Aro birinği, BSl birindži ʻfirst-rate, swell, top-notchʻ all come from the Turkish ordinal birinci ‘first’ (Polenavokij 2007: 90), and similarly Cretan Greek has μπιριντζής (Orfanos 2014: 277). Finally, Turkish üç ‘three’ is the source of Albanian yç ‘a game played with three stones.’
4.3.2.1.3 A Modern Albanian Secondary Usage
In a secondary functional domain, namely giving numbers over the telephone, as discussed by Friedman 2010c, in modern Albanian usage in Albania (but not in Kosovo), some Italian numerals are used; tetë ‘eight’ is replaced by otto, and pesë ‘five’ is replaced by cinque. These replacements are motivated by an interest in clarity, since the telephone cuts off high and low frequencies (such that pesë and tetë risk confusion), much as niner is used in aviation-derived usage in English (Hock & Joseph 2019: 154). While this example does not involve contact between Balkan languages, it does involve a Balkan language and moreover attests further to the possibility of the borrowing of numerals under the right ecological conditions (even if not ERIC-style conditions in this case).
4.3.2.2 Teens as ‘X-on-TEN’
As a final numeral-related parallel, we turn to one that has received considerable attention for more than a century. This is the convergence involving the formation of the numerals from eleven to nineteen, cited in Miklosich 1862, Sandfeld 1930, and virtually all of the subsequent Balkan linguistic handbooks.
The basic facts are that in Albanian, Balkan Romance, and Balkan Slavic, the “teens” are expressed as DIGIT-‘on’-TEN, i.e., with a digit, followed by a form of the preposition for ‘on,’ followed by a form of the word for ‘ten,’ thus additively giving the ‘teen’ as ‘DIGIT on-top-of (i.e., beyond) ten.’ Examples for such a “locatival” pattern (as Reichenkron 1958 calls it) include the following, for ‘eleven’ and ‘sixteen,’ to take just two of the nine numerals so constructed (Table 4.5).Footnote 128
Table 4.5 ‘11’ and ‘16’ in Alb, BRo, BSl
| Alb | njëmbëdhjetë | (cf. një ‘one,’ mbi ‘on,’ dhjetë ‘ten’) |
| gjashtëmbëdhjetë | (cf. gjashtë ‘six,’ mbi ‘on,’ dhjetë ‘ten’) | |
| Aro | unãsprãdzatse | (cf. un ‘one,’ -spră- ‘on’ (cf. supră ‘above’), dzaţe ‘ten’) |
| sheasprãdzatse | (cf. ş(e)áse ‘six,’ -spră- ‘on’ (cf. supră), dzaţe ‘ten’)Footnote 129 | |
| Rmn | unsprezece | (cf. un ‘one,’ spre ‘on,’ zece ‘ten’) |
| şaisprezece | (also şasesprezece; cf. şase ‘six,’ spre ‘on,’ zece ‘ten’) | |
| Megl | unsprăţi | (cf. un ‘one,’ spră ‘on,’ zḙáţi ‘ten’) |
| şasprăţi | (cf. şasi ‘six,’ spră ‘on,’ zḙáţi ‘ten’)Footnote 130 | |
| Blg | edinadeset | (cf. edin ‘one,’ na ‘on,’ deset ‘ten’) |
| šestnadeset | (cf. šest ‘six,’ na ‘on,’ deset ‘ten’) | |
| Mac | edinaeset | (cf. edin ‘one,’ na ‘on,’ deset ‘ten’) |
| šesnaeset | (cf. šest ‘six,’ na ‘on,’ deset ‘ten’) |
This type of teen formation is not found in the other Balkan languages, thus neither in Turkish, nor in Romani, nor in Greek (generally speaking, but see below on the Postclassical period): Turkish shows simple concatenation of ‘ten,’ on, with a digit, e.g., onbir ‘11’ (cf. bir ‘one’), onaltı ‘16’ (cf. altı ‘six’), whereas the pattern in Romani is TEN-‘and’-DIGIT, e.g., deš-u-jekh ‘11,’ and the formations found in present-day Greek are concatenated DIGIT-TEN (δέκα) for ‘11’ and ‘12’ (έντεκα/δώδεκα) and TEN-DIGIT for ‘13’ through ‘19’ (e.g., δεκαέξι for ‘16’). Thus this pattern has the appearance of a concentrated lexical Balkanism restricted to a subset of the languages, specifically Balkan Slavic, Balkan Romance, and Albanian.
We say “lexical” here even though the pattern in these forms lies on the borderline between morphology, syntax, and the lexicon; in some ways it resembles the VERB-‘not’-VERB pattern discussed in §4.1. That is, these numerals, represented as DIGIT-‘on’-TEN, constitute both a coherent class of lexical items, albeit a small one, consisting of semantically related forms, and a set of derived combinations (historically, compounds), each with a compositional semantics of existing words. As such, these numerals have a clear internal syntax, but also, as historical compounds, they are lexical items. Given the enriched view of the lexicon advocated in §4.1, such a situation is not problematic, and it points to a need for flexibility in classifying phenomena (sometimes arbitrarily) regarding which domain of grammar they fall into.Footnote 131
These facts have been widely discussed, in both handbooks and specialized studies, e.g., Reichenkron 1958. Their potential Balkanological interest stems from the comparison between these facts and the patterns for ‘teen’-numeral formation in related languages outside the Balkans and/or at different stages in the development of the languages in the Balkans.
In particular, the formation of teen numerals via ‘DIGIT-on-TEN’ is pan-Slavic; compare the following, from East Slavic and West Slavic, in Table 4.6:Footnote 132
Table 4.6 ‘11’ and ‘16’ in selected non-Balkan Slavic languages
| Russian | odinnadtsat’ (cf. odin ‘one,’ na ‘on,’ des’at’ ‘ten’) | ‘11’ |
| šestnadtsat’ (cf. šest’ ‘six,’ na ‘on,’ des’at’ ‘ten’) | ‘16’ | |
| Polish | jedenaście (cf. jeden ‘one,’ na ‘on,’ dziesięć ‘ten’) | ‘11’ |
| szesenaście (cf. sześć ‘six,’ na ‘on,’ dziesięć ‘ten’) | ‘16’ |
And, this pattern occurs in Balkan Romance but not the rest of Romance, as in Table 4.7, which are simply ‘one-ten,’ ‘six-ten,’ ‘one-ten,’ and ‘ten-six’ respectively, reflecting Latin numerals somewhat faithfully, e.g., undecim ‘11,’ se(x)decim ‘16,’ though with the order of elements reversed in the latter Spanish form. What these mean is that the Balkan Romance numerals represent an innovation away from the Latin situation.Footnote 133
Table 4.7 ‘11’ and ‘16’ in selected non-Balkan Romance languages
| French | onze ‘11,’ seize ‘16’ |
| Spanish | once ‘11,’ dieciséis ‘16’ |
Greek too shows innovation in some of the teens, away from Ancient Greek, but, significantly, not in direction of other Balkan languages. For ‘13’ through ‘19’ in Ancient Greek, the pattern was ‘DIGIT-and-TEN’, e.g., τρεῖς καὶ δέκα for ‘13’ (καί = ‘and’). The modern asyndetic concatenation, e.g., δεκατρείς ‘13’ (‘ten-three’), is thus innovative within Greek. Moreover, it is the same as in Turkish, e.g., onüç ‘idem,’ suggesting that Greek was perhaps influenced by Turkish.
These facts have led most scholars to consider that what is found in Albanian and in Balkan Romance to be the result of Slavic influence on these languages, influence which did not extend to Greek or affect Romani after it entered the Balkans. There are however additional facts to consider that are relevant for evaluating this parallel, giving some reason to doubt its validity as a Balkanism per se.
First, as some have pointed out (e.g., Schaller 1975), Hungarian has a locatival pattern for the teens, with a locative case ending on ‘ten’ but with the digit following, e.g., tizenegy ‘11’ (cf. tíz ‘ten,’ -en ‘LOC’, egy ‘one’). Thus the order of elements differs from the Balkan pattern but the same elements are involved. The Hungarian pattern, however, is more extensive than the Balkan one; as Petrucci 1999: 133, Footnote footnote 30 states: “Hungarian also uses the locative pattern for ‘21’ through ‘29’: husz-on-egy ‘21,’ husz-on-ketto ‘22,’ etc. (Reichenkron 1958:162),” where -on is the back-harmonic allomorph of -en. Interestingly, the language that Hungarian replaced in its region was Slavic, so that this Slavic-type construction in Hungarian could well be a substratum effect in Hungarian (see also Footnote Chapter 6, footnote 5), as Slavic speakers shifted to the new language; the extension of the pattern to the twenties is understandable in language-internal terms as an analogical spread.Footnote 134 In the end, though, Hungarian is irrelevant for assessing the Balkan situation, albeit possibly as another instance of the borrowing, or contact-related spread, of numeral formations; moreover, even if an indigenous Hungarian pattern, all it shows is that a language can have such a pattern independently, raising the question of independent origin for the Albanian and Balkan Romance situations.
Second, Greek shows some evidence of a Balkan-style locatival pattern before Slavic speakers entered the Balkans. Hinrichs 1999b: 440–441, for instance, mentions Greek examples from the fifth century CE like τῆς τρίτης ἐπὶ δέκα ‘(of) the third upon ten’ for ‘(of) thirteen,’ and says they are “nach dem balkanischen Muster” (‘according to the Balkan pattern’). And, Mihăescu 1977 mentions the sporadic occurrence of ‘DIGIT-on-TEN’ numerals in Postclassical Greek, such as τρεῖς ἐπὶ δέκα ‘three upon ten’ for ‘thirteen’ from the fourth century and δύο ἐπὶ δέκα ‘two upon ten’ for ‘twelve’ from the fifth century. A conclusion to draw here is that this pattern can arise independently without contact, since the dating of these formations is too early for Slavic influence.Footnote 135
Even so, these facts do not seriously alter the picture concerning the grouping of all of Slavic, Albanian, and Balkan Romance. However the final additional consideration does undermine the assessment of this feature as a shared contact-induced trait within these languages during the period when they were in contact in the Balkans. Hamp 1992b has pointed out that the words for ‘twenty’ in Balkan Slavic and Balkan Romance and for ‘thirty’ in Albanian show that the numeral ‘ten’ is treated as masculine in Slavic but feminine in Albanian and Balkan Romance. The following facts show that Slavic, Balkan Romance, and Albanian have gender in the numerals ‘two’ or ‘three’ (for Slavic, the question of neuter gender assignment is irrelevant here) (see Table 4.8).
Table 4.8 Gendered numerals in Balkan languages
| Slavic gendered numeral: | dva (M) | dve (F) | ‘two’ |
| Romanian gendered numeral: | doi (M) | două (F) | ‘two’ |
| Albanian gendered numerals: | tre (M) | tri (F) | ‘three’ |
| (dy [M] | dȳ [F] | ‘two’) |
These forms figure in the multiples of ‘ten’ and show gendered forms, thus revealing a key difference in detail between the Slavic formation and the Balkan Romance and Albanian formations (see Table 4.9).Footnote 136
Table 4.9 Compound numerals with ‘ten’ in Balkan languages
| OCS | dъvadesęti ‘twenty’ (lit., ‘two tens,’ with M dъva, thus M ‘ten’) |
| Romanian | douăzeci ‘twenty’ (lit., ‘two tens,’ with F două, thus F ‘ten’) |
| Albanian | tridhjetë ‘thirty’ (lit., ‘three tens,’ with F tri, thus F ‘ten’) |
To fully appreciate the significance of this Albanian/Romanian gender mismatch vis-à-vis Slavic, the Baltic numeral facts become important. Baltic offers a mixed picture: Latvian has the Slavic-type formation (cf. vienpadsmit ‘11,’ sešpadsmit ‘16’), whereas Lithuanian does not (cf. vienuolika ‘11,’ šešiolika ‘16,’ with an element –lika, from *leikw- ‘leave,’ not a form of ‘10’ (dešimt), generalized from the pattern seen in Germanic with ‘11’ and ‘12’ (‘one-left (over),’ ‘two-left (over),’ respectively, as if counting on one’s fingers but working with a base-twelve system). Unfortunately, no teens are attested for Old Prussian. Thus Lithuanian sides with Germanic while Latvian sides with Slavic, pairings that make sense in terms of geography, assuming the present-day geographical relationship matches an earlier one, even if not in just the same locale.
Following Hamp 1992b, the interpretation of all of these facts for the Balkans is that Albanian only superficially has the Slavic (-Latvian) pattern, because it also has a different gender for ‘ten’ (although OCS ‘10’ can also show feminine agreement, albeit not in the ordinal numeral). Hamp proposes that there was a period in which the variety of Indo-European which was to become Albanian (Albanoid) was part of a northwest Indo-European grouping in which Germanic and Balto-Slavic and Albanoid were in contact. Albanoid, along with Latvian, and Early Common Slavic, got the DIGIT-‘on’-TEN pattern (presumably as an innovation in one group that diffused into the others) at this time, but altered it somewhat when it moved down into the Balkans and encountered the variety of Latin to which some speakers shifted, yielding Balkan Romance. In this way, Hamp accounts for the similarities between Albanian and Slavic (and Latvian), and the differences between Latvian and Lithuanian, while still allowing for the specific form of the Albanian-Balkan Romance parallel to emerge. And, it is supported in part by other features that link Albanian at a deep level with Balto-Slavic, especially the Winter’s Law lengthening of vowels before the original voiced plain stops (see §1.2.3.1).
The occurrence of the DIGIT-‘on’-TEN locatival pattern for the teen numerals in Balkan Slavic therefore has a different history from the pattern in Albanian and especially Balkan Romance. There is convergence, but it dates from a pre-Balkan period, and moreover, there is an important divergence to consider as well. More specifically, and more importantly for the evaluation of this parallel, this pattern cannot be a Slavic one that has been imposed on other languages of Balkans after their migration thereto, and in that sense it is not a (true) Balkanism.
4.3.3 Loans with Grammatical Value
Elements that serve a grammatical function, whether words or affixes, are typically part of tightly knit combinations that are not easily parsed in natural second language acquisition. Such function words are typically unaccented, adding to their being part of the background of a phrase or sentence and not part of the outstanding elements (nouns and verbs). As to what can be called the glue of these latter syntactic units, holding content words together and showing how they relate to one another, they are among the items generally considered to be less easily acquired in second language acquisition and thus less easily borrowed in contact situations. In the Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 74–76 “borrowing scale,” for instance, the borrowing of the function words “conjunctions and various adverbial particles” requires scale point 2 (out of 5) “slightly more intense contact,” and others, such as adpositions, require point 3 “more intense contact.”
In this section, therefore, we examine grammatical lexemes that have diffused across language boundaries in the Balkans, a phenomenon briefly exemplified by Sandfeld 1930: 21 as “mots dits grammaticaux” (‘words considered grammatical’). We focus here on the very forms themselves, and thus distinguish this contact effect from calquing, where equivalent native items are substituted into foreign phrasal or constructional “templates” as models.Footnote 137 That these forms have spread is consistent with the claim of sustained and intimate day-to-day contact among speakers of different languages in the region, with concomitant bilingualism, what we see as sprachbund-conducive conditions.
4.3.3.1 Pronouns
Pronouns seem to occupy a special place in contact situations. While many instances are known of borrowing of indefinite pronouns and, less so, of interrogative pronouns (see Matras 2009: 198–199), the wholesale importation of personal pronouns across languages, while documented (see Thomason & Everett 2001 and Matras 2009: 203–208), seems a much rarer event. Matras attributes this to the function of pronominals and to the fact that many nominal forms are often pressed into service in pronominal functions, especially to indicate complex social relations (e.g., honorifics) rather than simple referentiality per se. All of the examples cited by Matras involve close and fairly intense contact, as with the Molise Romani borrowing of the 3PL pronoun lor from Italian, though in the case of Pirahã apparently borrowing personal pronouns from Tupi-Guarani, there was not necessarily any bilingualism, only the near absence of pronominal use by the Pirahã, “suggesting that borrowing may have served a distinct referential purpose” (Matras 2009: 204). Nonetheless, it is fair to say that pronouns generally rank rather low on scales of borrowability, and pronoun borrowing would not be expected in casual contact situations. If pronouns are to move across language boundaries at all, intense and sustained contact would appear to be a suitable precondition.Footnote 138
There are various Balkan loan phenomena that center on pronominals. They are discussed in the sections that follow.
4.3.3.1.1 General
There are some instances of the borrowing of pronominal-like elements in the Balkans. Most of the languages, for instance, have borrowed the Trk hiç ‘nothing’: Alb hiç, BRo hici, Mac ič, Blg hič, Jud hiç, Rmi hič, Ottoman-era Edirne Greek χιτš (Ronzevalle 1911: 457). In addition to meaning ‘nothing’ this word can also be used as a negative intensifier of the type ‘not at all.’ Nonetheless, the form is pronominal in origin and seems to have spread without much resistance, a fact which might be attributed to the higher degree of “nouniness” it shows compared with deictic or personal pronouns.
A somewhat clearer case of borrowing involving pronominals is the occurrence of the Turkish demonstrative bu ‘this’ in nineteenth-century texts in Macedonian and in the Greek of Ottoman Edirne (Ronzevalle 1911: 266). The Macedonian use is always in Turkish-centered discourse – e.g., Stambol bu, lesno aren čoek ne moži da se najdi ‘It’s Istanbul, you can’t find a good person easily’ (Cepenkov 1972a: 154) – and the Edirne Greek usage is restricted to the expression μπου κιμ (cf. Trk bu kim) ‘who (is) this?,’ with the interrogative pronoun κιμ (Trk kim) ‘who?’ as well. Nonetheless, given the strong familiarity that Greeks and Macedonians had in those times with Turkish, we feel confident in speculating that these uses were parsable and recognizable to the non-Turkish users, perhaps indexing Turkish ways through this usage.Footnote 139 Moreover, κιμ has a few other uses in Edirne Greek, e.g., κιμ ο ‘who is this?’ (with demonstrative pronoun o from Trk o), and some indefinite uses dialectally in Bulgarian (Grannes et al. 2002: s.v.), e.g., repeated kimi … kimi ‘some … others,’ and with native interrogative pronouns as in kim koj ‘someone’ (cf. Blg koj ‘who?’), which may reflect in part Turkish uses, e.g., kimi ‘some (of them),’ kimimiz ‘some of us.’
Turkish her ‘every’ was borrowed into Macedonian as er and used to form generalized pronouns with native material, e.g., er koj ‘everyone,’ er što ‘everything,’ etc. (Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 115).
Even clearer yet, and of a somewhat person-related nature, is the borrowing of the Greek indefinite pronoun καθένας ‘each (one),’ along with its feminine form καθεμιά, into Agía Varvára Romani (Igla 1996: s.v.).
A truly personal and thus more grammatical instance involves the first-person singular possessive in Aromanian. Aromanian has -m for ‘my,’ e.g., bãrbáte-m ‘my man,’ as well as -nji, e.g., inima-nji ‘my heart.’ The -nji, according to Papahagi 1974: s.v., is from the Latin dative pronoun mihi, which could be used to express possession, presumably via an intermediate stage *mnihi (or *mnihi). As for -m, Papahagi 1974: s.v. takes it to be from the Greek possessive pronoun μου ‘my,’ phonetically [mu], which in the northern Greek dialects that Aromanian would be in contact with would be simply -μ ([m], due to the regular Northern Greek loss of unstressed high vowels (see §5.4.1.5).Footnote 140 Thus -nji is the inherited form, and -m would be a later borrowing.Footnote 141 There do not appear to be any other pronominal forms, possessive or otherwise, that were taken over from Greek, so one can wonder why first person would be privileged here,Footnote 142 but the hypothesis of a Greek source for -m fits the available evidence, even if isolated in Aromanian. One can note that the Molise Romani pronoun borrowing is restricted to just one “cell” of the person/number paradigm. Sepeči Rmi Devlam ‘O my God!’ (Devel ‘god,’ VOC devla + Trk 1sg -m), Sérres Rmi sarimiz ‘all of us’ (Rmi sar ‘all,’ Trk -imiz ‘our’), and Skopje Arli Romani Fatmam ‘my Fatma’ (proper name + Trk 1SG -m) also show pronominal borrowing (see Cech & Heinschink 1999: 150–153; Sechidou 2011; Friedman 2013b). The same is true of the -m in nineteenth-century Macedonian folk poetry, e.g., devojkom ‘my girl’ (Koneski 2021: 335). We note here too the polite second singular, Rmn dumniata, Alb (Geg) zotnia jote, Aro afindi, Grk (Sarakatsan) η αφιντιά (with northern raising of the unstressed /e/), itself a Turkism (cf. efendi, discussed in footnote 274) (Skok 1927: 166); see §6.1.4.3 for more on politeness and number in the Balkans.
Another instance of pronominal borrowing that interacts with grammar is in the Turkish of the Western Rhodopes (near Pazardžik and Smoljan), where the Bulgarian dative reflexive pronoun si and the masculine-neuter accustive gu (StBlg go) have been borrowed in the local Turkish dialect as in these examples (Mollov & Mollova 1966: 124–125, using their orthography): čăkarăm si ‘I’m leaving,’ ben si giderim ‘I’m going,’ ajnada si bak ‘look at yourself in the mirror’ (mirror.LOC rfl.DAT look.IMPV), jazdăm gu ‘I wrote to him,’ al si gu ‘take it for yourself.’ The accusative pronoun can even co-occur with the native form as a kind of object reduplication: ben onu vermišim gu ‘I have given it to him’ (I him.ACC give.1SG.PRF him.ACC). See also §6.1.4.1.5.
In Judezmo, Turkish personal pronouns are incorporated into the expression Sen favlar, ben entender ‘You [Trk] speak [Jud], I [Trk] understand [Jud].’ While this could be taken to be simple codeswitching, in theories of codeswitching that define a so-called matrix language, and do so based on predication (cf. Matras 2012: 382), this is in fact a Judezmo utterance with Turkish insertions. Such an analysis is strengthened by the connotational meaning of the sentence, viz. ‘Speak to me in Turkish and I will understand you, although I do not speak it’ (Bunis 1999: 90). At the same time, this example raises the problem of the border between borrowing and codeswitching, especially regarding the possibility of one-word switches (touched on briefly at the end of §3.2.1.6).
4.3.3.1.2 Indefinite Pronouns and Adverbs
Sandfeld 1930: 128 observes that Albanian and Balkan Romance show a similarity in the formation of nonspecific indefinite pronouns that suggests possible ancient contact, namely the use of Alb -do and BRo -va, both formants based on 3SG ‘want,’ e.g., Alb kushdo, Rmn cineva ‘anybody,’ Alb kudo, Rmn undeva ‘anywhere,’ Alb kurdo, Rmn cîndva/cândva ‘anytime.’Footnote 143 Sandfeld also cites Alb çëdo ‘anything/something,’ but in modern Albanian, çdo (< çë+do) means ‘any, every’ and can be combined with a variety of words, e.g., çdo gjë ‘everything,’ cf. also ndonjë gjë ‘something/anything’ (ndonjë < në ‘if’ + do ‘want.3SG’ + një ‘one,’ cf. colloquial Alb ndo … ndo … ‘either … or … ’ We can also note Rmn ceva ‘something, anything, etc.’ Specific indefinites of the type Alb dikush, diçka, diku, dikur, disa ‘somebody, something, somewhere, sometime, some [quantity]’ employ di ‘[who] knows?’ (Meyer 1891: s.v.). The usage is similar to one of the etymologies suggested for the Common Slavic indefinite prefix *nē, OCS ně- ‘some-’ – which is quite productive in BSl – according to which the prefix comes from a contraction of ne vě ‘not know,’ although other etymologies have also been proposed (Vasmer 1986–1987: III s.v.). The use of ‘know’ to form indefinites might be connected to the pre-migration contact of Albanoid and (Balto-)Slavic discussed in §4.3.2.2.
Constructions of a similar type are attested in Latin, e.g., quamvis ‘anyhow,’ quōlibet ‘anywhither,’ where the former has an element from volō ‘want,’ and the latter utilizes a different, but semantically similar, verb (libet ‘it is pleasing’). The generalization specifically of ‘want’ and its extension to other indefinites, however, seems to have taken place in the Balkans, since these constructions did not become productive in Romance outside the Balkans. As Sandfeld 1930: 116 notes, in some Aromanian dialects, the Albanian particle is simply borrowed and attached to native material, e.g., itsido ‘anything’ (i ‘and/or’ + tsi ‘what’ + do), which then provides a base for other words, e.g., caretsido, iutsido, cãndutsido ‘anyone, anywhere, anytime.’ Aromanian also has native Romance forms for some of these, e.g., careva/caniva, cúni-vá (DAT/GEN.SG, but also nom), iuva, tsiva, ‘some/any-one, -where, -thing’ as well as a number of other constructions (see, e.g., Papahagi 1974: passim; Vrabie 2000: 53).Footnote 144 Meglenoromanian has tsiva ‘some/anything.’
In the case of Common Slavic, based on the evidence of OCS, it appears that plain interrogatives were used as indefinites (Huntley 1993: 145). This is still the case in Slovene, which is unique in modern Slavic in its preservation of the original situation, although bare interrogatives as indefinites occur as contextual variants elsewhere in Slavic. The rest of South Slavic has an old optative use of preposed bilo – originally the neuter resultative participle of ‘be’ – as a possibility, e.g., bilo koj ‘whoever, etc.’ The adjectival postposed root god- ‘suitable’ (cf. Latin libet in quōlibet above) is used here in Balkan Slavic in an old locative adverbial form gode but in BCMS the old accusative adverbial god also occurs. Balkan Slavic also has a postposed new subjunctive/optative construction of the type (i) da e ‘(and/even) DMSFootnote 145 be.3SG’. BCMS has a variety of indefinite pronominal constructions (Stevanović 1986: 301), including preposed unstressed ma, which is part of the standard but appears to be a specifically Montenegrin feature (cf. also Fielder 2008). Lekhitic and East Slavic use various modal particles based on ‘be,’ e.g., Pol -bądź, Belarusian -nebudz’, Russ -nibud’, Ukr bud’, all from the singular imperative of ‘be’ (cf. OCS bǫdĭ); Belarusian and Ukrainian both also have aby-, based on a conditional marker, and Polish shows byle- (cf. bilo cited above) and lada- (semantically similar to god-). Czech uses the quantifier koli- and Sorbian has žkuli-, while Slovak uses hoc(i)-, vol’a-, -kol’vek, bar(s)-; of these, hoc(i)-, vol’a- are both semantically and historically connected to ‘want’ verbs.
Turkish has a wide variety of strategies. Romani borrows from various contact languages, although sometimes employing native elements, e.g., neko ‘someone’ = Slv ne + Rmi ko ‘who,’ diso ‘something’ = Alb di + Rmi so ‘what,’ dišta ‘idem’ = Alb di + Srb šta (Cech et al. 2009: 12, 40, 166, et passim); note also some calques, e.g., Skopje Arli neso, neko on the model of Macedonian nešto, nekoj.
Greek goes its own way here, with κανείς, a negative polarity item ‘no one’ that also means ‘anyone’ in interrogative contexts. It derives from καὶ ἂν εἶς ‘and if-ever one’ (Thumb 1912: 96; see also the detailed discussion in Horrocks 2014: 67ff.), although Balkan Slavic i da e ‘and if/let is’ is close to a calque.
Given this situation, it would appear that the formation of indefinites in Albanian and Balkan Romance might be a shared innovation from the period of contact with Latin, while the Slavic developments in general, although they took place after the migration of Slavic to the Balkans, are basically independent. We can also note here the Balkan Turkism (of Arabic origin) filan/filjan (StTrk filân) meaning ‘some X or other, so-and-so, etc.’
4.3.3.1.3 Negative Pronouns and Adverbs from Interrogatives
As Sandfeld 1930: 157 observes, the derivation of negative pronouns from interrogatives is a Common Slavic feature shared with Albanian and Balkan Romance, e.g., Mac/Blg nikoj, nikoga[š], nikade/nikăde, nikak[o], Alb askush, askund, askur[rë], assesi ‘nobody, nowhere, never, nohow.’ Sandfeld 1930: 157 cites the Banat Romanian GEN/DAT nicicui ‘nobody,’ and Romanian also has nici unde ‘nowhere,’ nicicînd ‘never,’ nicidecum/nici cum ‘nohow.’ We can also mention Meglenoromanian nitiscari, nitsicăn, ničcum ‘nobody, never, nohow.’ Although Aromanian has nitsi (= Rmn nici < Lat neque ‘not’), it uses sentence negation with indefinites to express negative pronouns. Note also the Aromanian dialect of Aminciu (Grk Métsovo), which has the form cantsiva ‘nobody,’ where the element can- is based on Grk κανείς (see §4.3.3.1.2, and Footnote footnote 144). Balkan Romani dialects borrow Slavic ni as in niko ‘nobody,’ niso ‘nothing,’ nijekh ‘no one’ (cf. ko ‘who,’ so ‘what,’ jekh ‘one’), although Slavic nikoj is sometimes borrowed wholesale. The pattern also occurs in Baltic, e.g., Lith nieko ‘nothing,’ nikas ‘nobody,’ niekada ‘never,’ nier ‘nowhere,’ niekaip ‘nohow.’ Given the Balto-Slavic evidence on the one hand, and the far greater productivity of the pattern in Albanian than in Balkan Romance, on the other, we can speculate that, as with the ‘on-ten’ construction for teens (see §4.3.2.2), this might have been a Balto-Slavic/Albanoid northwest Indo-European areal feature that pre-dated the arrival of the respective ancestral languages in the Balkans.
4.3.3.2 AdpositionsFootnote 146
Adpositions are relational elements that pull pieces of an utterance together by marking how they relate to each other. They constitute a closed class of adverbials that mark specific grammatical functions, in some cases, syntactic arguments, but also, more usually, syntactic adjuncts. As such, they are part of the tightly knit combinations that serve grammatical purposes, thus fitting the profile of less easily borrowed items. And this resistance has been recognized.
Three adverbial notions often expressed by adpositions, especially in the Balkans, namely ‘at,’ ‘in,’ and ‘with,’ appear on the 207-word Swadesh list. Moreover, among the meanings ranked by Tadmor et al. 2010: 235 as showing little historical evidence of being borrowed in their forty-one-language sample, ‘up’ is ranked highest and ‘behind’ is twenty-fourth, and in their composite list of 100 vocabulary meanings that are “basic” by various measures (pp. 238–241), the adverbial notion ‘in’ occurs as number ninety-seven. All of this testimony, taken together, is consistent with the intuition that adpositions, especially those expressing local relations, are less likely targets for borrowing.
Nonetheless, as far as second language acquisition is concerned, Matras 2009: 29 considers “the choice of prepositions modifying objects” to be among the “vulnerable categories” in a bilingual’s codeswitching, and, perhaps relatedly, examples of the borrowing of prepositions do occur, including in the Balkans. Matras 2009: 200 claims this may be so especially for “expressions of more peripheral and more complex local relations,” and in his listing of examples from various parts of the world, notes a few Balkan cases: Greek χωρίς ‘without,’ εκτός ‘except for,’ Romanian în loc de ‘instead,’ and various Slavic prepositions such as bez ‘without’ or vmesto (as in Bulgarian) or namesto (as in Macedonian) ‘instead of’ all occur in, mutatis mutandis, Romani.
To those examples, other Balkan cases can be added, e.g., colloquial Macedonian and older Bulgarian use of the Greek distributive preposition κατά ‘x by x’ with temporal expressions meaning ‘every,’ e.g., Mac katadneven ‘daily,’ katagodišen ‘yearly,’ katautro ‘every morning,’ etc. (cf. Sandfeld 1930: 21–22 and Gerov 1895–1908: s.v.).Footnote 147 There is also Alb anámesa, Aro anámisa ‘(in) between’ from Greek ανάμεσα ‘idem,’Footnote 148 and Alb andis ‘instead’ from earlier or dialectal Greek αντίς (now more usually αντί). Moreover, Sasse 1991: 320ff. gives instances of Greek prepositions in Arvanitika, including ανάμεσα and αντίς, as well as εκτός ‘except,’ εναντίον ‘opposite,’ μέχρι ‘until,’ and μεταξύ ‘between.’
And these examples can be multiplied, with some interesting syntactic effects. Bulgarian has gibi ‘like’ from Turkish, as did Ottoman-era Edirne Greek (Ronzevalle 1911: 89). Macedonian and Bulgarian both have karši ‘opposite’ from Trk karşı, as does Albanian (karshi) and Aromanian (carshí), and so did Edirne Greek during Ottoman times (Ronzevalle 1911: 411). For the most part, the Turkish postpositions have become prepositions – as expected since the languages are primarily prepositional – so that the shift is in keeping with the general typological cut of each language. Still, there are exceptions: in Edirne Greek, the postpositional use of gibi is documented (e.g., in Ronzevalle 1911:89), and in Aromanian (Papahagi 1974:371), carshí is postposed (doĭ oamenĭ carshí ‘opposite two men’). Moreover, mene karši ‘opposite my place’ occurs in Macedonian as a marked word order with the focus on mene (VAF field notes 2017). The final –i in all these forms for ‘opposite’ may well reflect a direct borrowing from a local (Balkan) Turkish form karşi (as opposed to being an adaptation of a form like standard Turkish karşı) since Aromanian copied the syntax of the Turkish and Edirne Greek seems in general not to have nativized the Turkish words it borrowed; nonetheless, in principle, in a given language, the word could have entered from a nativizing Balkan intermediary. A number of Romani dialects, e.g., Kaspičan, Sliven Nange, Kalburdži (RMS), and Futadži (Ivanov 2000), borrow a few Turkish postpositions as postpositions, and sometimes even extend this to native forms, e.g., Kaspičan xəzmečestar sora ‘after work’ (lit., ‘work.ABL after’), which borrows the Turkish postposition sonra ‘after’ and calques the ablative governance of Turkish, but also, e.g., Sliven Nange shtar zisendar palal ‘after four days’ (lit., ‘four days.ABL after’), where palal ‘after’ is native and the ablative on ‘days’ calques the Turkish case syntax. Gilliat-Smith (1915/1916: 87) records the use of the Turkish postposition beri ‘since’ as a postposition in various Romani dialects of Bulgaria, sometimes borrowed with the Turkish ablative case suffix that beri governs in Turkish, e.g., Kalajdži Rmi račjardan beri ‘since the night began’ (cf. Rmi rat ‘night’).
Matras 2009: 200 gives instances from Domari of the borrowing of “core prepositions” (from Arabic), and there may be such a case in the Balkans, involving ‘with’ in Greek and Albanian. The languages have identical forms, me in each, but the direction of influence, if any, is not clear. The relationship, if there is one, is complex, and so a more detailed treatment here demonstrates the difficulties in identifying historical relationships for some words.
First, the details of how με developed in Greek are not entirely clear. It is first attested in Medieval Greek (Hatzidakis 1905: 1.474; Bortone 2010: 221). The received wisdom (so Andriotis 1983: s.v., and all lexical compendia, e.g., Dangitsis 1978: s.v.; LKN: s.v.; Babiniotis 1998: s.v.; and Charalambakis 2014: s.v.), following Hatzdakis op. cit., is that it derives from Ancient Greek μετά by haplology and resegmentation operating on μετά with a neuter accusative plural nominal, either the demonstrative ταῦτα or a noun phrase introduced by the definite article τά; that is, μετὰ ταῦτα/μετὰ τά X … became μετ´ Ø X … (or μεØ τα X …) and was then analyzed as a new form με with τα as the article.Footnote 149 While possible, this account looks ad hoc and is not entirely convincing.Footnote 150 Complicating the issue is the occurrence of an adverbial element με- in Ancient Greek, in composite forms like μέχρι ‘until, up to’ (ModGrk μέχρι) or μέσφα ‘till.’ This με- is surely an inherited element from Proto-Indo-European, as there are cognates elsewhere that parallel these Greek formations, e.g., Armenian merj ‘close, near,’ Gothic miþ ‘with.’ Conceivably, then, Modern Greek με could be an archaism, despite its late attestation, a relic of an independent use of με- not directly attested in Ancient Greek, or it could reflect the reanalysis of affixal adverbial με- to independent word status.Footnote 151
On the Albanian side, the occurrence of me could simply represent the Indo-European element directly, with expanded usage: me, presumably the same one as at issue here, serves to mark the Geg infinitive, occurring with a participle (e.g., me punue ‘to work’), and a preverb usage can be detected in the verb marr ‘take,’ past mora ‘took,’ analyzable as *me with the root found in AGrk ἄρνυμαι ‘win, gain,’ Arme aṙnum ‘take.’Footnote 152 Some etymological sources on Albanian are simply silent on me (B. Demiraj 1997); Meyer 1891: s.v. says that it is a borrowing from Greek while Çabej 2014: s.v. summarizes the various arguments and opinions, siding with Jokl 1940: 128–129.
However, there are uncertainties on the Greek side, and there are disagreements between Greek and Albanian as to the functions of the respective me’s. Greek με, for instance, is not used as a preverb, though adpositions and preverbs do correlate across Indo-European generally (cf. Greek κατά ‘down,’ πρός ‘toward,’ and even μετά, among others), and no use of με in Greek parallels the Geg use as an infinitival marker. Moreover, Albanian me is not used in adverbial composites of the type of Greek μέχρι.Footnote 153
These functional mismatches might point to independent origins for the respective me’s, perhaps independent inheritance from Proto-Indo-European. If a borrowing, despite Meyer’s strong opinion, the directionality is not clear, and it could just as easily be that Greek borrowed from Albanian as vice versa. The fact that the prepositional use of με is not found in Ancient Greek is suggestive that this particular use represents a borrowing, especially since colloquial Medieval Greek was in contact with Albanian (Arvanitika) all over the Hellenic peninsula and the islands.
The semantic matching of the two me’s as prepositions is striking, in that each can mark means, accompaniment, and circumstance (and see also §4.3.10.2). Therefore the specifically prepositional uses may be borrowed, or at least modeled on one another, even if other functions do not match up directly. In the end, a definitive assessment of the history of this convergence cannot go beyond the speculations here, and we are left with a parallelism between Greek and Albanian that may or may not be contact-related.
The matching between Greek and Albanian in the semantics of με/me is instructive, as there is convergence all across the Balkans in preposition use and in the range of meanings for prepositions (cf. Asenova 2002: 97–104). With regard specifically to the semantics of Alb me, Grk με[τά], and BRo cu vis-à-vis BSl sъ, Asenova 2002: 101–102 observes that the Slavic preposition lost its ablative function quite early (it was taken over by Blg/Mac ot/od), thus bringing the BSl preposition in line with the other Balkan languages. The various functions that the respective languages’ prepositions currently have could have developed independently, but under the circumstances the parallels could only have been supported by language contact; see also §4.3.10.2 for more examples and discussion.
4.3.3.3 Negation
Negation clearly ranks among basic vocabulary material both in terms of its grammatical function and its discourse function. The meaning ‘not’ is on the Swadesh list, and, in Matras’s 2009: 208 estimation, negation falls into the “essential and salient semantic relations that are likely to have some kind of structural manifestation in every language.” He takes that as a reason why “not many examples of direct borrowing of word-form can be found” for this category. It is interesting, and telling, therefore, that Balkan languages show examples of the borrowing of negation.
There are several types of contact-induced developments involving negation-related items in the Balkans.Footnote 154 The most significant for the view of ERIC loans developed here, in that it is the most grammatical and thus the least expected under other than intense contact conditions, is the borrowing of the Greek negation marker μη.Footnote 155 This marker occurs in Greek with finite present tense verb forms, giving negative imperatives (prohibitives), e.g.: μη φύγεις ‘don’t (you.SG) leave!,’ μη φύγετε ‘don’t (you.Pl) leave!,’Footnote 156 and it is found in Balkan Slavic and Balkan Romance. Topolińska 1995a: 310 notes the occurrence of mi in the Macedonian of Lagadina (Grk Langadas) and sporadically elsewhere in Aegean Macedonian, and Stojkov 1968: 86 identifies it as characteristic of the Bulgarian of Strandža, in Thrace. Stankiewicz 1986a: 210 mentions mi as one of the “dialectal equivalents” (along with nekaj, nemoj, and n’alaj) in “various areas of Bulgaria and in some dialects of Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian” that can occur with an old truncated infinitive in a prohibitive expression. Papahagi 1974: 796 documents its occurrence in Aromanian, e.g., mi γin’ĭ nculeá ‘Don’t (you) come here.’ The Modern Greek μη derives directly from Ancient Greek μή by regular sound changes (ē > i) and thus it has been part of Greek for millennia. There is nothing like it elsewhere in Slavic or Romance, so its occurrence in the Balkan varieties of these groups is best attributed to borrowing. While borrowing of negation in general may be unusual, the fact that it is prohibitive negation that is borrowed here finds motivation in the conversational and discourse basis of Balkan interaction that characterize ERIC loans, in that prohibitives can be expected to be particularly prevalent in conversational interactions.Footnote 157
There is also a prohibitive expression that is parallel across several of the languages, in some instances, just in regional dialects. As demonstrated by Papadamou 2019a: 796–797, drawing also on Papadamou & Papanastassiou 2013, there is a prohibitive structure in northern dialects of Greek (of Grammochoria in the Kastoria regional administrative unit) that involves a fossilized 3sg verb form φτάν’ ‘it is enough’ (equivalent to StModGrk φτάνει ‘it reaches; it is enough’), with a following verb, as in φτάν’ κρέντς ‘you spoke enough, do not speak’ (2sg). She notes that this is “reminiscent of similar structures that carry the same function found in the local Slavic [i.e., Macedonian VAF/BDJ] dialects of the region, where, however, instead of φτάν,’ the adverb dosta ‘enough’ is used, e.g., dosta zborvi” ‘enough speaking, do not speak.’ Moreover, she adds that “similar structures are also found in the Aromanian dialects of the region, where duri/dure (Papahagi 1974) is used as a marker of negation, which stems from the Turk. dur ‘stop,’” e.g., duri zburets ‘stop speaking, do not speak.’ These parallels thus represent shared phraseology in the domain of negation that is somewhat grammatical in nature.
A second type of negation-related borrowing involves words that serve as a general statement of negation, an exclamatory utterance related to a discourse context that is equivalent in meaning to English no (and thus opposed to the grammatical not). There are two instances of such forms from Greek entering Southern Aromanian (Vrabie 2000: s.v. no): Greek όχι ‘no,’ giving Aromanian ohi (noted also much earlier by Récatas 1934Footnote 158), competing with native nu, and Greek μπα, an interjection that means something like ‘ah well’ but also ‘unh unh; no way,’ functioning somewhat like όχι but more showing dismissiveness, giving Aromanian ba (also in Papahagi 1974: s.v.) in a similar meaning. Macedonian has the dismissive ba, while Romanian has ba as an exclamatory negator, as does Bulgarian (‘of course not! Certainly not!’ (Bojanova et al. 1998: s.v.)). Further, Agía Varvára Romani has hayır for ‘no,’ from Turkish (from the period before the speakers settled in a suburb of Athens). And, Manea 2013: 558 observes that neam, from (eastern) Bulgarian njama, occurs as “a Wallachian regionalism” in Romanian for ‘not at all.’ She further notes ba ‘no, nay,’ from Bulgarian ba, which, besides uses in combination with nu ‘no’ to express “the contradiction of an assertion,” can also, “in non-standard contemporary Romanian [serve] as an archaic and colloquial variant of nu ‘no’ … especially with interrogative disjunctive clauses,” e.g., Ai fost la şcoală au ba? ‘have-you been to school or not?’ (see §4.3.4.3.1 for more on ba, also found in Turkish and Judezmo).
Relevant here too is the noise-word, technically an ingressive voiceless dental affricate (alveolar click) – conventionally spelled tsk in English, cq in Albanian, ck in Macedonian and Bulgarian, τσουκ in Greek, țâț in Romanian, and cık (rarely çık) in Turkish, but all phonetically [ʇ] – which is the clucking noise that can accompany an upwards head-nod (downward in Balkan Slavic) for ‘no’ (on which see below). The ingressive velaric dental (dental click) negator occurs from India through the Middle East and northward into the Caucasus and northwestward into the Balkans and southern Italy and Sicily. Its northernmost extent in the Balkans appears to coincide with Ottoman boundaries, while in Italy it appears to coincide with the extent of Magna Graecia, and so is characteristic of southern Italy.
Another case like this is Turkish yok, which as a predicate means ‘there is/are not’ but is used also as a general emphatic negative exclamation meaning ‘no’ or ‘absolutely not.’ This has spread widely in the Balkans: note Balkan Romance ioc, Albanian and Balkan Slavic jok, Greek, as in Τουρκική η Κύπρος – γιοκ! ‘Cyprus Turkish – No way!’,Footnote 159 and also the former Serbo-Croatian, e.g., in a joke in which a Serb tells a Macedonian that Macedonians use lots of Turkisms, a mi Srbi – jok! ‘but we Serbs, not at all!’.Footnote 160 The emphatic negator jok also occurs in Croatian sources (SANU 1973: s.v.; Matica Hrvatska 1967: s.v.). Further, yok may be involved in two additional instances of influence, as to use and, in one case, form as well.
The Albanian of Tetovo has uses for its inherited grammatical negator nuk ‘not’ in a way analogous to yok. The inherited grammatical negator nuk (pronounced [nawk] due to a regular diphthongization process in much of East Central Geg) has both functions of yok: it can be used to mean “there isn’t any” and also as a one-word general negative utterance, roughly “no that isn’t the case.” While native nuk ka, (more frequently, s’ka in most of Albanian), with the existential use of the 3SG of ‘have’ (see §7.8.2.2.6), would mean ‘there is none’ and could in principle be reduced to simply nuk, the emphatic exclamatory use of nuk in Tetovo suggests Turkish influence. This is consistent with the status of Turkish as the urban Muslim home language in Tetovo prior to World War Two (Ellis 2003).
In addition, Joseph 2000c, 2001b, developing a suggestion made first by Landsman 1988–1989, argued that irregularities in the development of ModGrk όχι ‘no!’ from AGrk οὐχί ‘not’ can be explained by reference to influence from Trk yok. While όχι must derive in some way from οὐχί, the stress placement and the initial vocalism of όχι are unexpected, as is the functional shift from grammatical negation to a general exclamatory negative.Footnote 161 All three irregularities can be accounted for if yok, in its emphatic negative use, had an impact here, as the initial vowel and stress of όχι matches the stressed -o- of yok, and the functions match as well. Moreover, the chronology of the first appearances of όχι, in the sixteenth century, accords well with this hypothesis of Turkish influence. Greek όχι would thus be a loan hybrid phonologically speaking, with the vocalism and stress of the Turkish form and the consonantism of the Greek (much like Tsakonian ðon, as discussed in §3.2.1.4). Again, given the exclamatory nature of όχι and yok, conversational interaction must have been the medium for such influence. Rijksbaron 2012, however, has addressed each of these points, finding evidence from the pre-Turkish era in Greek showing that each irregularity can be documented for Greek before Turkish influence was possible; he concludes that at the most, Turkish served to enhance the selection from among existing variants already present in Greek. (See also §4.3.3.1.1 on the Turkish negator hiç ‘nothing, not at all.’)
Finally, a third Balkan development involving negation is gestural in nature, thus paralinguistic, but still contact-related. Matras 2009: 196 is inclined to see gestural borrowing as part of discourse-related borrowing, drawing on the observation in Salmons 1990 about “the wholesale adoption of English discourse markers in Texas German as part of the overall convergence of communication patterns, including gestures,” and we agree with this assessment.Footnote 162 Gestural borrowings in the Balkans are part of the conversationally based interactions associated with ERIC loans. Moreover, a gesture can only be borrowed if seen, so that gestural borrowing necessarily involves face-to-face interaction between speakers. The gesture in question here is the upwards nod of the head for ‘no’ – realized sometimes even as just the raising of the eyebrows – with an optional dental or alveolar click, as mentioned above. It is found in Greek, Balkan Romance, Albanian, Balkan Slavic (slightly modified in Bulgarian), and Turkish. The spread of this usage is thus clear, but the directionality is not. It occurs outside of the Balkans, e.g., in some Arabic speech communities (e.g., Lebanon), as well as Persian, and in India as well, suggesting it may have been imported into the Balkans through Turkish. At the same time, though, at least as far as Italy is concerned, it occurs in the south and in Sicily but not in the north, thus coinciding with the borders of ancient Magna Graecia, and therefore suggesting that it has been part of Greek for millennia (Morris et al. 1979). Nonetheless, whatever the source and direction of its spread, it clearly has diffused widely, and since it involves speakers interacting directly, face-to-face, it necessarily is tied to conversation, and is thus consistent with our ERIC loan rubric.Footnote 163
4.3.3.4 Complementizers
Complementizers, or subordinating conjunctions, are part of what may be termed “clause-linking strategies,” and they serve as markers in the discourse of crucial relations between clauses and, ultimately, utterances. They are lexical items but have grammatical and discourse functions. As such, they can be borrowed but their borrowing is tied to their role in discourse.
Matras 2009: 194, 196 gives numerous examples of the borrowing of certain discourse “connectors” (see below in §4.3.4.1 on these) which for him include complementizers, and suggests that “some of the most frequently borrowed subordinating conjunctions express concessive relations, causal relations, purpose, and conditionality,” noting further that “factual complementisers appear to be more borrowing-prone than non-factual complementisers.”
In the Balkans, the borrowing of such elements is well documented, with instances to be found of borrowed causal, factual, conditional, concessive, and some temporal subordinators. For instance, Agía Varvára Romani has temporal molis ‘as soon as,’ from Greek (Igla 1996: s.v.). Bulgarian has causal zerem ‘because, since,’ either from Gagauz (Grannes 1996: 144) or Turkish (standard Turkish zira ‘because, since,’ Grannes et al. 2002: s.v.) and Macedonian zer, zere ‘idem’ is also from Trk zira (Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 231), also BSl čunki(m) and dialectal Albanian çynçi, çunçi, çimçi, qymqe from Turkish çünki ‘because’ (Grannes et al. 2002: s.v; Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 36, 213, 230; Boretzky 1976: 38, 111). Both Bulgarian and Macedonian have oti, in the causal sense ‘because, for that reason,’ from earlier (Classical up into Byzantine and Medieval) Greek ὅτι, in the meaning ‘for which/that reason.’Footnote 164 The entry of this form into Balkan Slavic is relatively early, predating the Ottoman period, as it occurs in the thirteenth-century Baniško gospel (Dogramadžieva & Rajkov 1981), so that it may have actually been a learnèd borrowing, found also in OCS (Sadnik & Aitzetmüller 1955: s.v.). Moreover, the causal meaning of ὅτι is available even today in Modern Greek (LKN: s.v. ότι2, Charalambakis 2014: s.v. ότι2), so that the chronology of the borrowing cannot be determined with any precision.
Another sense of ὅτι, meaning simply ‘that’ as a factual subordinate clause introducer, thus as a simple complementizer, was also borrowed into Bulgarian and Macedonian. This factual subordinator use is found in the Romani of Greece, too (Igla 1996: s.v.), and other varieties of Balkan Romani also borrow a local factual subordinator. In each case, as Matras 2009: 196 describes it, “the original Romani factual complementiser kaj is often replaced, in the respective dialects, by Greek oti, by Bulgarian či [< če with vowel reduction – VAF/BDJ], by Romanian-derived ke” and so on. He notes further that “the non-factual complementiser (inherited te) is virtually never replaced.” This latter fact means that the Balkan distinction of factual versus nonfactual complementation (see §7.7.2.1.3.1), realized in Greek via ότι/πως vs. να, in Macedonian via deka vs. da, in Bulgarian via če vs. da, in Albanian via se/që vs. të, in Aromanian via cã vs. si, in Meglenoromanian cã vs. s,’ and in Romanian via că vs. să, was carried over into and established, or perhaps maintained in, Romani through these borrowings.Footnote 165 We can also note here Gostivar WRT se ‘that, because’ borrowed from Albanian se ‘idem’ (Jašar-Nasteva 1970: 298). Here, Jašar-Nasteva makes the point that although the number of Albanian borrowings into Gostivar WRT is relatively small vis-à-vis Macedonian lexical items, such borrowings as exist tend to be function words.
In the area of concessives and conditionals, forms are borrowed that are based on the Greek word μακάρι, an old case form of Ancient Greek μάκαρ ‘blessed’ that in Postclassical Greek came to mean ‘God willing,’ and then took on grammatical use introducing wishes, in that way becoming complementizer-like. Judezmo of Istanbul (Varol Bornes 2008: 392) has makaré or makari with the imperfect subjunctive in the sense of ‘if only,’ e.g., makaré fuera ‘if only this had been … .’ Vlax Romani (Hancock 1995: 113) has màkar kẹ for ‘although,’ and màkar te for ‘even if,’ Macedonian, Bulgarian, and BCMS all have makar ‘at least,’ makar što/če/da for ‘even though,’ and makar i da for ‘even if; although,’ Aromanian has macar(im)Footnote 166 as an adverb meaning ‘at least’ but also as a connective, co-occurring with the subordinator si, meaning ‘even if,’ and Meglenoromanian has măcar si ‘although’ as well as salde si ‘only if’ (cf. Rmi salde ‘only,’ Mac sal ‘only,’ all from Turkish). For ‘if’ in Meglenoromanian, there is acu from Macedonian ako, and in Aromanian, one finds ama că, where ama, found all over the Balkans as ‘but’ (cf. §4.3.4.1), can here represent Greek άμα ‘when, if.’ In addition, Aromanian also has composite forms s-easte că/s-fúre că that are based on forms of the verb ‘be,’ with fúre deriving from the Latin perfect subjunctive of ‘be,’ fuerit. In that way, s-fúre că looks somewhat like Alb në qofte se ‘if; in case that’ (lit., ‘in may.it.be (optative) that’), so that calquing – of uncertain direction however – is a possibility here. Meglenoromanian also borrows Mac dali, interrogative marker meaning ‘if,’ in the sense of ‘whether.’ Romani also has dali as well as ako ‘if’ from Macedonian and eger ‘if’ from Turkish (StTrk eğer).
Recognizing calquing and composite complementizers brings an Albanian–Greek complementizer parallel into focus, though most likely not one at the level of conversational usage. Both languages have composite forms for ‘although’ that are derived from prepositional ‘with’ plus ‘all’ plus the factual complementizer, as does Aromanian: Alb megjithëse (me + gjithë + se), ModGrk μολονότι (με + ολο- ‘all’ + οτι), Aro cu tute cã. The Greek, however, is a learnèdism, as the -ν- as a neuter singular ending is a Katharevousa feature, and the Albanian and Aromanian forms are likely calqued from that. Nonetheless, such parallels depend on a degree of awareness of the lexicon and grammar of the source language on the part of some recipient language speakers, and to that extent are indicative of one dimension of multilingualism in the Balkans.Footnote 167
4.3.3.5 Interrogation
An interrogative marker serves a discourse function, but is also grammatical in that it is an indicator of a major sentence-type. As such, it would be expected to be somewhat resistant to borrowing, so it is significant that an overt marker for yes-no questions has been borrowed in the Balkans.Footnote 168 In particular, the Turkish postpositive mI, which is positioned in the string of postverbal elements before the personal endings, e.g., türkçe biliyor mu sunuz ‘Do you know Turkish?’ (= ‘Turkish know.prog q 2pl’) and shows vowel harmony with the verbal stem, was borrowed – in its rounded back harmonic form mu – into Edirne Greek during Ottoman times. Ronzevalle 1911: 451 describes it as “pleinement adoptée par les rouméliotes” (‘fully adopted by the Roumeliotes’) and gives the following examples:
a. μπουρείς μου
can.2SG Q
‘Can you (do it)?’ (Standard Greek: μπορείς?)
b. θαρτ’ς μου
FUT.come.2SG Q
‘Will you come?’ (Standard Greek: θά ‘ρθεις?)
This marker seems simply to be phrase- or utterance-final in the Greek, occurring after the personal endings (e.g., 2SG -(ει)ς), so that it has a somewhat different syntactic status from its Turkish source. Nonetheless, its grammatical marking function is carried over in the transfer.Footnote 169
Various dialects of Balkan Romani show reflexes of borrowed Turkish mI as well as the Slavic yes-no question marker li, also borrowed, though in each case these interrogative markers are sometimes transformed into Romani evidential markers; see §6.2.5.3 for details and discussion. Slavic li is also borrowed as an interrogative marker into Aromanian (Cuvata 2009: s.v.). Turkish mI also occurs in other Balkan expressions (see §4.3.4.2.1).
4.3.3.6 Articles
Articles are among the least commonly borrowed elements cross-linguistically in terms of their form, as noted by Matras 2009: 216,Footnote 170 excluding cases where an article is incorporated in a lexical borrowing, as with Spanish algodón ‘cotton’ with the Arabic definite article al- carried along with the borrowed noun (quṭun). Interestingly, though, one case that Matras does cite is from the Balkans, involving the Romani of Epirus in contact with Albanian. In that variety of Romani, an indefinite article with the form njek occurs, most likely “a blend of inherited Romani (j)ek and Albanian një” (p. 217).
It is worth mentioning here a parallel involving articles in the Balkans that is not quite as it seems. The Romani definite article (for more details on which see §6.1.2.2) has the form o in the masculine nominative and normally i in the feminine, which are quite strikingly identical to the Greek forms. Nonetheless, while some observers have intimated that contact with Greek may be involved in this parallel – Messing 1988: 18 says “It is probably not an accident that the Greek definite article for these two forms [Romani o and i] duplicates them” – the formal convergence is most likely merely a coincidence. Oblique forms of the article in some Central and Vlax Romani dialects preserve l- (< *t) from the early Indic demonstrative source of the Romani article, and one can note that masculine nouns in Romani typically end in -o and feminine nouns in -i, so that those phones, on system-internal grounds, are associated with those respective genders (Sampson 1926: 247; Matras 2002: 96–98; Boretzky & Igla 2004: Map 47). At the same time, however, the deployment of the article in Romani, e.g., its use with proper names, does point to the possibility of early Greek influence (Boretzky 2000a).
There is one contact effect involving articles in the Balkans that is noteworthy. While the quite Balkanized Torlak dialects of eastern BCMS do have a (postposed) definite article, there is some retreat in the use of the article in the dialect of Niš and the Timok dialects in general and under normative pressure from standard Serbian, which does not have a definite article (Toma 1998).Footnote 171
4.3.4 Discourse Elements
In the domain of ERIC vocabulary, we include those lexical items that serve as the “glue” of everyday conversational interactions between people, those holding discourse “chunks” together, much as function words hold syntactic chunks together (see §4.3.3). This covers a wide range of items, of varying functions. To some extent, all are interjectional in that they are not referential and do not mark actions or states or represent things; while some establish or signal overt connections between utterances, others seem to be fillers or hesitation markers. They include frequent discourse markers, which link utterances and often reveal a speaker’s stance or attitude towards matters at hand, and indicators of an individual’s status relative to other interlocutors that reflect solidarity and social distance more generally. In addition, they can modify the content of an utterance and can also serve a purely expressive purpose as elements that add “color” and “tone” to conversation.
It should be clear how these forms qualify as ERIC loans. As “discourse elements” they are necessarily tied to conversation and speaker interaction; indeed, as Brinton 1996: 33 remarks, discourse elements are “predominantly a feature of oral rather than of written discourse.”Footnote 172 As such, they could not spread without such interaction, presumably on an intense and sustained basis, and since they generally show shared functionality,Footnote 173 a reasonable degree of bilingualism that would allow for the spread can be assumed. They are given a central role in the discussion of borrowing in Matras 1998, 2009 and in Hauge 2002, from which some of the material herein is drawn, and while we see them as important, for us they are one part of the larger conversationally based set of loans that we recognize. Nonetheless, although these discourse words are unified as markers that help to guide the discourse and move it along, they constitute a highly diverse set of elements; as a result, the classes proposed here are somewhat arbitrary and not completely discrete. In what follows, with a rough division into connective, modifying and expressive, and interjectional discourse elements, and bearing in mind that some elements can fit into more than one category,Footnote 174 we survey the diffusion of these discourse-related words in the Balkans.
4.3.4.1 Connective Discourse Elements
A major aspect of conversation involves agreeing or disagreeing with an interlocutor, and particles marking these functions clearly connect speakers to previous utterances and indicate a speaker’s stance. In §4.3.3.3, instances of the borrowing of such discourse-related (as opposed to grammatical) negators are presented, and here the affirmative side, particles meaning ‘yes,’ are added. Several instances are documented: Slavic da is ‘yes’ in Romanian, and according to Popnicola 1997, it occurs locally in the Aromanian of Bitola; Aromanian dialectally also shows po, from Albanian, and malista ‘yes indeed,’ from Greek (Vrabie 2000: s.v.).Footnote 175 Moreover, the Meglenoromanian spoken on the Greek side of the current border uses ne for ‘yes’ and ohi for ‘no’ (R. Atanasov 2016: 141, cf. Grk ναι, όχι). Albanian po also occurs in some dialects of Romani (e.g., Konopar Arli in Skopje). In earlier Bulgarian, though now obsolete, Turkish evet ‘yes’ is found, and dialectally the affirmatives ăhă, from dialectal Turkish ıhı, and zar, from Turkish zira, occur in the meaning ‘yes; right’ (Grannes et al. 2002: s.vv.).Footnote 176
Quite widespread in the Balkans is a vocal gesture of affirmation with the form e. It is used in BSl to confirm something that someone else has said (i.e., not as an affirmative response to a discourse-new kind of yes/no question soliciting real information), in that sense functioning rather like English right. Albanian also has it, as does Greek, and in the Aromanian ‘yes’ (Cuvata 2006: s.v.; Papahagi 1974: s.v.). While it is a short utterance that undoubtedly belongs to the range of interjectional noises that humans can make universally, the functional match across these languages is striking.Footnote 177 What is not at all certain is the direction and source of diffusion, and it could well be that it was independently arrived at in each language but mutually reinforced through contact.
A connection of a different sort that also diffuses in the Balkans is the linking of chunks of discourse additively and adversatively. Matras 2009: 194 claims that such connectives show a “borrowability hierarchy based on contrast [of] but > or > and,” so we take them in this order, though it is not always clear that this hierarchy is followed in the Balkans.
Certainly the connective with the greatest spread in the Balkans is ‘but,’ in that a subset of the forms ama/ami/ma/mi, each with various nuances of adversative value, occurring as a discourse marker and/or conjunction, is found in virtually all of the languages. Fielder 2008, 2009, 2010, 2015, 2019 has discussed this most thoroughly from the pan-Balkan angle, with other works that focus on the uses in particular languages. The distribution of the relevant forms is given in Table 4.10.Footnote 178
Table 4.10 ‘but’ in the Balkans
| ama, ma, ami, mi (as discourse marker and conjunction) |
| Aromanian |
| Greek |
| Bulgarian |
| Macedonian |
| Meglenoromanian |
| ama, ma only (as discourse marker and conjunction) |
| Albanian |
| Judezmo |
| Romani |
| Turkish |
| ama, ma (as discourse marker only) |
| Romanian |
The source is unclear and much disputed, as there are several plausible contact sources (e.g., Arabic into Turkish and then Turkish into other languages for ama, Italian into Greek and Albanian (and BCMS) for ma, Greek into other languages for ami (ΜGrk αμμή, etc.) as well as plausible internal sources in some cases (e.g., ama from Greek αμμή (from AGrk ἄν μή ‘if + not’) with final -α by analogy to αλλά ‘but,’ and μα by apocope from άμα), all of which make for the possibility of conflicting, and largely unprovable, claims.Footnote 179 For instance, άμα/amma occurs in Greek and in Turkish and given the extent of Greek influence in the vocabulary of Aromanian, the occurrence of ama there could be due to Greek; however, Turkish has also had a considerable impact on the Aromanian lexicon, so that ama could be a Turkism there, as indeed Vrabie 2000: 83 judges it.Footnote 180
Besides the spread of the (a)mV word(s) for ‘but,’ other borrowing of adversative/contrastive connectives in the Balkans is attested. Meglenoromanian borrows tucu from Macedonian tuku ‘but, rather.’ Romani of Agía Varvára has borrowed αλλά ‘but’ from Greek (Matras 2009: 194) and ala occurs in Bulgarian and Macedonian sources though it is not much used in the present day, if at all (Fielder 2008: 116). A form omos ‘however,’ from Greek όμως ‘however,’ is reported dialectally for Macedonian by Budziszewska 1983. Also, several Turkish ‘but’-like connectives are borrowed (some of which have other uses as well), see Table 4.11.
Table 4.11 Borrowing of adversatives in the Balkans
| ancak ‘but, on the other hand, only’: | Alb anxhak ‘however,’ Aro anǧeac ‘almost, finally,’ Blg andžak ‘precisely,’ Mac andžak ‘because’ |
| illâ ve lâkin ‘but on the other hand’: | Alb velakin, Blg illja veljakim/illjakim, Mac iljakim, Aro eleakim/ileakimFootnote 182 |
| me(ğe)r ‘but; however’: | Blg meger/mer |
Finally, diffusion of ‘but’ is not restricted just to Balkan sources, if μα/ma in Greek and especially Albanian derives, as is quite plausible, from Italian ma.Footnote 181
We can also note here the calqued adversative whose literal meaning is ‘good but’ and which has the semantics of ‘however’: Trk iyi ama, Rmi šukar ama, Alb mirëpo, BSl [h]arno ama, Aro gine ama, Megl bun ama, Grk καλά άμα. A similar convergent adversative is the use of ‘and’ with subjunctive (i.e., DMS + finite verb) to mean ‘even if,’ e.g., BSl i da, Alb edhe të, BRo și s[ă], Grk και να, as in Mac i da dojdeš, fajde nema ‘even if you come, it’s no use (lit., ‘there is no profit’)’ (cf. also Sandfeld 1930: 108 regarding ‘and’ plus jussive in this meaning).
In the case of words for the disjunctive connective ‘or,’ there is one quite widely diffused form and other more localized borrowings. The widespread form is ya in the expression ya … ya meaning ‘either … or,’ and it is found in Romani, Greek (για … για), Aromanian (ia … ia), Albanian, Balkan Slavic and Meglenoromanian (ja … ja), and Turkish (ya … ya). The locus of diffusion for these languages is surely Turkish,Footnote 183 as Matras 2009: 194 has it, commenting on Romani of Agía Varvára, though the presence of the word in Greek means that the Agía Varvára source in principle could be Greek as the local and “current contact language” rather than Turkish as “an older contact language.” Other cases where the source is clear are the appearance of Macedonian ili ‘or’ and a ‘or, whereas’ in the Turkish spoken in North Macedonia and in Aromanian (Papahagi 1974: 675) as well as ili … ili … ‘either … or … ’ in Meglenoromanian, the occurrence in Albanian and in SDBR of i from Greek ή ‘or’ and yohut in Albanian from Turkish yahut ‘or; otherwise’ (Dell’Agata 1966), and the borrowing into Bulgarian of ha … ha and Macedonian a … a from Turkish (Grannes et al. 2002: s.v.; Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 229).Footnote 184 Similarly, Agía Varvára Romani (Igla 1996: 296) has the negative disjunctive connective ne … ne ‘neither … nor,’ from Turkish.Footnote 185
The additive/conjunctive connective ‘and’ also yields examples of borrowing in the Balkans. Macedonian simplex ‘and,’ i, is borrowed into Aromanian,Footnote 186 and also into the Turkish spoken in North Macedonia, whence there is “reciprocity,” in that the doubled hem … hem of Turkish, meaning ‘both … and,’ enters Macedonian, Aromanian, and Meglenoromanian (as em … em …), as well as Albanian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Romani; single [h]em ‘and, too, and yet,’ occurs in all these languages was well as in the Greek of Ottoman-era Edirne (Ronzevalle 1911: 456). A borrowed form that is additively connective in that it keeps the discourse flowing is the Turkish demek ‘that is to say, namely,’ found throughout the Balkan languages, including Romani (e.g., Igla 1996: s.v.), Albanian (Boretzky 1976), Aromanian (Papahagi 1974: s.v. demec), Meglenoromanian, Macedonian, and colloquially in Bulgarian (Grannes et al. 2002: s.v.) and dialectally in Greek (LKNonline: s.v. ντεμέκ).Footnote 187
The widespread occurrence of the amV word(s) for ‘but’ along with the wide distribution of ya for ‘or’ and the more restricted borrowing of ‘and’ would seem to suggest that Matras’s hierarchy mentioned above is suitably instantiated in the Balkans. However, it is important to realize that in a language that attests two of these connectives, they need not have been borrowed in the sequence predicted by the hierarchy; in the absence of appropriate historical records, one has to be agnostic.
We turn now to two case studies which are sufficiently complex to require presentation in considerable detail.
4.3.4.1.1 Detailed Case Study A: ‘either … or’
The disjunctive conjunction meaning ‘either … or … ’ also has a specifically Balkan realization in the Albanian dialects of North Macedonia, which comes from Macedonian and may in turn be connected with Aromanian.
The Macedonian verbal l-form is descended from the Common Slavic resultative participle, which in Old Church Slavonic (ceteris paribus, the equivalent of Common Slavic) was used to form the perfect, pluperfect, conditional, and future perfect. In Macedonian, unlike Bulgarian, the l-form lost its ability to function attributively but remained in use for the perfect, pluperfect, and conditional. At some late stage in Common Slavic, and thus well before the rise of the opposition confirmative/nonconfirmative in Balkan Slavic (see §6.2.5.1), what was the l-participle developed an optative usage in the third-person singular to replace the third singular imperative which, being homonymous with the second singular imperative, was lost. According to Vaillant 1966: 97, such usage is found in Czech as well as throughout South Slavic (cf. the common BCMS toast živ[j]eli! ‘may [we] live’), and thus it must have arisen prior to their separation. For Polish, too, Topolińska 2008 points out uses of bylo that also look optative, as in example (4.7):
a.
było nie było, zrobimy to (Pol) was neg was do.pfv.prs.1pl it b.
kakoda e, kje go napravime toa (Mac) how dms is fut it do.pfv.prs.1.pl it ‘no matter what (Polish ‘let it be/not be’), we will do it’
She compares this to uses of plain bulo protases in Ukrainian which can have an optative interpretation (Topolińska 2008: 172). Moreover, she notes that this usage occurs in eastern dialects, where the influence of Polish is unlikely, as in (4.8):
(4.8)
Buło pryiti, to ja skazała by … (Ukrainian) was come.inf then I say.cond ‘If [someone] would come, I would say … ’
In Macedonian, the old perfect using the l-form developed a chief contextual variant meaning of nonconfirmativity in opposition to the synthetic aorist and imperfect, which became markedly confirmative, i.e., denoting events for which the speaker is willing to vouch. The old perfect can thus be used to express surprise (or doubt, etc.) at a newly discovered state of affairs that existed before the moment of speech but that the speaker just discovered, e.g., Toj bil tuka normally means ‘he was/has been here,’ but it can also mean ‘He is here (to my surprise)’ and in this meaning it corresponds to Albanian Ai qenka këtu (see Friedman 1981, 1986a, 2005a for details).
Vaillant 1966: 97 attributes the optative uses of the l-participle to an elliptical optative composed of da plus the conditional (3sg bi plus l-participle), e.g., Macedonian Dal ti Gospod dobro!, literally ‘May the Lord grant you [that which is] good!’. He also notes that Russian uses of the type pošël ‘Let’s go’ have nothing to do with the South and West Slavic phenomenon under consideration here but are rather expressive uses of the past. (Cf. colloquial English We’re outta here.) It thus seems to be the case that we are dealing with an old isogloss that spread from South to North to include West Slavic and even Ukrainian, but not Russian.
In Macedonian, the optative use of the l-form was reinterpreted as a perfect rather than an elliptical conditional and can thus occur in other persons with the auxiliary of the old perfect rather than the conditional marker, e.g., Da ne sum te videl!, literally ‘May I not have seen you!,’ i.e., ‘I’d better not see you [around here].’ In the course of subsequent centuries, the perfect meaning of the old present resultative perfect using the l-form in Macedonian came into competition with that paradigm’s nonconfirmative meaning, which arose as a result of the development of marked confirmativity in the synthetic pasts (see §6.2.5.1 and Friedman 1986c for detailed discussion). In southwestern Macedonian, with the rise of a new resultative perfect using the auxiliary ima ‘have’ and the neuter verbal adjective, the old perfect using the present of ‘be’ plus the verbal l-form became restricted to nonconfirmative usage and, in the extreme southwest, disappeared almost entirely. To the north and east of the Ohrid-Struga region up to the river Vardar (and beyond, since World War Two), the old and new perfects have been in competition, and the old perfect using the verbal l-form is an unmarked past, but with a chief contextual variant meaning of nonconfirmativity (see Friedman 2014b:101–108 for detailed explanation, also §6.2.5.1). At the same time, with all these developments, a remnant of the old Late Common Slavic use of the l-participle as an optative (without, importantly, an auxiliary in all the languages where it occurs) developed in Macedonian and Bulgarian into a disjunction using the third-person singular neuter of ‘be’ as bilo …, bilo … (lit., ‘let it be …, let it be … ’) in the meaning ‘whether …, or … ’ (cf. archaic English be he alive or be he dead …).Footnote 188 In its meaning, this construction corresponds to the Albanian use of the 3sg present optative qoftë …, qoftë …. In modern Albanian, the optative is more or less limited to expressions such as rrofsh! ‘thank you’ (lit., ‘may you live’), me nder qofsh ‘you’re welcome’ (lit., ‘may you be with honor’), and a variety of other formulae, blessings, and curses; these can use any verb in any person, so that even though quite restricted in function, the category is very much alive. This function, however, is very tightly connected to the desiderative function of the optative. As such, it rarely occurs outside this function, and when it does, e.g., in the expression në qoftë se ‘if,’ it can always be replaced by some other locution (në, po, po të, etc.).
In the Albanian of North Macedonia (but not that of Kosovo, Montenegro, Albania, or Greece),Footnote 189 it appears that the combination of the general restriction of the Albanian optative to wishes combined with the surface similarity of the Macedonian optative use of the l-form to its nonconfirmative use, especially with the verb ‘be,’ has resulted in a calqued replacement of qoftë by qenka in the meaning of ‘whether …, or … .’ Thus, for example, an Albanian politician from Tetovo, talking with a colleague in Skopje about the importance of investment, made the point that nationality was irrelevant: qenka shqiptar, qenka amerikan, qenka maqedonas … ‘[it doesn’t matter] whether it’s (= let it be) an Albanian, an American, or a Macedonian … .’ The Macedonian for qenka here would be bilo, while standard Albanian would use qoftë in this position (Friedman 2012b).
An Aromanian equivalent expression for ‘whether … or … ’ is furecă (furică, furică, furcă, fucă) as in fure-că-i bărbat i fure-că-i mul’are ‘whether it be a man or a woman’ (Capidan 1932: 511).Footnote 190 This corresponds to the Balkan Slavic bilo … bilo ….
From the point of view of Aromanian, furecă is an archaism, preserving the Common Balkan Romance (im)perfect conditional-optative of 3sg ‘be’ (Latin perfect subjunctive fuerit). From the point of view of Latin, however, it is an innovation on two counts. First, the Common Balkan Romance transformation of the imperfect and perfect subjunctive into a conditional-optative is an innovation, since Latin did not have a specific conditional paradigm, although the imperfect subjunctive was one of the tenses used to render conditional meanings (Rosetti et al. 1965: 184; Papahagi 1974: 67; Ivănescu 1980: 155, cited in Nevaci 2006: 143). Papahagi 1974: 67 makes the point that the merger of the perfect and imperfect subjunctives occurred in Common Balkan Romance. Moreover, the present and past synthetic conditionals have also merged for most or all verbs, with the new analytic conditional with volo ‘want’ replacing the synthetic past conditional, and, usually, the present conditional as well.Footnote 191 But precisely in the auxiliaries, the temporal opposition is preserved in form even if not necessarily in content, so that, formally, the 3sg present conditional of ‘be’ is [s’] heare and the (im)perfect is (s[i]) fure.Footnote 192
The second innovation from the point of view of Latin is the use of this form of ‘be’ in a disjunctive alternative conjunction, where Latin had sive … sive … (rarely seu … seu …), which in turn comes from the locative of the demonstrative *so- plus the clitic conjunction -ue ‘or.’ We can also note here that the more common meaning of (s)furecă, etc. is simply ‘if’ (Romanian dacă; cf. Capidan 1932: 509; Saramandu 1984: 464), which meaning likewise had a very different form of expression in Latin. Thus far, the developments we have noted for Aromanian are suggestive, but only that. These developments occurred at a time when Romance, Slavic, and Albanian speakers were in contact with one another in the same place, and their verbal systems were all undergoing significant restructuring. As Gołąb 1976, 1984a, 1997 has shown, the influence of Aromanian on Macedonian, especially in the verbal system, was especially strong. At the same time, Romance-Albanian and Slavic-Albanian contacts are all well attested in the respective lexicons. Moreover, Scărlătoiu 1980 argues that Slavic-Romance contact occurred over a wide area, which means that innovations could also expand broadly. On the other hand, the Aromanian development is quite distinct from Romanian, which uses the Balkan Romance subjunctive of ‘be’ for the correlative alternative conjunction – fie …, fie … (cf. French soit …, soit …) – and has very different developments for ‘if.’ In all three languages, it is a past stem of ‘be’ that moves into this equivalent type of modal usage, while the conditional of the Balkan type (Gołąb 1964a), using volo plus imperfect marking, made significant inroads later into all three language systems, but did not completely eliminate the earlier constructions. We thus have a picture of complex accommodation and resistance.
The modern Albanian-Macedonian interaction casts light on the situation a millennium or so ago. It was a time of considerable change in the Romance, Albanian, and Slavic verbal systems as well as lexicons, and while the developments are not completely isomorphic, their parallels are striking. If Albanian was already beginning to develop its optative around the time that the dialects that became Common Balkan Romance lost contact with Latin, this might have given an impetus for the reinterpretation of the past subjunctives as a new distinct conditional-optative. This in turn might have influenced the optative development in the South Slavic perfect, which was early enough to spread north before the Magyar and German invasions cut off contact between what became South and West Slavic. Finally, it is worth noting that Greek does not have this type of correlative alternative conjunction and in general it is absent from these developments. This contributes to the idea that they are quite old, i.e., before Greek began to re-enter the hinterland from the coast after the Slavic migrations.
4.3.4.1.2 Detailed Case Study B: An Expressive Connector
Finally, since this subsection treats connectives and §4.2.4.2 treats attitudinal expressives, it is appropriate to consider the Balkan particle de as it not only serves as a connector, but also expresses an attitude, usually a kind of emphatic; thus, it iconically provides a suitable connective in itself to the next section.
The relevant facts are that both BSl (including eastern Štokavian) and Turkish each has a native particle de, and in both the particle can be independent or enclitic. In both language groups the independent form can be derived from a verb of saying and at the same time there is a homonymous particle of nonverbal origin. For BSl, the source of the ‘say’ particle is the Indo-European root *dhē- ‘do, put, etc.,’ which gives OCS děti with an imperative dej that survives in the Bulgarian prohibitive nedej ‘don’t!’ as well as in the archaic form of more recent de (BER I: 334). In BSl, the reportative meaning found, e.g., in Russ de, Ukr di, Pol dzie (Vasmer I: s.v.), does not occur. According to Skok 1971: s.v., Slavic de is of pronominal origin (IE *t-), despite difficult historical phonology, although he also identifies clitic de as a Balkan Turkism. Skok notes that de can be used with imperatives, and in the plural imperative can even come between the verb and the plural marker: dajde! ‘c’mon give! (2SG)’ / dajdete! ‘c’mon give! (2pl)’. He identifies this use of de with nonimperatives as typical of Kosovo for BCMS, e.g., znamde! ‘Hey, I know, already.’
For Turkish, the Common Turkic root for the verb is *dij ‘say, etc.’ For Turkish, de! (i.e., the vocalically invariant, bare, stressed verbal root) is still the imperative of ‘say’ as well as a freestanding expressive particle (Sevortjan 1980: 221–222; as a freestanding particle, Redhouse 1968: s.v. marks it as ‘provincial’ and glosses it ‘Now then! Come on!’). Turkish also has an inherited enclitic particle dV with low vowel harmony, i.e., realized as da or de depending on the last vowel of the preceding item. This particle has the basic meaning of a coordinating conjunction ‘and’ but by extension is also emphatic with meanings like ‘even,’ ‘even though,’ etc. (Sevortjan 1980: 109–110). It is this second de that occurs in expressions such as [h]em de ‘and also,’ ben de ‘me, too,’ bana da ‘me.dat too.’
In Aromanian and Meglenoromanian, Albanian, and northern Greek, independent de has the exclamative meaning (‘Hey!’ or ‘Well, now!) found in Turkish and Balkan Slavic (Skok 1971: s.v, cf. 1974: s.v.). Clitic de occurs chiefly with imperatives in Albanian and Greek, a usage that was noted above for Balkan Slavic and which also occurs in Balkan Romance and Turkish. Newmark et al. 1982: 322 says that de adds “intensity” to the imperative and “serves to express the speaker’s impatience”; this is exactly what Greek shows, e.g., (4.9):
a. έλα ντε ‘C’mon already!’
b. σταμάτα ντε ‘Stop it, OK!’
Cf. also Romani, e.g., ava de, ava ‘I’m coming, already!’.
In Greek, ντε always occurs phrase-finally, with the exception of the fixed phrases ντε και καλά, literally ‘dé and well,’ and ντε και σώνει, literally ‘de and is.enough,’ that can be translated as ‘once and for all!’, conveying a sense of finality and annoyance.Footnote 193 In general, the emphatic de will be enclitic. In BSl, as noted above, de can be freestanding as well as enclitic, e.g., de more de! ‘C’mon man, c’mon!,’ da de da ‘yes, of course,’ and so too for the Aromanian de, e.g., de bre de ‘C’mon man, c’mon,’ which can also occur independently as a one-word interjectional utterance: De!. Romanian has the Turkish conjunction de in a variety of meanings, including ‘and,’ ‘if,’ and an interjection de meaning (roughly) ‘now then; well.’
In terms of meaning, the Turkish nonharmonic de matches the Greek, Albanian and BSl better than connector de/da, but in terms of prosodic (word order) properties, the connector de is the better model. It is possible of course that the postpositive connector was borrowed and simply altered in meaning in the borrowing language.Footnote 194 Boretzky & Igla 1994: s.v. also cite the use of -ta ~ -da as a focus particle or an emphatic particle after imperatives as being from the Turkish (cf. also Igla 1996: s.v.; Boretzky 1993: 87). It is clear that both Slavic and Turkish had the resources for contributing to the different usages found in the various Balkan languages, and that the two de’s in the two languages had the potential for various types of conflation, especially since the connective ‘and’ itself can serve as a kind of emphatic marker. For Romanian, Cioranescu 1958–1966: s.v. notes Moldovan deh, dec and mentions as well the claim that the particle is from Dacian, despite the absence of any such attestation.
4.3.4.2 Modifying and Expressive Discourse Elements
This last element, de, as noted, actually does more than just connect; it adds attitude and speaker stance, and injects a certain expressiveness or tone into the utterance, thus modifying it in some way.Footnote 195 There are also elements that are less expressive but fully modificational nonetheless. Both of these types of modifying discourse elements abound in conversation, and they have spread quite widely around the Balkans.
4.3.4.2.1 Modifiers
There is a rather large class of modificational words, mostly but not exclusively from Turkish and mostly, but not exclusively, adverbs, that are borrowed into various of the Balkan languages that have something to do, in a rough way, with the evaluation of the truthfulness of the content of an utterance, offering meanings such as ‘really; is it so’ (thus confirming), ‘certainly,’ ‘probably,’ ‘presumably,’ ‘perhaps’ (thus commenting on likelihood), ‘so to say,’ ‘supposedly,’ ‘that is,’ ‘as if,’ ‘at least’ (thus mitigating or clarifying); we give several here (listed alphabetically by spelling in source language), along with their source, meaning (in donor and/or borrower, as relevant),Footnote 196 and language distribution (see Table 4.12).Footnote 197
Table 4.12 Selected borrowed Balkan modifiers
| Trk ácaba | ‘I wonder if; oh indeed!’ | Alb axhaba, Aro ageaba, Blg adžeba, Jud adjaba, Mac adžaba, Megl adžaba, OEGrk adžiba ‘I wonder; is it so?’ |
| Grk αλήθεια | ‘truly? really?’ | Aro alithios ‘really, truly’ |
| Trk ártık | ‘now; well then; not’ | Aro artic, ‘finally,’ Blg ártăk ‘finally; really; in fact,’ Megl artîk ‘finally,’ OEGrk artık ‘anymore, only’ |
| Trk bári(m) [=bārī] | ‘at least; for once’ | Alb bar/bare(m)/bari,Footnote 198 Aro & Megl báre/bári/ bárim, BSl* bar/bare/bárem/barém/bári/barí/ bárim/barím, Jud bári, Rmn barem, Grk μπαρίμ, Rmi barem |
| Trk belki(m) | ‘perhaps, maybe’ | Alb belqim, Aro belchi, BSl* belki(m), Grk μπελκί(μ), Jud belki, Megl. belchi ‘perhaps; probably; as if’ |
| Trk değil mi | ‘isn’t it so?’ | Alb, dilmi Aro delme ‘since,’ BSl delmi/dilmi/dilma ‘isn’t it?’, Megl delmi ‘since; because; after,’ Rmi dilmi ‘isn’t it so’ |
| Trk [h]élbet(te) | ‘certainly, surely’ | Alb (h)elbet(e), Aro elbet(e) ‘possibly; assuredly,’ BSl* (h)elbete/elbetta/helbette/helbet(t)ja, Rmn (h)elbet, Megl elbet, OEGrk elbet(te) |
| Trk gālibā | ‘probably, presumably’ | Alb galiba ‘perhaps,’ BSl* galiba, OEGrk galiba |
| Trk gerçek | ‘real; really, in truth’ | Blg gerček |
| Trk gûya, göya | ‘as if; supposedly’ | Alb gjoja/gjyja, Aro ghotaha, ghoma, ghoa, gho, etc., Blg gjóa, gjoj[kim], Mac gjoa[miti] (BCMS đôjā), Megl ghiuá, OEGrk γ’a |
| Grk λοιπόν | ‘so; OK, well’ | Aro lipon |
| Alb mbase | ‘perhaps; maybe’ | Grk μπας και ‘perhaps’Footnote 199 |
| BSl pa | ‘well, so, and so’ | Alb (in North Macedonia), Rmi pa |
| Trk sāhi(h) | ‘really, truly’ | Alb sahi, Aro saí ‘exact,’ Blg saí usually followed by the Turkish interrogative particle mi to render ‘Really?’, also Mac & Rmi sajmi?, BCMS sahi(h) |
| Trk samsahi | ‘really really’ (intensive reduplication of sahi) | Blg samsai ‘obviously; indeed’ |
| Trk sanki(m) | ‘as if’ | Aro sanchi, BSl sanki[m] ‘actually; that is to say; as if,’ Jud sankyi, Rmn sanche/i, OEGrk sangim |
| Trk sözde | ‘so-called; supposed(ly)’ | Blg sjuzde ‘supposedly (indicating disbelief)’; ‘as if’OEGrk seüzde |
| Grk τάχ’ | ‘as if’ | Aro taha |
| Trk yāni | ‘that is to say’ | Alb jani ‘however; namely,’ OEGrk γ’a’ni, |
| Trk zāten | ‘essentially; already’ | Alb zaten ‘just exactly,’ Aro zaté, Blg zată(n), |
| (coll zāti) | Mac zate ‘indeed, really, exactly’; Jud zatén | |
| ‘indeed,’ OEGrk zatın ‘naturally; also’ |
In the realm of truth-evaluative borrowings, the Turkish perfect marker -mIş, whose auxiliary ‘be’ form is imiş, is a special case. The auxiliary imiş in WRT is often not reduced to clitic -mIş in derived tenses, which is an archaism relating to its auxiliary origin. The affix itself can be treated as a separate lexical item as in the following example from Lewis 1967: 102 Ben mişlere muşlara pek kulak vermem ‘I miş.pl.dat muş.pl.dat much ear give.neg.1sg’ = ‘I don’t pay much attention to gossip.’ In Gostivar, Turkish speakers also use miş as a lexical item to comment on someone else’s narrative in the confirmative when the interlocutor is confirming a belief rather than something s/he knows irrefutably (VAF field notes, cf. §6.2.5). Adamou 2012a notes a similar use of -muš in the Romani of Greek Thrace (in Xánthi), Kyuchukov 2012 reports similar usages in Romani dialects in eastern Bulgaria, and Skopje Arli also has imiš in such usages (Friedman 2019b).Footnote 200 We can also observe that this reanalysis of an inflection unit as a lexical item is one of many counterexamples to the unidirectionality hypothesis of grammaticalization theory, since we clearly have a grammatical affix turning into a freestanding lexical item (see footnote 151).
Finally, numerous other elements, generally sentence adverbs, some of which have mitigating, intensifying, or focalizing discourse uses, are borrowed into other languages, mostly from Turkish though we cite one case from Romanian. As this is a more open-ended sort of borrowing, in that the definitional boundaries for such discourse elements are not fixed, we mention just a few of the more prominent ones here, and refer the reader to Grannes et al. 2002, Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 115–124, and Hauge 2002 for more examples. See Table 4.13.
| Trk bile | ‘even; already’ | Alb bile ‘even; in fact,’ Aro bile, Blg biljá(m)/bilé(m), Mac bile (dial.), Rmi bila(m)/bilim, Jud (Istanbul) bile (in fixed phrase from Turkish vallahi bile ‘strewth’ (Varol Bornes 2008: 457) |
| Trk hemenFootnote 201 | ‘almost, nearly’ | Blg hemen; OEGrk εμέν |
| Trk sade | ‘only’ | Alb sade,Footnote 202 Aro sade, Blg sa(a)dé, Mac sade, Rmi sáde/sadé Rmn sade, OEGrk sadé |
| Trk salt | ‘only’ | Alb sall(a)/sallde/sallte (dialectal), Blg sal/sált(e), Mac sal, Megl sal/săl, Rmi saltə́ |
| Trk tamam | ‘just right; there you have it!’Footnote 203 | Alb tamam/n, Aro tamam/tamamá/tamamaná, Blg/Mac tamám/n, BCMS tàmām/n, tamȁm/n Rmn (dialectal) taman, Grk (dialectal) ταμάμ(ι), Megl tamam/n, Rmi tamami |
| Rmn mai | ‘almost’ | Blg mai (Banfi 1985: 100) |
4.3.4.2.2 Expressives
Expressives, as noted above, introduce tone or attitude into a conversation, but we include here the borrowing of words conveying conversational pleasantries, e.g., greetings,Footnote 204 inasmuch as they inject a friendly tone. Regarding the latter, one can note the borrowing of Turkish merhaba ‘hello’ into Ottoman-era Edirne Greek in that form and Bulgarian colloquial usage as maraba (reflecting a Turkish dialect form).Footnote 205 Moreover, Aromanian in Greece has borrowed Greek γεια σου ‘hello’ (lit., ‘health to-you’ or ‘health your’), given as yeásu by Vrabie 2000: s.v. and γeásu by Papahagi 1974: s.v. The Turkish formula for ‘welcome,’ hoş geldin (cf. (4.37)), occurs, e.g., as a codeswitch in Albanian epic poetry (Halimi 1951: 225) in the form hoshgjelldën, which reflects the WRT backing of high front vowels in closed final syllables. (Cf. also hozhgjelden in songs collected by Milman Parry and Albert Lord in the 1930s in northeastern Albania, Scaldaferi 2021: passim.) A similar borrowing is found in nineteenth-century Macedonian folktales as Oždžldi, ožbulduk (Cepenkov 1972a: 183, cited in Friedman 1995b). In this Macedonian rendering, the speaker (a Macedonian woman) uses both the greeting and the response (lit., ‘welcome, well found’; cf. example 4.38) as a single greeting reflecting both local WRT pronunciation, and a transformation of the Turkish formula. Romani, too, makes use of this codeswitch representing WRT phonology and a reanalysis of the traditional answer. In a tale from Skopje narrated by a man born there in 1896, a king (padishah) addresses Tilči bey (a fox) “hoš gêldın” ‘well have you come’ and the fox replies “hoš buldun” ‘well have you found,’ which would be 2SG rather than the normal 1SG buldum ‘I have found’ (Cech et al. 2009: 220); on final m ~ n variation, see Footnote footnotes 166, Footnote 181, Footnote 201, Footnote 204, and Footnote 340.
A standard Albanian greeting tungjatjeta (lit., ‘may your life be prolonged’) also occurs in Macedonian folktales (Cepenkov 1972a: 120, cited in Friedman 1995b). Given the contexts of the epics and tales, it can be argued that these greetings represent codeswitching insertions determined by the addressee rather than borrowings, but the point here is that they are part of the linguistic repertoire of the narrators and their listeners. For bidding farewell, Edirne Greek used urular olsun, from the Turkish uğurlar olsun ‘good luck! good journey’ (lit., ‘good.omens may.there.be’).
Relevant in this regard, too, are the hypocoristic terms of familiar address, terms of endearment (see also §4.3.8). For instance, there are several that passed from Turkish into various Balkan languages, e.g., OEGrk ογλούμ (Ronzevalle 1911: 103), Rmi olum / oglum ‘my son’ (Cepenkov cited in Friedman 1995b), as well as Bulgarian olum, jolum (Grannes 2002: s.v.), from Turkish oğlum ‘my boy, my son,’ used as an endearment or for consolation (cf. English my dear boy). Macedonian also has olum as an archaism (Jašar-Nasteva 2001: s.v.). Similarly, Alb xhanëm, Mac džanam, Blg džanăm, BCMS džanum, Aro gianãm, gianîm (also ǧeanăm, ǧeanîm, Papahagi 1974: s.v.), Jud and OEGrk džanım (Varol Bornes 2008: 353; Ronzevalle 1911: 284) ‘my dear, my soul, my dear fellow’ < Trk can-ım (lit., ‘soul-my’), is used with the same nuances in all the Balkan languages, which range from endearment to exasperation, depending on context.Footnote 206 Papahagi 1908: 163 reports expressions involving birds used for ‘my dear’: Alb zogu im, Grk πουλί μου (both ‘bird my’), and BSl pilence, Aro puĭlŭ, Rmn puiule (all diminutives, ‘little chick’). Note also Aromanian bir ‘brave child!,’ from Albanian bir ‘son,’ described by Papahagi 1974: s.v. as being “used as a term of endearment.”Footnote 207 See also §4.3.8 for other such uses.
A marker that sometimes has a more challenging tone is Macedonian demek, from Turkish demek ‘that is to say’; besides the connective use discussed above (see §4.3.4.1), it can also have the sense of ‘really, oh yeah’ (often standing alone after the utterance it is commenting on, cf. English ‘as if!’). Further, Newmark 1998: s.v. describes a similar value for Albanian demek, saying that it “expresses disparaging doubt with irony or surprise: oh, really?,” and further notes as well a use as a “parenthetical expression referring to something previous: okay, then, so.” These elements could in principle be considered along with the evaluative modifiers discussed in §4.3.4.2.1, but they are included here as they seem to convey greater emotion. Adding a tone of surprise also is Bulgarian zer, from a Turkish source, described as follows by Grannes et al. 2002: s.v.: “question particle indicating a degree of surprise; is that so?” This most likely comes from Turkish zahir ‘apparently, clearly, evidently,’ used interrogatively.Footnote 208 Macedonian zar has the same use and presumably the same source. Bulgarian also has če indicating wonder and surprise, which may be from Romanian ce ‘what?’ in its exclamative use, i.e., ‘What?!’ (Hauge 2002).Footnote 209 Further, the polyfunctional expressive ha in Turkish, which expresses agreement, surprise, emphasis, threat, or interrogation, asks for confirmation, and (when connecting two imperatives of the same verb) marks a speaker’s view of actions as going “on and on, in a burdensome way,” depending on context (Redhouse 1968: s.v.), may be the source of a number of Balkan discourse expressives, especially Aromanian ha, described as “interjection which expresses different sentiments” (Papahagi 1974: s.v.), Bulgarian ha ‘idem,’ and possibly Greek α marking ‘astonishment’ (Householder et al. 1964: 139).Footnote 210
A Turkish expressive that seems to have shifted somewhat in value in some of the languages it has entered is gidi. As far as contemporary Turkish is concerned, gidi occurs in exclamations with hey, referring nostalgically to the past, as in hey gidi gençlik! ‘Oh for the days of youth!’ and hey gidi hey ‘O those times!,’ and with accusative seni ‘you,’ as a term of abuse in seni gidi ‘you little rascal.’ The same usage occurs in Macedonian, e.g., in the song ey gidi ludi mladi godini ‘O (my) madcap young years.’ The function is more discourse-expressive ‘expressing disapproval, threat (seriously or in jest)’ and with various interjections, e.g., ai or ax ‘expressing pity’ (Grannes et al. 2002: s.v.; Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 123–124). Albanian gjidi is also from gidi, but it is dialectal (Boretzky 1976: s.v.) and means ‘away!,’ apparently in an exclamatory sense (i.e., ‘Get away from here/me!’). Macedonian gitla is also used for ‘scram!’ (cf. Turkish git ‘go away!’).
Thus, these expressive items have varied origins, sometimes arising from words with lexical content that have been transferred to uses that are more discourse-based. Nonetheless, they have all become conventionalized into functions that are clearly conversational in nature. And, their conversational basis provides the conduit for their diffusion from one language into others.
4.3.4.3 Interjections
Since the classification of discourse markers adopted here is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, several interjections have already been mentioned, such as the affirmation markers of §4.3.4.1,Footnote 211 and the exclamatory utterances with expressive value of §4.3.4.2.2. Still, there are others, and we present here first some miscellaneous cases involving exclamations, and then focus on two types that are well instantiated in the Balkans and allow for greater depth of analysis: attention-getting words and exhortative words.
4.3.4.3.1 Exclamations
Exclamatory interjections, signaling an emotive reaction to an event or development one becomes aware of, spread around the Balkans. Some are regular words expropriated for exclamatory use, while others are more on the order of noises that come to be conventionalized. For instance, for ‘oops!’ or ‘oh!’ or ‘up!’ or the like, one finds hopa in Albanian, ώπα in Greek, opa in Macedonian, hop in Bulgarian, and (h)op in Aromanian, And these probably should not be separated from Turkish hop ‘now then! up! jump!’ (cf. Trk hoplamak ‘jump about, get excited,’ also hoppala ‘upsy-daisy,’ etc.). Similarly, for ‘alas,’ Albanian and Greek both have pa, pa, pa/πα πα πα, and Greek has πο-πο-(πο) to signal amazement, reminiscent of Albanian interjectional poFootnote 212 ‘oh say! But say!’; Albanian also has bo bo (bo) for amazement or dismay. The Albanian interjection is used by some Macedonian speakers as well, especially those with regular contact with Albanian. While these are conceivably just independently arrived at pairings of form and meaning, the clusterings are suggestive of a contact explanation, perhaps showing mutual reinforcement in conversational use.Footnote 213 BSl lele ‘oh dear!, oh woe!’ also occurs in Aromanian. One clear case with a wide distribution is aman, the ordinary Turkish word for ‘mercy’ (borrowed from Arabic) but which is used interjectionally in Turkish for ‘mercy! Oh my goodness! Oh my!,’ and that usage is found in Albanian, Balkan Romance, Balkan Slavic, Greek, Judezmo, and Romani. The form ba, said to have originated in Greek, where it is however a discourse negator (see §4.3.3.3), is found in Turkish (Redhouse 1968: s.v.), Aromanian (Papahagi 1974: s.v.), and Judezmo (of Thessaloniki, Symeonidis 2002: 207) in the expression of surprise. In Balkan Romance, Balkan Slavic, and Romani, ba at the beginning of a sentence expresses disagreement or cautious agreement.
Borrowed elements figure in the expression of wishes, or a negative counterpart, the expression of wistful regret (see also §4.3.3.3 on prohibitives, and §7.6.2 on the borrowed Turkish prohibitive sakın) as well as approbation or disapproval. Complementizer-like, and thus functionally shifted, uses of the Greek wish-introducer ‘would that … !’ are discussed above in §4.3.3.4, but purely exclamatory borrowing is seen in Turkish keşke (learnèd kâşki from Persian kāš ki ‘Would to God that’), ‘would that … /if only … ’ that is the source of colloquial BSl and Aro keški/keške ‘idem’ used in expressing regret (Derebej & Filipov 2019: s.v.; Grannes et al. 2002: s.v.; Polenakovikj 2007: s.v.; see also §6.2.4.2.8). Similarly, the Islamic expressions realized in Turkish as inşallah ‘if God wills it/may it come to pass’ (< Arbc ‘may it be God’s wish’), maşallah ‘congratulations, bravo’ (< Arbc ‘what God wishes’), eyvallah ‘thank Heavens’ (Trk eyi ‘good’ + Arbc ‘and God’), all occur in BSl (išala, mašala, evala), with the first two occurring in Аlbanian (mashalla, ishalla) and BRo; mašala also occurs in Judezmo. Balkan Slavic and Aromanian (Polenakovikj 2007: s.v.) borrow the Turkish interjection aşkolsun ‘bravo!’ (aškolsun, ašcolsun), which is generally used felicitously, but can also be used ironically.
Finally, by way of showing how borrowed interjectional items can be altered and even drastically reanalyzed, suggesting, as expected, that there is not always full bilingualism on the part of the speakers involved, consider Mac spolajti ‘thank(s be to) you.’ This is from Grk (ει)ς πολλά έτη ‘to many years’ (a congratulatory phrase said, for instance, at birthdays), but reanalyzed as to meaning and as to form. The -τη of the Greek neuter plural noun έτη ‘years’ (singular έτος) has been taken as the Macedonian second person dat.sg pronoun, added onto an imperative (which frequently ends in -aj for singular verbs in Macedonian – Greek -α ε- ([a e]) in fast speech could yield [aj]). That reanalysis has spawned the use of second dat.pl -vi, thus spolajvi, and the form can even be heard with a third-person pronoun, spolaj-mu na Gospod ‘thanks be to God.’ These developments are all well-motivated in Macedonian terms, especially when dealing with material that, due to its being a borrowing, is opaque.
4.3.4.3.2 Attention-Getting Particles
There is a large set of varied attention-getting exclamations that spread widely in the Balkans. These are clearly conversational, in that one function they serve is to draw interlocutors together as they set the stage for starting a verbal exchange. A few somewhat localized attention-getters of a miscellaneous nature are discussed first, followed by some that are more widespread in their distribution.
One involving negation, where the function seems to have been transferred across languages to affect native material is the use of the prohibitive negator as a one-word interjectional element with the negative imperative meaning ‘Don’t!’ This is found in usages in Grk μη, Alb mos, Romani ma, Mac nemoj (Lower Vardar nim, Blg nedej, etc.; cf. R. Greenberg 1996b). Joseph 2002b speculates that this may be a calque from a Balkan Romance source, as that is a language where the same word, nu, is used for (independent discourse negator) ‘no,’ for (grammatical negator) ‘not,’ and for prohibitive negation, unlike these other languages (e.g., Greek has όχι, δεν/μην, and μη, Albanian has jo, nuk ~ s’, mos in those uses, respectively, but BSl uses ne and Romani uses na as both ‘no’ and ‘not’).Footnote 214
On the positive side of getting someone’s attention, there is the Turkish presentational işte ‘look!, here!,’ which occurs in Bulgarian (Grannes et al. 2002: s.v.), Macedonian (Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 233), and Greek of Ottoman-era Edirne (Ronzevalle 1911: 98) as such, and in an apocopated form shte in Albanian around Elbasan and in Dibra (Çabej 2006: 80). A form that is likely native to Albanian, the interjection xa ([dza], cf. Mann 1948: s.v.) meaning ‘here you are!,’ has spread into other languages. The attention-getting here is via offering something for the taking, and this is a clue to its etymology. xa can be taken as an old imperative xë with an incorporated weak object pronoun (thus, *xë e => xa), from the PIE root *gwhen-, which means ‘strike, kill’ in most Indo-European languages but ‘hunt’ in Slavic and ex hypothesi originally ‘take’ for Albanian (Eric Hamp, p.c.).Footnote 215 This xa is the likely source for Greek τζα, used to signal one’s unexpected appearance, e.g., at someone’s door, and also dialectally for revealing (presenting) oneself in the game peek-a-boo (thus “here I am!”) after covering the face, a usage also found in Macedonian, where the form is [d]za! or [d]ze!.Footnote 216 It also occurs in Aromanian, as dza, glossed (by Papahagi 1974: s.v.) as ‘an interjection by which one expresses someone’s silence,’ as in ‘he did not utter even a dza!,’ a use likely derivative from the presentational sense seen in Albanian and Greek (i.e., ‘he did not even utter a “Here I am!”’). Cuvata 2006: s.v. gives exactly the peek-a-boo meaning for Aromanian Dza!; moreover, his entry (glossed by Macedonian Dze!) gives the explanation ‘an exclamation used with small children to make them laugh: Dza! iu-i njiclu? ‘Dze! Where is the little one?’ (lit., ‘where-is little.m.def’), so that it corresponds to English Boo! when used playfully between adults and children.
There are in addition two presentational words with broad instantiation in the Balkans that are likely outcomes of borrowing. These are the forms na ‘here!; take this!,’ and ya ‘now!; now then!; well!’.
The first of these, na, is found in Albanian, Balkan Romance, Balkan Slavic, Greek (νά), Judezmo, and Turkish. The etymology is much disputed, with many Greek scholars seeing a Greek origin for it,Footnote 217 and others suggesting it is of Slavic origin, given its wide distribution in East Slavic (e.g., Russian and Ukrainian) and West Slavic (e.g., Czech and Polish), deriving from a demonstrative element.Footnote 218 It could even also be an Albanian development, if from a zero-grade imperative of the PIE root *nem- ‘take; give.’Footnote 219 Admittedly, all of these proposals could be right so that na would have multiple origins in the Balkans, but at least some occurrences in some of the languages, e.g., TurkishFootnote 220 and Balkan Romance, would involve borrowing. Interestingly, νά is not found in Romeyka Greek, the Pontic Greek variety still spoken in eastern Turkey in the hills south of Trabzon and especially in the region of İçgöl (Ioanna Sitaridou, p.c., March 2011), a distributional fact which is consistent with taking the presence of νά to be Balkanologically significant and with taking it as a Balkan-based borrowing into Greek.Footnote 221
The second wide-ranging attention-getter in the Balkans is ja/ia/ya/για, found in Albanian, Romani, Balkan Slavic, /Balkan Romance, /Turkish, and /Greek. It is especially common phrase-initially with imperatives, adding emphasis and insistence, and functioning somewhat like English ‘hey,’ e.g., Greek για κοίτα ‘Hey, look!,’ Romani ja phen mange! ‘So say (it) to-me!,’ Bulgarian ja mi kaži ‘Hey tell me!’ (lit., ‘ja me tell’). It can also occur independently in some of the languages, e.g., Albanian Ja, rashë e vdiqa ‘Suppose I dropped dead?’ (lit., ‘There! I fell and died’), or with an object, e.g., Albanian Ja një grumbull ‘There’s a bunch!,’ Greek για μια στιγμή ‘Hey, (wait) a moment,’ Aro ia-li vini ‘Here, he’s come’ (Cuvata 2006: s.v.). As with na/νά, ja/ia/ya/για presents an etymological tangle. The Greek is said (Andriotis 1983: s.v.) to be from Ancient Grk εἶα, an interjection meaning ‘up! away! c’mon then!,’ but Romanian ia for some scholars (Nandriş 1961) is from the second-person singular imperative of a lua ‘to take,’ while others (Cioranescu 1958–1966: s.v.) see it as a “spontaneous creation” (“creación espontánea”), though on a par with Alb ja but also with Romance forms such as Sardinian ea. A seemingly extended form, iacă, may derive from Latin ecce ‘behold’ (Cioranescu ibid.) and there is also iată, ‘behold! here is!,’ which may be from a reduction of ia with uite ‘here (is); (look) here’ (Cioranescu ibid.). However, Arbc ya is unquestionably the source of Turkish ya (Redhouse 1968: s.v.), so the expression could be just another Turkism, or we might be dealing with multiple sources.
This element is like an interjection in drawing in a listener, but it is also somewhat grammatical in nature in that it so typically co-occurs with imperatives. In that way too, it serves a connective function in discourse, in essence announcing what is coming as a command, literally something that commands the hearer’s attention.
4.3.4.3.3 Exhortatives
Both na and ja are actually rather close to exhortatives, as indicated by translations given in some of the dictionaries, e.g., ‘now then, come’ (Levitchi 1973), ‘C’mon!’ (TRMJ 2005), ‘here! Take this!’ (Newmark 1998), among others. There are other elements like these, e.g., Turkish ha (see also §4.3.4.2.2), found in Bulgarian functioning as “a call to action” (Grannes et al. 2002: s.v.) and in Ottoman-era Edirne Greek (Ronzevalle 1911, 1912); note also Alb hë, which ‘encourages action’ (Newmark 1998: s.v), Rmi ha dža! ‘get going’ (lit., ‘ha + go.IMPV,’ Boretzky & Igla 1994: s.v.), and Macedonian a (with the normal loss of etymological /h/) glossed as ‘let’s’ (Murgoski 2013: s.v.).Footnote 222 Further, there is éla, formally the imperative of ‘come’ in Greek (έλα, from the Ancient Greek verb ἐλαύνω ‘drive; sail’ (Andriotis 1983:s.v.)), but used to urge people on, like English c’mon and borrowed into Aromanian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian in that use (R. Greenberg 1996b).Footnote 223
The exhortative with the widest spread in the Balkans is a word meaning ‘C’mon; let’s go; all right already,’ that in what can be called its “generic” – as perhaps the most frequently encountered – form is [h]ajde.Footnote 224 This seems to be best taken as deriving from the Turkish exhortative haydi ‘hurry up! go on! all right!,’ which has a number of variant forms in Turkish itself, such as hayde, hayda, and hadi, and derives (Tietze 2016a: s.v.) from an interjection ha, which has a variant hay, with a deictic element. Not surprisingly, there is actually quite a variety of shapes for this exhortative across the Balkans, all sharing a common core nonetheless; thus one finds also ajde, hadi, hade, ade, and even just haj (hay), ajt, or aj (ay) (see Table 4.14).Footnote 225
Language-specific etymologies have been proposed for some of these, yet recognizing language contact provides the best account ultimately. For instance, Greek άιντε is said (Andriotis 1983: s.v.; Babiniotis 1998: s.v.; Dangitsis 1978: s.v.; Floros 1980: s.v.) to derive from an Ancient Greek plural imperative ἄγετε ([ágete]) of ἄγω ‘drive,’ but the phonological developments needed for this etymology are ad hoc. While getting άι ([ái]) out of ἄγε ([áge]) is conceivable, that is as far as it goes. A change of g > [j] before a front vowel is regular, but loss of [j] is not; the [i] could in principle be a contraction of [j] and [e] or, if this was a northern form originally, a raising of unstressed [e] to [i], but if the latter, the raising would have to have left the final unstressed [e] intact; moreover, there is no way to get [d] from the [t] of ἄγετε. The situation is no better with the apparent variant άντε ([ade]), which is simply referred by Andriotis (1983: s.v.) to άιντε; in this case, there is no regular, non-ad hoc path either to the absence of a reflex of [g] or to the voiced [d]. Given such problems, a Greek-internal source for the Greek forms is difficult to maintain,Footnote 226 as presumably recognized by Charalambakis 2014: s.v. άντε, who, correctly takes Greek άιντε to be a borrowing, from Turkish haydi.
For Slavic, Skok 1972: s.v. notes that hájde and its variants are used throughout South Slavic, including Kajkavian, Čakavian, and Slovene. He is unequivocal that this form is of Turkish origin, from the exclamation hay (see above and footnote 226) plus de (§4.3.4.1.2),Footnote 227 although he also adduces the verb haydamak ‘to drive cattle.’ Indeed, άι-ντέ, with two accented syllables, can be heard in Greek, suggesting that the ντε originates in the impatient connective (cf. §4.3.4.1.2), and that univerbation to άϊντε may have happened independently, at least in Greek. Other South Slavic sources, e.g., Škaljić 1966: s.v. and Knežević 1962: 138 look to Turkish haydi. The absence of [h-] in most of Greek indicates that the [h-] forms of Balkan Romance, South Slavic (except dialects where /h/ is lost), dialectal Greek, and Albanian are from haydi while the initial part of Greek άιντε might be from Turkish áy (see Table 4.14 and footnote 226). Whatever the precise etymological connections, Turkish is primarily responsible here for the spread of this (these) exhortative(s), given the convergence in form and function. And, their highly colloquial nature confirms the importance of focusing on conversational interactions for the diffusion of such forms.
Table 4.14 A widespread Balkan exhortative
| hajde [de] | Albanian (pl. haideni), Aromanian, Bulgarian, Romanian (spelled haide), Greek (dialectal), Judezmo, Romani, BCMS, Slovene |
| hajdi de | Aromanian, Greek (Ottoman-era Edirne) |
| ajde [de] | Greek (spelled άιντε/άϊντε), Judezmo (Bunis 1999: 429), Macedonian (pl ajdete), Aromanian, Romanian (spelled <aide> (pl. ajdeţi)) |
| hadi | Greek (Ottoman-era Edirne), Romani, Turkish |
| hade | Greek (Ottoman-era Edirne), Judezmo (Altabev 2003: 204) |
| ade | Greek (spelled άντε), Judezmo (Altabev 2003: 204) |
| aida | Romanian |
| aidi | Aromanian (Papahagi, Cuvata) |
| haj | Aromanian, Romanian (spelled < hai >) |
| ajt | Macedonian, Romani |
| aj/ay | Macedonian, Greek (spelled άι), Aromanian, Turkish |
As an aside, but an interesting one that shows more evidence of how loanwords can move away from their source language features, in some of the languages, (h)ajde, though not an imperative etymologically, nonetheless is treated grammatically like a singular imperative, spawning plural imperatival forms, with regular personal endings added on. Thus Romanian has a “2pl” haideţi and a “1pl” haidem ‘c’mon; gw’an; let’s go,’ as does Serbian (hajdete/hajdemo), and Macedonian and Albanian have 2pl forms, ajdete and hajdeni, respectively, as does Greek, αΐντετε. Further, in addition to hayde (Varol Bornes 2008: 431), Judezmo has a form aydes (Bunis 1999: 431) that appears to be ayde with the 2SG ending -s added on, though the occurrence of άιντες in Greek makes one think of the 2SG -ς of Greek itself and also the adverbial -ς that shows up dialectally, e.g., the widespread τότες ‘then’ from earlier (and now standard) τότε, or επειδής ‘since; because’ (e.g., in Greek of southern Albania) from earlier (and now standard) επειδή.Footnote 228
Also, Bunis 1999: 627ff. gives for Judezmo ababam from Turkish ha babam ha, literally ‘ha my.father ha,’ as a form showing emphasis and encouragement – Redhouse 1968: s.v. ha glosses this as ‘push on; on with you; get on.’Footnote 229 Moreover, this expression was well known in Bulgaria in the nineteenth century and is used by Konstantinov’s 1895 literary creation Bai Ganyo (Friedman 2010a), it also occurs in the Turkish popular song sung by many Armenian musicians, Martinim omuzumda ‘My rifle on my shoulder.’
Some discourse markers, therefore, are etymological imperatives or are treated like imperatives. Since imperatives are typically directed at second-person referents,Footnote 230 they are often accompanied by vocatives, which are terms of address also directed at second persons. Consequently, there are etymological vocatives that function as attention-getting interjectional discourse-linked elements, and these have spread in the Balkans. We defer discussion of these until the next section.
4.3.5 Lexical Vocatives and Related Elements
The class of conversationally based lexical items that have spread in the Balkans would not be complete without a consideration of what might be viewed as discourse-related elements par excellence, namely vocatives and other such elements. Vocatives, inasmuch as they typically involve calls to someone rather than addresses to inanimate objects, are inherently tied to conversation and to interpersonal interactions. As such they clearly fit as potential ERIC loans, and there is good evidence of sprachbund-related phenomena involving vocatives. These developments are covered in their morphosyntactic dimension in §6.1.1.4, but mention can be made here of a few relevant contact-related lexical developments.
In Judezmo of Istanbul (Varol Bornes 2008: 350, 388–389), lexical forms that serve as terms of address have been borrowed by some speakers from Greek, e.g., kirio/kiria ‘sir/madame,’ from κύριος/κυρία,Footnote 231 or kukla, for familiar address, though with a hint of an ironic sense, from Greek κούκλα ‘doll.’ Both Slavic and Romance speakers in the Balkans, especially in the nineteenth century, sometimes affected the title kir (F kirja), and in literature such affectations featured in comedies parodying hellenizers, e.g., Jovan Sterija Popović’s comedy Kir Janja (Serbian) or the 1909 novella Kir Ianulea (Romanian) by Ion Luca Caragiale. Nevertheless, these comedies are indicative of certain social trends of their time that were reflected in language (cf. in this respect Detrez 2003 on Gudilas of nineteenth-century Plovdiv). Likewise, Turkish efendi and hanım were used as equivalents of ‘sir/madam’ or ‘Mr./Ms.’ throughout the Ottoman Empire (cf. also §4.3.8).
Some such borrowings look somewhat more grammatical in nature. In Albanian, for some nouns, there are special vocative forms that end in -o, such as biro ‘O son!’ (from bir) or Agimo ‘O Agim!’ (from the proper name Agim). This -o is generally assumed to be from the Slavic vocative, the one case form that remains throughout Balkan Slavic even in the regions with total loss of other substantival cases. This -o in Slavic is characteristic of a-stem nouns, most of which are feminine, e.g., sestro ‘sister!’, ženo ‘woman!’, but also vladiko! ‘O bishop!’. In Albanian, however, the usage is generally limited to a few lexical items such as biro.
Further, there are occurrences of Slavic -o with native Romani kinship terms, e.g., Kalderash dej ‘mother’ has Slavic-influenced dejo! as well as suppletive mamo! (from Slavic) ‘O mother!’ (Boretzky 1994: 235), and Bugurdži bibí ‘aunt’ has both native bibíje and Slavic-influenced bíbo! ‘auntie’ (Boretzky 1993: 35). The lexical item mamo is found in both North and South Vlax dialects (Fennesz-Juhasz et al. 2003: 132, 238, 242, 248, 250). Similarly, the development of kak ‘father’s brother’ into kako in Arli (and kakos in Bugurdži) seems to be a reinterpretation of a Slavic-influenced vocative into a new nominative.Footnote 232 Likewise, Meglenoromanian has popi ‘O priest,’ and tati ‘O daddy’ from Macedonian pope!, tate! respectively, with vowel reduction. (Atanasov 1990: 195).Footnote 233 Moreover, the Albanian vocative marker, preposed stressed O, is used by some Macedonian speakers.
Thus some vocative markers appear to have been borrowed in the Balkans. Still, what is perhaps the most striking Balkan lexical development pertaining to the vocative is the borrowing and ultimate spread all across the languages of the region of what has been termed an “unceremonious mode of address or cry of surprise, impatience, etc.” or “exclamation [meaning] ‘hey you!; you there!; well!; just!’,” to use the definitions found in two Greek dictionaries (Pring 1965: s.v. and Stavropoulos 1988: s.v., respectively) for one of the representatives of this item, the Greek interjection/exclamation βρε. This and related forms seem to have originated in Greek and to have entered all of the Balkan languages, an account given by Sandfeld 1930: 20. This particle of address takes on numerous forms,Footnote 234 several of which, including some that are dialectally restricted, are listed below from the various languages (see Table 4.15).Footnote 235
Table 4.15 A widely diffused Balkan particle of address
| Turkish: | be, bire, bre, mari, more, mori, vre |
| Albanian: | bre, mor, more, mori, moj, mre, o, or, ore, ori, vore, vre |
| Bulgarian: | be, bre, ma, mari, more, mori, vre |
| Macedonian: | abre, be, bre, more, mori, mor’, or’, ore, ori, vre, |
| Aromanian: | are, avre, bre, măi, moĭ, móre, morì, omoĭ, óre, oré, re, vre |
| Romanian: | bre, mă, măi, măre, mări, vre |
| Judezmo: | abre, bre, vre |
| Romani: | be, bre, mo, mori, ore |
Two key facts make it clear that Greek is the ultimate source here. First, these forms have a clear etymology in Greek, being readily traceable in Greek to an Ancient Greek source – the vocative μωρέ of the adjective μωρός ‘dull, sluggish, foolish, stupid, idiotic’ – for most of the Greek forms.Footnote 236 Second, the greatest variety in form is to be found in Greek, with some fifty-eight distinct forms evident if one takes all of the Greek dialects into consideration (Joseph 1997a),Footnote 237 thus allowing for an inference of precedence for Hellenophone territory as the point of diffusion in ways parallel to the historical linguistic observation of greater diversity in the source than in outlying regions.Footnote 238 The full listing, showing phonetic forms arranged alphabetically with an indication of the dialect provenance, is given below, with forms previously mentioned, where the (a) forms were originally for male addressees and the (b) forms for female addressees; details on how each arose are to be found in Joseph 1997a:
a.
b.
The wide-ranging distribution of some of these forms across the Balkans does not mean that all of the languages borrowed the words from Greek; it is far more likely that they spread locally from language to language, and some particular instances may have a different source. Thus, for example, the forms ρε and άρε/αρέ may have Indic roots (cf. Sanskrit (a)re ‘interjection of calling, of astonishment, of contempt, of disrespect (as to an inferior), of anger, etc.’),Footnote 239 brought into the Balkans via Romani (Joseph 1997a). And, the form be may be a Turkish alteration of μπρε, given that Turkish generally does not allow initial consonant clusters,Footnote 240 so that its occurrence in Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Romani would reflect borrowing from Turkish. Moreover, Vastenius 2011 argues that the b-initial forms may have a different, more easterly origin (in Kurdish bra ‘brother’), from the m-initial, clearly Greek-derived, forms. Various forms have other proposed etymologies, too numerous to adduce here. Nonetheless, it is still the case that a good many of the forms seem to emanate ultimately from Greek.
These particles of address are very common in all of the languages, and in some instances have taken on uses that go beyond simple address or attention-getting. In Kefalonian Greek, for instance, μπρέ is found as a neuter noun meaning ‘wife,’ το μπρέ μου ‘my wife’ (ILNE: s.v.), and βρε and other related forms can be used as an expression of surprise or wonder (as in other Balkan languages). Further, according to Tannen & Kakava 1992: 29–30, ρε serves as “a marker of friendly disagreement” in Greek conversation, presumably a pragmatic function of its interjectional use, whereas Costanzo 2009 discusses βρε as a marker of solidarity, drawing a typological parallel with certain Chicano Spanish terms; Vastenius 2011 sees solidarity but also social power as relevant for the pragmatics of some of these forms in various of the languages.
Given their high frequency in conversation and interpersonal interactions, these forms would spread quite easily when speakers of different Balkan languages communicated with one another in their varieties of their interlocutor’s language. They would be highly salient in terms of their function, and easily inserted into conversation, and once they spread, they could become entrenched, as they would form useful “bridge” words between languages, whether speakers were drawing on their own language’s resources or trying to use words from their interlocutor’s language.
4.3.6 Onomatopoeia and Related Words
While conversation is a means for conveying information, it also conveys feelings, reflecting an emotive side to human interactions (Jakobson’s phatic, Bühler’s expressive; see §6.1.1.4). By turning to expressiveness here, we are signaling that the intimate contact we envision in the Balkans had this kind of expressive side to it as well. Onomatopoeia, as the set of conventionalizations of noises and sounds from the natural world, most particularly but not exclusively animal noises, is one aspect of expressive phonology (treated more fully in §5.7). As such, given its expressive nature, it is not surprising to find parallels across the languages, even in the face of issues of naturalness and universality for individual noises. Nonetheless, Emeneau 1969 has determined on the basis of structural properties on the form of onomatopes in Dravidian and Indic, and on shared phonological material that allows for what he calls “areal etymologies,” that there was contact-driven diffusion of onomatopoetic material between these two language groups, with many Dravidian features entering Indic via contact; indeed, he takes this as one of the defining characteristics of the South Asian sprachbund.
Related to onomatopoeia are words that are themselves noises but are not directly mimicking natural sounds. English shhh to quiet someone or psst to get someone’s attention would be instances of such words.
As indicated above, there is a potential methodological pitfall with any attempt to establish a connection of a historical nature such as borrowing or contact-induced influence regarding onomatopes and related noise words in two or more languages. Since mimicking a natural sound is what onomatopoeia is all about, one necessarily has to worry about how to rule out naturalness and universality as the cause for any similarity across languages in this domain; given naturalness, an onomatope could have arisen independently at any time in a given language. The case of the noise made by cats is instructive in this regard. We find the following as a conventionalization for a cat noise in the Balkans (see 4.11):
(4.11)
Albanian: mjau Bulgarian: myau Romanian: miau Greek: νιάου ([niau]) Turkish: miyav, miyauv
The initial nasal, the high front vocoid, and the diphthongal vocalic nucleus all match across the languages, but since this word sounds so much like a cat’s vocalization, there is no compelling reason to insist that these forms have anything to do with one another other than reflecting a universality of the human experience with cats. Consider in this regard Tamil miau for the same sound. Thus it is not of particular Balkanlogical interest.
The most compelling instances that might point to contact as playing a role in the onomatope are ones where the forms in the different languages share some unnatural oddity that would point to a common origin or common or even mutual influence.Footnote 241 Working in this way, it is possible to identify some Balkan onomatopes and noise words that show the effects of contact among speakers. Some of the convergences, moreover, are quite localized and restricted to just a few languages.
Perhaps the most compelling example of a borrowed onomatope in the Balkans involves the sound of laughter. Grannes et al. 2002: 147 in their discussion of Bulgarian kis-kis for that sound explicitly treat it as a borrowing from Turkish, which has kıs kıs as well as, dialectally, kis kis for the same noise (specifically the kind of covert laughter denoted by English giggle, cf. tee-hee). Here the exact match in sounds, with an initial k and a final s that are not found widely cross-linguistically, and especially not in this particular combination, allows for a good case to be made for borrowing as opposed to independent origin.Footnote 242Another such example is the conventionalization for a knocking noise: tak-tak/tac-tac/τακ-τακ occurs in Balkan Slavic, Judezmo, /Balkan Romance, and /Greek. It is likely that these are connected to the Turkish noun tak (underlyingly /takk-/) ‘a thump, knock,’ which was borrowed as a noun into Edirne Greek of the Ottoman period. Balkan Romance also has tac as an interjection imitating a cracking noise. In this regard, too, Edirne Greek takır-tukur for the sound of footfalls or of a hammer is noteworthy, as it appears to be from Turkish takır takır ‘noise of a horse’s hooves’ and/or takır tukur ‘alternation of tapping and knocking sounds,’ where the reduplication as well as the segmental matching, even down to the adoption of the unrounded back vowel [ı], points to a borrowing. Balkan Slavic and Greek have repeated tak-tak[-tak] for ‘knock-knock[-knock],’ also a likely contact-induced convergence.
Somewhat striking too are the words for the sound of a goat bleating, since Greek and Turkish match up well, with [mæhehe] and με.ε.ε ([mε.ε.ε]) respectively, as two of the only three languages (Russian being the other), out of sixteen surveyed,Footnote 243 with a tri-syllabic conventionalized noise. Still, this is dangerous territory in which to draw too many conclusions.
In some instances, it is not so much a clear borrowing as some partial convergences that give a localized clustering suggestive of mutual influence. This is the case with the noise for a dog’s bark (4.12):Footnote 244
(4.12)
Albanian ham-ham Aromanian ham-ham, gap-gap Bulgarian bau-bau; džaf-džaf Romanian ham-ham; hau-hau Greek γαυ-γαυ ([γav γav]) Macedonian av-av Romani hau-hau Turkish hev-hev; hav-hav
Although the forms are not identical, similarities are evident in the occurrence of an initial back (velar or glottal) fricative in all but Bulgarian and Macedonian, but even the absence of an initial consonant in Macedonian can be reconciled with the prevalence of [h-] in the other languages because Macedonian (or more accurately, its western dialects, on which the standard is based) historically lost [h]/[x] by a regular sound change (cf. ubav ‘beautiful’ vs. its cognate in Bulgarian xubav-, endek ‘ditch’ vs. its Turkish loan source hendek), so that [av av] matches up as expected with the initial h- forms. Moreover, while h-initial dog-noise words occur in other languages outside of the Balkans, e.g., Finnish (hau hau), various Slavic languages (Ukr [ɦaw-ɦaw], Sln hov hov, Pol/Slo hau hau, Cz haf haf), they are mostly located in Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean (cf. Arbc/Heb hau hau), or contiguous with that (e.g., Arme haf haf), interrupted by Croatian and Hungarian (vau vau). Only Thai with hoang hoang has #h- outside of this extended region, though there are other individual matches with some Balkan languages, e.g., Tagalog aw aw and Lithuanian au au resemble the Macedonian form. And while a final labial of some sort is frequent cross-linguistically, a final -m is found only in Albanian and Balkan Romance. The Balkans may thus be part of a larger zone for this sound, and there are smaller clusters (e.g., perhaps a Habsburg zone for Croatian and Hungarian), but there is a definite concentration of similarities in the languages identified herein as Balkan languages nonetheless.
Turning to noise words in the Balkans offers some particularly clear cases of borrowing in this sector of the lexicon. For instance, for attracting a cat, in Greek one says ψι ψι ψι/psi psi psi, like the ps ps ps of Balkan Slavic and Balkan Romance. There is convergence too with the noise used to quiet someone (like English shhh or shush), for Albanian has sus, as does Macedonian and Turkish, with Turkish being the likely source. Greek here has σους but also σουτ, matching the initial and the vocalism of sus, and somewhat matching the Bulgarian št, certainly as to its final and even in the initial once allowance is made for the absence from the Greek phonemic inventory of a palatal fricative. The preciseness of these matchings makes it reasonable to assume that contact played a role in the convergence and such examples show that there can be cross-language influence even in the expressive domain of the lexicon.
4.3.7 Reduplication
Reduplication, the repetition of linguistic material generally though not exclusively at the word or sub-word level, is exploited in many languages for expressive purposes;Footnote 245 Moravcsik 1978: 316–325, for instance, documents as typical for reduplication such cross-linguistically recurring functions as intensity and emphasis, and even diminution and related notions like endearment but also derogation, all of which involve the addition of emotion and color, and the like, into discourse. These functions often have an iconic basis, a characteristic that is aligned with expressivity.Footnote 246 As expressives, instances of reduplicative word-formation are especially well-suited for use in conversation, inasmuch as human verbal interaction frequently involves emotional coloring and more than just the exchange of information, which are very common in conversation. Since reduplicative formations show diffusion throughout the Balkans, they are thus prime candidates for consideration as ERIC loans.
There are three main types of reduplication that are relevant here, two of which are noted in Asenova 2002: 276–290 and from her account fall under her rubric of “full Balkanisms” (see also §2.4 (especially Footnote footnote 37)).Footnote 247 The first, discussed in §4.3.7.1, fits in with universal characteristics of reduplication but does have some contact-related aspects to it, possibly including, though, Balkan-external ones. The other two, discussed in §4.3.7.2, are definitely contact-related as they involve demonstrably Turkish patterns found in various forms borrowed into other languages in the Balkans. Beyond these patterns, there is a single reduplicative expression that is noteworthy.
4.3.7.1 Whole-Word Reduplication
Seliščev 1925: 46, 51–57 appears to be the first to draw attention to the Balkan “repetition du substantif, d’ordinaire à l’accusatif, pour exprimer des différenciations dans une quantité, des parties isolées, des groupes, des series” (‘repetition of a substantive, usually in the accusative, to express differences in a quantity, isolated parts, groups, series’), and he illustrates it with examples from Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, and Aromanian. This phenomenon was mentioned by Sandfeld 1930: 162, referring to Seliščev. Asenova 2002: 276–290, as noted above, is the only modern handbook treatment of the Balkan languages that mentions this construct as a possible Balkanism; Asenova 1984 is replete with Greek and Bulgarian examples. A sampling is given in (4.13):Footnote 248
(4.13)
Alb copa-copa ‘all in pieces’ (Newmark 1998: s.v.) copëra-copëra ‘piece by piece’ (Seliščev 1925: 53, from the 1802 Tetraglosson of Daniil Moschopolitis; see Kristophson 1974) pika-pika ‘one drop after another, drop by drop’ pjesë-pjesë ‘piece by piece’ valë-valë ‘wave upon wave’ vende-vende ‘here and there; in several places’ Aro agalea galea ‘nonchalantly’ (Papahagi 1974: 116; base word from Grk αγάλια ‘slowly’) bucãtsi bucãtsi ‘piece by piece’ (Seliščev 1925: 53) pale pale ‘line by line’ (borrowed from Alb) Grk τοίχο τοίχο ‘along the wall’ γιαλό γιαλό ‘along the sea’ δύο δύο ‘two by two’ κομμάτι κομμάτι ‘piece by piece’ (LKNonline: s.v.) φιρί φιρί ‘insistently’ (from Trk fırıl fırıl, LKN: s.v.; Babiniotis 1998: s.v.) Blg na vălni na vălni ‘in waves’ (Sofia region, Seliščev 1925: 52) na tumbi na tumbi ‘in groups’ (Sofia region, Seliščev 1925: 52) kupove kupove ‘in heaps’ (Sandfeld 1930: 162) Mac komati komati ‘piece by piece’ (borrowed from Grk, Seliščev 1925: 53, from the 1802 Tetraglosson of Daniil Moschopolitis; see Kristophson 1974) kupoi kupoi ‘in heaps’ (Prilep dialect, Seliščev p. 53) na tumbi tumbi ‘in groups’ (Prilep, Seliščev p. 52)Footnote 249 (po)leka-poleka ‘slowly, little by little’ Rmn încet-încet ‘slowly-slowly, little by little’ Trk yavaş yavaş ‘slowly, gently, take it easy’
Seliščev observes (p. 54) that the doubled pattern occurs in Turkish (e.g., kapı kapı ‘door to door,’ cf. Göksel & Kerslake 2005: 100), and indeed one can find instances of this doubling in the Balkans with Turkish-derived words, as with Alb dallgë-dallgë ‘in waves; wavy,’ Mac dalgi dalgi ‘idem’ (cf. Trk dalga dalga ‘idem’).
Seliščev thinks that Turkish played some role in this Balkan reduplicative pattern, in particular the bare nominal doubling found in some parts of modern Balkan Slavic, such as the Macedonian kupoi kupoi (StMac kupovi kupovi) and Bulgarian kupove kupove noted above in (4.13), but he is quick to point out that a certain type of nonbare nominal doubling occurs in early Slavic and the bare type occurs in early Greek, thus predating contact with Turkish in each case. The Slavic Gospels have na spody na spody ‘by groups,’ in Mark 6: 39–40, with the preposition na included in the doubling, and Greek here has συμπόσια συμπόσια ‘by companies’ (6: 39) and πρασιαὶ πρασιαί ‘by groups’ (6: 40). Other examples in the New Testament, e.g., Mark 6: 7 ‘by twos,’ with δύο δύο in the Greek compared with dъva dъva, literally ‘two two’ in the Slavic Gospels but also dъva i dъva ‘two and two’ and dъva nъ dъva ‘two but two’ in different early (eleventh-/twelfth-century) renditions, suggest that the simple bare-element doubling in early Slavic was a calque on the Greek and that, as Seliščev (p. 56) puts it, “le redoublement du nom de nombre avec valeur distributive répugnait au sens linguistique des Slaves” (‘doubling of a noun of number with distributive value was repugnant to the linguistic sensibility of the Slavs’), so that something, e.g., a conjunction, needed to be added to make the doubling in the translation of the Gospel more natively Slavic (hence dъva i dъva/dъva nъ dъva). And, there are instances in Greek that predate the New Testament, most importantly the Classical Greek example μῡρία μῡρία ‘by the tens-of-thousands’ (lit., ‘ten-thousand ten-thousand’) found in Aeschylus’s Persians, l.980 (472 BCE).Footnote 250
But far from being a Greek pattern that spread, there are indications that the doubling could simply be independent in each language, a possibility that Seliščev both is aware of and does not entirely dismiss and that Sandfeld is inclined to credit. That is, a doubling pattern is found in many languages in expressions of distributivity and what Moravcsik 1978: 318 calls “scattered plurality,” e.g., Quileute, Twi, Yoruba, and Mitla Zapotec, and so it most likely reflects simply a universal iconic way of referring to multiple instantiations of essentially the same entity. Both Seliščev (p. 46) and Sandfeld (p. 162) note its occurrence in Italian, and in broader Indo-European terms, it is a regular compound type in early Sanskrit (āmreḍita), e.g., dive-dive ‘day by day; daily,’ pade pade ‘in every place,’ and elsewhere; thus the pattern could in principle be a parallel inheritance in each language from Proto-Indo-European and not a contact phenomenon. Indeed, Stolz 2006 (see also Stolz 2003) treats whole-word reduplication, what he calls “total reduplication,” as a potential language universal, so that its occurrence in any given language, under this view, need not involve contact or inheritance.
Still, for the specific doubling that occurs in modern Balkan Slavic without an added element cited above, Turkish influence can reasonably be invoked to explain the absence of a conjunction. Moreover, for individual lexemes or lexical constructs, contact is certainly indicated, as the borrowed komati komati (Mac) and agalea galea (Aro) examples above show. One widespread reduplicative phrase in the Balkans is Turkish yavaş yavaş ‘slowly, gradually’ (lit., ‘slow slow’), a doubling of yavaş ‘slow, gentle, docile,’ a form which has also entered these languages (see Table 4.16).
Table 4.16 Reduplicated ‘slowly’ in the Balkans
| Alb | avash avash ‘little by little; very slowly’ (cf. avash ‘slowly; softly,’ with variant javash) |
| Blg | javaš javaš ‘at an easy pace’ (cf. javaš ‘idem’) |
| Mac | javaš javaš ‘slowly, take it easy’ |
| Grk | γιαβάς γιαβάς ([javas javas]) ‘slowly’Footnote 251 |
| Aro | iavash iavash ‘slowly, take it easy’ |
| Rmn | iavaş iavaş ‘gently, without hurry’ |
| Jud | yavaš yavaš ‘very gently, without hurry’ |
The languages also show other formations with similar meaning composed of native, or at least non-Turkish, material; see Table 4.17.
Table 4.17 More reduplicated ‘slowly’ in the Balkans
| Alb | dalë-dalë ‘slowly’ |
| dalë ngadalë/dalëngadalë ‘unhurriedly, slowly; little by little, gradually’ (nga ‘from; out of; by’) | |
| Blg | léka poléka ‘little by little; bit by bit’ (cf. lek ‘light’, with po- ‘more’) |
| Mac | [po]leka póleka ‘little by little’ |
| Grk | σιγά σιγά ‘slowly; little by little’ (cf. σιγά ‘gently, softly; slowly’) |
| Aro | agalea (a)galea (from Grk αγάλια ‘slowly’) |
| Rmn | încet-încet ‘slowly-slowly, little by little’ |
And in some instances, influence from the reduplicated pattern can be detected; while Greek σιγά ‘slowly’ derives from the Ancient Greek adverb σιγῇ ‘in silence’ (a frozen dative case),Footnote 252 the earlier form occurs only singly, not doubled; hence the repetition in σιγά σιγά is likely to be a reflection of the doubling pattern with this sememe in neighboring contact languages.Footnote 253
Moreover, the Albanian forms dalë dalë/dalë ngadalë/dalëngadalë may reveal a further, different contact-related detail. Although the semantics of the connection are challenging, inasmuch as adjectival dalë by itself means ‘protruding, sticking out; worldly,’ these forms appear to involve whole-word doubling. The latter two show the occurrence of a linking element, in this case a preposition, between the doubled pieces. That is, the Albanian dalë ngadalë/dalëngadalë presumably are etymologically *dalë nga dalë , where nga is the preposition ‘from’ (Geg kah, and note Geg kadal ‘slowly’). This use of nga is striking, as it agrees with what is seen in Slavic and with what, to judge from Seliščev’s discussion summarized above, is needed at an early stage to make the doubling suitable for use in Slavic; it is reasonable to suppose then that the Albanian usage here reflects a contact effect and is due to Slavic influence, the result of a calquing on a Slavic model. Similarly, while Aromanian in 1802 showed bucãtsi bucãtsi for ‘piece by piece,’ as given in (4.13) above, Papahagi 1974: 289 cites the same expression as bucãtsi di bucãtsi, with the preposition di ‘from’ between the doubled pieces, just as in the presumed Albanian *dalë nga dalë (cf. also Mac leka poleka), again a likely contact effect, either via Slavic or via Albanian.
4.3.7.2 Turkish-Origin Reduplication Patterns
Besides this whole-word doubling, Turkish has two reduplicative patterns that have had an impact on the Balkan lexicon. These are detailed in the two subsections that follow.
4.3.7.2.1 Turkish CVC-Intensive Reduplication
Turkish is a language that in general does not have prefixes, yet it does have one prefix-type that is reduplicative in nature, serves an expressive function, and has diffused into several languages of the Balkans. This is the CVC-intensive prefix, generally used just with adjectives, which copies the initial consonant and vowel of the base word (or just the vowel if vowel-initial) and closes with another consonant, most often p but also s, r, or m. As befits an intensive, the meaning signaled is, as described by Göksel & Kerslake 2005: 98 one of “accentuating the quality of an adjective,” thus it is ‘very; highly’ or the like. For instance, beyaz ‘white’ forms an intensive bembeyaz ‘very white,’ eski ‘old’ forms epeski ‘very old,’ and temiz ‘clean’ forms tertemiz ‘clean as a pin.’ There are, however, some exceptional forms, e.g., çıplak ‘naked,’ çırılçıplak ‘stark naked.’
There are traces of this formation in various languages mainly through the borrowing of both the base adjective and the prefixed intensified adjective. In Greek, for instance, there is τσιρ-τσιπλάκης ‘stark naked,’ from Turkish çırçıplak ‘idem’ (this form is also acceptable, cf. above) alongside τσιπλάκης ‘naked’ (Trk çıplak), and in Bulgarian and Macedonian one can find several such pairs (Grannes 1974/1996: 139; Grannes et al. 2002; Jašar-Nasteva 2001), e.g., bambaška ‘peculiar, strange’ (Trk bambaşka) alongside baška ‘different’ (Trk başka), samsai ‘obviously; indeed’ (Trk samsahi ‘really really’) alongside saí ‘really’ (Trk sahi ‘really’), tastamam (dialectal) ‘perfect’ (Trk tastamam ‘complete, perfect’) alongside tamam ‘exactly, perfect’ (Trk tamam ‘complete, finished, just right, true’). Such pairs, if one were to take a purely synchronic viewpoint, would lend themselves to an analysis by which Greek and Balkan Slavic have a very limited “intensive prefixal reduplication process”; such an analysis, however, would not mean that the Turkish process itself was borrowed here, but rather that the lexical material that gives evidence of such a process was borrowed, from which the process would then be “re-created” in the borrowing languages.
This process is generally found just with Turkish lexemes that have been borrowed. However, M. Ivić 1984 has shown that in some of the languages there is a limited degree of productivity for this process, mostly with monosyllabic stems with meanings such as naked, full, alone, entire, sound, new, and similar states, and even involving native – or at least, for some languages, non-Turkish – material.Footnote 254 One widespread such case is the Slavic root gol- ‘naked,’Footnote 255 which is the basis for the following prefixed intensives, all meaning ‘stark naked’: Blg gol-goleničăk, Mac gol-goleničok, and Rmn gol-golut (as a borrowing from Slavic), as well as BCMS go-gоlest; alsо go-golcat or gol-golcat.Footnote 256 We can also note here BCMS sam-samcat ‘all alone’ from native sam ‘alone, etc.’
4.3.7.2.2 Turkish m-Reduplication
Turkish also has a type of whole-word reduplication that replaces the initial sound of the word with m- and repeats the rest of the word. This is sometimes referred to in the literature by its Turkish name, mühleme (e.g., by Stolz 2006, for whom it is a type of “total-reduplication-cum-variation”), or reduplication with m. The meaning of the resulting composite form is a type of collective for the item itself and/or things related to it. Göksel & Kerslake 2005: 99 characterize the function as a way “to generalize the concept denoted by a particular word or phrase to include other similar objects, events or states or affairs.” Often a translation with ‘and such, and the like’ conveys the sense. For instance, kitap ‘book’ yields kitap mitap ‘books and such,’ dergi ‘magazine’ yields dergi mergi ‘magazines and such,’ içecek ‘drinks’ yields içecek miçecek ‘drinks and the like,’ and so on. There can be also a dismissive or minimizing sense associated with this construction, as in yeşil meşil ‘green-ish’ (cf. yeşil ‘green’); this is often accompanied by a somewhat pejorative sense, and these features give the m-doubling an expressive quality that renders it very useful for, and as a result very common in, conversation.
This pattern has an interesting history, probably originating far to the east of Asia Minor, possibly South Asia or beyond, since there are parallels in modern Indic and Dravidian and even other Asian languages, and most likely it spread westward (see Southern 2005 and Levy 1980 on this) into Turkish as well as the Caucasus.Footnote 257 Thus this is a pattern that can diffuse, and it is found to some degree in all the Balkan languages, with Turkish as the likely conduit for the introduction of this m-reduplication pattern into the Balkans. For the Balkans it has been studied most thoroughly in Bulgarian (Grannes 1996: 259–286), though there are very detailed studies too for some Greek dialects, especially the Bythinian Greek in northwestern Asia Minor (Konstantinidou 2004), and Stolz 2006 discusses it for the Balkans, with particular attention to its Turkish origins as far as the Balkans are concerned.
Examples abound in the Balkans; a sampling, with an indication of sources where possible, is given in (4.14), where some of the translations give a feel for the colorful, expressive, colloquial, and somewhat pejorative, character that these formations can have – in some instances the formations reflect language-particular embellishments of the basic m-doubling pattern, either with added words or with univerbation into a single unit, or the like:
(4.14)
Alb shiri-miri ‘confusion’ (Schuchardt 1888: 68; Meyer 1891: s.v) cingra-mingra ‘trivia’ çikla-mikla ‘tiny bits and pieces; crumbs; trivia’ Blg knigi-migi ‘books and such’ skandal-mandal ‘scandals and stuff’ (Grannes 1996: 278) snjag-mnjag ‘snow and such’ (Grannes 1996: 278) Mac OBSE-mOBSE ‘the OSCE and the like’ (Prizma 2015)Footnote 258 knigi-migi ‘books and such’ Aro sare-mare ‘salt and such’ (Capidan 1932: 524) carne-marne ‘meat and such’ (Capidan 1932: 524) Rmn ciri-miri ‘confusion’ (Meyer 1891: 406) Rmi bajraktari-majraktari ‘standard bearers and other such people’ pajtoni majtoni ‘carriages and such’ sluge-mluge ‘all kinds of servants’ (Cech et al. 2009: 216, 232) Jud livro mivro ‘books and such’ (Varol Bornes 1996) sapatos mapatos ‘shoes, shmoes’ (Bunis 1983: 121) Grk τζάντζαλα μάντζαλα ‘rags and such; useless stuff’ τα σάνταλα κι τα μάνταλα ‘stuff and things’ (OEGrk,
Ronzevalle 1911: 441, 1912: 156; with definite article τα and κι
‘and’ (StdGrk και))
σούρδου μούρδου ‘topsy-turvy’ (Levkas dialect; Meyer 1891) σούρδου (μ)πούρδου ‘topsy-turvy’ (Chios dialect; Meyer 1891) η σάρα και η μάρα ‘Tom, Dick, and Harry; ragtail and bobtail’ (Meyer
1891; with definite article η and και ‘and’)
άρα μάρα ‘who cares?’ άρες μάρες (κουκουνάρες) ‘nonsense’
Some of these have direct parallels in Turkish, so that not only the pattern but also some of the pieces in particular formations may derive from Turkish elements; this is likely the case with shiri-miri and ciri-miri, since Meyer 1891: 406 cites Turkish şur mur with the same meaning. Turkish şur means, among other things, ‘tumult, uproar, commotion’ (Redhouse 1968: s.v.; Ayverdi & Topaloğlu 2006: s.v.; Akalın & Toparlı 2005: s.v.), so this seems to be a straightforward reduplication with m-. The Greek σούρδου (μ)πούρδου appears to be at least influenced by if not based on the Turkish.
Some of the languages have a considerable degree of productivity for this construction.Footnote 261 Thus, for example, Demetrius Vyzantios, in his 1836 Greek play Η Βαβυλωνία (‘Babylonia’), a work that has dialect-based miscomprehension as a recurring theme, uses the m-doubling construction quite frequently and for particular effect with a variety of base words;Footnote 262 one finds in it, for instance, καφέ μαφέ ‘coffee and such’ and πιπέρι μιπέρι ‘pepper and such,’ based on the nouns καφές ‘coffee’ and πιπέρι ‘pepper,’ respectively, ἔγνωκας μέγνωκας ‘what’s with this ἔγνωκας ?!’ (in mocking a character using Ancient Greek forms), based on a verb,Footnote 263 and σουκράτη μουκράτη κυδίδη μυδίδη ‘what’s with Isocrates (and) Thucydides?!’ (mocking a character reading Ancient Greek authors), based on truncated proper names. And, in Bythinian Greek, due to the intensive contact between Turkish speakers and Greek speakers and the bilingualism there, there are literally dozens and dozens of attested instances of this construction (Konstantinidou 2004). Although in modern-day Greek the construction is less frequent than in Bithynian Greek, it is still quite productive, as observed by Kallergi & Konstantinidou 2018: 102–121. Moreover, it is extremely productive in Macedonian, as attested to in Vistinata za Makedonija (Prizma 2015; Friedman 2019a), where there are at least a dozen such examples, including the OBSE- mOBSE example in (4.14). As with other cases like this (see §4.3.7.2.1, regarding intensive prefixation), it is more likely that the borrowed lexical material was the basis for the emergence of a process in the borrowing languages, rather than that the process itself was borrowed from Turkish.
4.3.7.3 Other Reduplications
All of the languages show other reduplications with various forms and various meanings. Romanian, for instance, has talmeş-balmeş for ‘jumble,’ and Greek has (somewhat onomatopoetic) τσαφ-τσουφ ‘in an instant.’ However, none of these have any systematic status across the several languages nor a specific or demonstrable contact dimension. There is, however, one reduplicative phrase with expressive value that occurs widely throughout the Balkans that shows several variant forms with varied meanings but most centering on inadequate verbal skills. There is some dispute as to the ultimate source, but its widespread manifestation makes it noteworthy in this regard, no matter what its origin is.Footnote 264 Relevant forms are given in (4.15):Footnote 265Footnote 266
(4.15)
Trk çatra-patra ‘incorrectly and brokenly (speaking a foreign language)’ çıtır pıtır ‘with a sweet babble (said of the talking of a child), prattling’ çat pat ‘a little, some (ability in speaking a language)’ Grk τšὰτ πὰτ (OEGrk, Ronzevalle 1911: 287, 1912: 70) tšatır patır (OEGrk, Ronzevalle 1911: 288, 1912: 70; also
BDJ field notes (Alexandroupolis region, from a twenty-year-old speaker, 1981)
τσάτρα πάτρα ‘stumblingly (with reference to speaking a language)’ tšátara pátara (OEGrk, Ronzevalle 1911: 287, “plus expressif que τšὰτ πὰτ pour dire mal parler une langue” (‘more expressive than τšὰτ πὰτ for saying ‘to speak a language badly’) Blg čatăr-patăr ‘idiom (dial[ectal]) so-so, passably, poorly’ (Grannes et al. 2002) čatara-patara ‘idem’ čatra-patra ‘idem’ čat-pat ‘idem’ Mac čat-pat ‘idem’ Aro ceat-pat ‘so-so, comme si comme ça’ (Papahagi 1974: 432) Rmn ceat-pat ‘idem’ Alb çatrapil ‘confusion, disorder’
This pattern may in some sense be related to the m-doubling since it involves whole-word repetition of a word with a labial initial, though in this case a p-; note too that labials are involved in the intensive prefixation reduplication as prefix-final elements. Still, this particular case is not the borrowing of any sort of pattern per se but is rather a lexical borrowing, albeit interesting and relevant as ERIC loans given the phrase’s colloquial character.
4.3.7.4 Conclusions Regarding Reduplication
By its very nature, as argued in §4.3.7.1, reduplication lends itself well to expressive functions, and thus to conversational uses. All of the Balkan evidence cited here illustrates this point well. Given that there are several instances of the borrowing of reduplicative forms in the Balkans, there can be no doubt that reduplication can thrive in situations of language contact, and the positive suggestions of reduplicative patterns spreading make that all the clearer. In these ways, then, reduplication in the Balkans fits in well with the ERIC-loan typology advanced here, both as to its function and as to its role in discourse and conversational interaction. As such, it provides support for viewing the nature of language contact in the region as both intense and intimate.
4.3.8 Diminutives, Hypocoristics, and Endearing Terms of Address
Means of addressing interlocutors in an endearing way, and other ways of showing intimacy, as well as respect (in some sense its counterpart), towards a discourse participant, including the use of diminutives, all fall quite naturally into the realm of conversationally based words, inasmuch as they are tied to face-to-face acts of communication between speakers where more than just the exchange of information is involved. They thus quintessentially represent “human-oriented” instead of “object-oriented” interaction. Significantly, and as expected under the ERIC-loan classification of Balkan lexical borrowing advocated here, forms of this sort show considerable diffusion within the Balkans.Footnote 267
Such words are found frequently in several lexical domains discussed above, which by virtue of their inherent reference and/or the social context in which they typically occur, invite the use of endearing address. For instance, they are common in kin terms, as the status of close kin lends itself well to terms of endearment or to notice of relative age or size; see §4.3.1.1 (on ‘mother, grandmother’), §4.3.1.2 (on ‘brother’), and §4.3.1.4 (on ‘uncle’) for some examples. Similarly, vocatives also typically occur in social contexts where hypocorism is to be expected, as seen in the examples in §4.3.5. And, expressive and familiar address, seen in §4.3.4.2.2, also is conducive to the use of diminutives and hypocoristics.
In many cases, the usage involves transfer of a foreign item from the typically loving context of the nursery or home or playful interactions to broader reference outside of that domain, but still invoking the original intimacy. Derivatives of Turkish canım ‘my soul,’ oğlum ‘my son,’ and Albanian bir ‘son’ are discussed in §4.3.4.2.2. In many instances, Turkish is the source of other words of this sort; for instance, Bulgarian dialects (Grannes et al. 2002: 15) show Turkish ata ‘father’ used as an ‘intimate and respectful term of address for a man, father.’Footnote 268 Greek is the source of kukla ‘doll’ and the form with a possessive pronoun, kuklam ‘my doll’ (Greek κούκλα μου, canonically but κούκλα μ in a northern dialect like Constantinople Greek – but also identical with the 1sg.poss suffix of Turkish), in Judezmo of Istanbul (Varol Bornes 2008: 393), though borrowed as well into Turkish and thus possibly not directly from Greek. Cf. also Romani Devlam ‘O my God,’ cited in §4.3.3.1.1.
Related to this is the use of a range of politeness formulas of Turkish origin throughout the Balkans,Footnote 269 as noted by Skok 1935: 254–255 and Mirčev 1963: 76, and as discussed for Bulgarian by Grannes 1969. Grannes observes that the forms efendi ‘sir’ (Trk efendi), efendim ‘my sir, milord’ (Trk efendim), gečmiš ola! ‘a wish expressed to persons who have been ill or been through some calamity; get well soon; a speedy recovery’ (Trk geçmiş ola!, lit., ‘passed may.it.be’ [Modern Trk geçmiş olsun]), kuzum ‘my dear’ (Trk kuzum ‘my lamb!’), and šerif aga ‘noble lord’ (Trk şerif ağa) were all widely used colloquially in Ottoman times in Bulgarian, but also, we can add, in all the Balkan languages.Footnote 270 Moreover, Balkan languages such as Greek, Macedonian, and Albanian have all calqued geçmiş ola/olsun in various ways: Grk περαστικά (lit., ‘passingly’), Mac da ti pomine ‘may [it] pass you’ and Alb [qoftë] të kaluara ‘[may it be] passed,’ all used to wish someone to get well.
Relevant here too is BSl and Alb temane, the word for an ‘oriental salute made with a bow and touching the fingers of the right hand to the lips and then to the forehead,’ ultimately from Arabic but in the Balkans by way of Turkish. This gesture of respect and politeness was known in Ottoman times and remains to some extent in post-late-Ottoman Rumeli (Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Thrace), where it is part of many Muslim wedding ceremonies where the bride shows respect to the groom. It also figures in the meeting of Bai Ganyo and the Czech historian Konstantin Jireček (Konstantinov 2010).Footnote 271
Finally, one key way in which diminutivity is expressed in the Balkans is through suffixation, and there are many instances of such suffixes diffusing across the languages. Several of these are quite clear-cut but one is particularly notable – and controversial.
To cover the straightforward cases first, Matras 2009: 210 observes that “Romani dialects borrow a series of agentive and diminutive affixes from various contact languages,” although the only example he gives is from Central European Romani (Sinti) and involves a Slavic feminizing suffix: Sint-ica ‘a Sinti woman.’Footnote 272 Slavic is the source of several diminutive suffixes in Romanian, as documented by Puşcariu 1902, such as -işcă (as in morişcă ‘coffee-mill’; for the suffix, cf. Russ voriška, based on vor ‘thief’), and in the case of the diminutive suffixes in -Vc (-uc, -oc, etc.) where native Latinate material is involved etymologically, Puşcariu (p. 142) argues that “the influence of neighboring languages cannot be denied [and] through Slavic influence the Romanian c-suffixes acquired greater vitality.”Footnote 273 Further, the South Slavic diminutives -če and -ko occur in Albanian as “suffixes of endearment” (Newmark et al. 1982: 172) in borrowings such as dajko ‘uncle,’ but also in native Albanian words such as vëllako ‘brother,’ birçe ‘sonny boy’ and nipçe ‘nephew.’ These same suffixes also occur in Judezmo, e.g., Avram > Avramche, Binyamin > Benko (Bunis 2003: 224–225). Here it is worth noting that the Turkish diminutive -çe, which is invariant (e.g., divançe ‘a small collection of poetry’), is of Persian origin, while the South (mostly Balkan) Slavic could be native or influenced by the Turkish (cf. Sawicka 2021).
Albanian is not just a recipient language as far as diminutives are concerned. Megara Greek, as noted above in §4.3, has borrowed the Albanian diminutive suffix -zë in, e.g., λιγάζα ‘a little,’ and Kyriazis 2012b notes that -zë occurs more widely in other Greek dialects in close contact with Arvanitika (though some instances, e.g., βάιζα ‘girl’ (Alb vajzë) simply have the suffix integrated into a borrowed Albanian word).Footnote 274
The Turkish nominal diminutive -CIK is the basis for the Greek somewhat slangy and affective nominal/adjectival suffix -τζικος that occurs in λαουτζίκος ‘riff-raff, general populace,’ based on the Greek noun λαός ‘people,’ and possibly μασκαρατζίκος ‘young rogue; rascal’ alongside μασκαράς ‘rascal’ (so LKN: s.v.μασκαράς).Footnote 275 It generally shows up only in Turkisms, e.g., WRT kapi ‘door’ kapicik ‘[small] back door’ gives BSl kapidžik (Mac also ‘gateway between courtyards’), Alb kapixhik, Aro capiǧikje.Footnote 276 However, the form dadedžik ‘daddy’ (Rmi dade ‘father.voc’ + Turkish diminutive -cik) does occur in some dialects of Romani (Cech & Heinschink 1999: 150–153; Friedman 2013b). Jud kavedžiko ‘a little coffee’ makes more sense as the Turkish diminutive + o than as Trk -ci + Jud -iko (pace Bunis 1999: 639).Footnote 277 Alb nenexhik ‘mint’ (Trk nâne ‘idem’) is probably a local Turkism, borrowed as such into Albanian. Similarly, in Albanian bërxhik (Meyer 1891: s.v.) ‘the short span between thumb and first finger,’ and similar forms, while there is a possible Slavic connection (but cf. Skok 1973: 31), the suffix could have been influenced by Turkish. Cf. also Sawicka 2021 on the possible influence of Turkish -çe on the Macedonian diminutive -če.
A different source for diminutives is Italic (Latin or Romance) suffix, Latin -ulla, found in Greek -ούλα, e.g., ξανθούλα ‘blondie,’ γατούλα ‘kitty.’ Greek masculine and neuter forms, -ούλης/-ούλι, respectively, also occur, either built on -ούλα or from Latin gendered forms, e.g., masculine -ullus, which is the source of Macedonian (originally from just south of Ohrid, north to Prilep then down just east of Voden (Grk Édessa) and Neguš (Grk Náousa)) -ule, as in jagnule ‘little lamb’ (cf. jagne ‘lamb’), detule ‘little child’ (cf. dete ‘child’). This suffix has become productive in Macedonian informal speech, e.g., kafule ‘small coffeehouse.’ Albanian zheg ‘heat wave, oppressive heat’ (from Slavic), has a regional variant zhugull, presumably with this suffix.Footnote 278 While the Greek form is most likely directly from (Late) Latin, the Macedonian is most likely from Balkan Romance (Koneski et al. 1968: 422–423, 538). The Greek form also entered Judezmo, as in the woman’s name Rikula < Rika < Rivka (Bunis 1999: 82).
We can also note that the diminutive suffix -ache in Romanian is a borrowing from the Greek suffix (neuter) -άκι, (masculine) -άκης (Puşcariu 1902: 223). This suffix also occurs in Judezmo, e.g., Avram > Avramaki (Bunis 2003). Bunis 2003: 222 also suggests the possibility that the Judezmo diminutive -achi, e.g., haham ‘scholar’ > hahamachi ‘quite a learned scholar,’ may be from the Spanish augmentative -acho, influenced by Grk -άκι, Trk -cik, and/or Trk -çe and BSl -če.
The suffixes Alb -ush-, BRο -uş-, Slv -uš-, and Trk -Iş- are all involved in various forms of derivations that involve diminutives and expressives, e.g., Alb zonjushë ‘miss, mademoiselle’ (from zonjë ‘lady, Mrs., mistress [of the house]’), Mac liguš ‘snot-nosed kid’ (from liga ‘slime, snot’), Rmn cățeluș ‘doggie’ (from cățel ‘puppy’). In the case of Turkish, the suffix involves high vowel + ş, ordinarily subject to vowel harmony. However, in WRT, precisely -uş- surfaces as an invariant, e.g., from Aluş (hypocristic for Ali, vs. StTrk Aliş). Directionality versus heritage is difficult to establish except for the probably Balkan influence on the WRT form.
A diminutive suffix that has diffused quite widely, like the Turkish ones discussed in §4.2.2.4, but best treated here due to its function, is the one that is phonetically [-itsa], found in all of the Balkan languages. While on the one hand its specific form, with a dental affricate, aligns it with the expressive phonology discussed in §5.7, its relevance here lies in its function and its diffusion throughout the various languages. Examples of this suffix (sometimes with other diminutive suffixes as well) from a range of languages include the items in Table 4.18.
Table 4.18 Examples of [-itsa] in the Balkans
| Alb | rrugicë ‘alley’ < rrugë ‘road’ |
| Blg | ribčica ‘little fish’ < ribka ‘small fish’ < riba ‘fish’ |
| Mac | rečica ‘small river’ < reka ‘river’ |
| Rmn | casuliță ‘wee house’ < casulă ‘little house’ < casă ‘house’ |
| Megl | kudíță (also: kudičkă) ‘little tail’ < koadă ‘tail’ |
| Grk | πατατίτσα ‘little potato’ < πατάτα ‘potato’ |
| Rmi | harica ‘a tiny bit’ < hari ‘a little’ |
| Jud | amanitsa ‘gragger, noisemaker used at Purim’ < Aman ‘Haman’ (the villain in the Book of Esther) |
As these examples indicate, these forms with [-itsa] show typical diminutive functions, such as marking smallness in size, smallness in age (i.e., youth), low social status, endearment, and the like.Footnote 279
In terms of origins, it is generally held, uncontroversially, that as far as Balkan Slavic is concerned, the suffix is the regular outcome, via the third (progressive) Slavic palatalization, of a feminine suffix with the form *-īkā.Footnote 280 This suffix is found elsewhere in Slavic, mostly as a feminizing suffix (e.g., Russ tsaritsa ‘tsarina’), but in some instances with diminutive(-like) value, at least in origin, as in Russ jagoditsa ‘buttock, nipple’ (cf. jagoda ‘berry,’ thus lit., ‘little berry’), bessmyslitsa ‘nonsense’ (diminutive as dismissive or belittling), or ptica ‘bird’ (an old diminutive, cf. OCS and ORuss pъta ‘bird’), and its Slavic realization as a diminutive is the likely source of the Albanian and Balkan Romance suffix.
There is, however, and has been for over 100 years, considerable controversy as to the origin of -ίτσα as far as its occurrence in Greek is concerned. This is not the place to rehearse all the details of the scholarly dispute, but emblematic of the controversy is the fact that George Hatzidakis changed his mind several times throughout his career, vacillating between taking -ίτσα as a Slavic borrowing and treating it as a Greek-internal development (Georgacas 1982: 31). Similarly, the most authoritative etymological dictionaries offer mixed results, with Andriotis 1983: s.v. (as also in earlier editions) being convinced that it is a borrowing from Slavic -ica while Babiniotis 2010: s.v. takes it as being of Greek origin. It is recognized by all that there are lexical items of Slavic origin in Greek, at least 250 outside of the dialects (Georgacas 1982: 45), though most are not in common use now and are best attested in northern dialects; these include βερβερίτσα ‘squirrel’ (cf. BSl ververica), μουσίτσα ‘gnat, midge’ (Slavic mъšica, diminutive of muxa ‘fly’), and νουζίτσα ‘leather strap, belt’ (cf. Srb uzdica ‘rein, bridle’). There are also many Slavic toponyms in Greece (Vasmer 1941), e.g., Granítsa, Stemnítsa, and Tsernítsa. Still, in his definitive collection of dialect and historical material, Georgacas 1982 argues at great length that apart from the clear loans, Greek diminutive -ίτσα has a Greek source, deriving from a colloquial late Koine (c. fourth century CE) palatalization and affricatization (suggested by Coptic borrowings from Greek, e.g., sibōtos from κιβωτός ‘ark,’ siθára from κιθάρα ‘lyre,’ epēsi from ἐποίκιον ‘farmstead; hamlet’) of the -κ- of the Ancient Greek diminutive suffix -ικιον. The fact that there is a full complement of gendered suffixes in Greek derived from the nucleus -(ι)τσ-, specifically neuters -ιτσι (e.g., κορίτσι ‘girl,’ cf. κόρη ‘girl, daughter’) and masculines -ιτσης (e.g., the proper name Θεοφιλίτσης, derived from Θεόφιλος) and -ίτσας (e.g., the proper name Ζαχαρίτσας, derived from Ζαχάριος), alongside the feminine -ίτσα, could suggest an internal Greek origin; however those could also be elaborations from a starting point of Slavic origin.Footnote 281 Similarly, Georgacas 1982: 30–31 was persuaded by the widespread, truly pan-Hellenic, distribution of -ίτσα as opposed to the far more localized dialect geography of clear Slavic loans, and by the absence of Slavic loans from several parts of the Greek-speaking world, e.g., southern Italy and the Pontic areas, as opposed to the presence of -ίτσα elsewhere, but one could simply appeal to spread internally within Greek, from dialect to dialect, to explain the distribution, a scenario Georgacas himself even endorses in some instances (p. 31). Moreover, the Coptic evidence is not as compelling as Georgacas suggests: the forms he cites come from the Sahidic dialect and are spelled with the grapheme called shima, a letter that in Sahidic seems to represent a Coptic palatalized velar; these loans, therefore, could simply reflect some degree of fronting, but not anything like affricate value, for a velar in Greek before a front vowel, as found in all of the loans.Footnote 282 One is left, therefore, with no compelling evidence for Georgacas’s account, although it is accepted in Babiniotis 2010.Footnote 283
Further, it strains credulity to suppose that Greek would have an etymologically unrelated suffix that matches the Slavic-derived one so exactly. So even if there is a plausible Greek source, the Slavic suffix, which was known in Greek, could well have enhanced the adoption of a fronted (and by then possibly affricated) variant of the -ικιον suffix and allowed it to emerge and take hold in its affricated form. The chronology of the first actual appearances of -ίτσα in written materials would accord with such a view, as it is found first in ordinary vocabulary in the twelfth-century poems of Θεόδωρος Πρόδρομος (Πτωχοπρόδρομος), e.g., μικροτερίτζιν ‘very small,’ and in personal names as early as the ninth century (Βοϊδιτζης, in 838CE (Georgacas 1982: 39)). It should be noted that a Greek-internal source for -ίτσα would further mean that – in principle – at least some instances of -itsa in other Balkan languages could have been borrowed from Greek. Nonetheless, diffusion ultimately from a Slavic source remains, for most scholars, the most plausible scenario for the spread of an -itsa diminutive suffix throughout the Balkans.Footnote 284
4.3.9 Taboo Expressions, Insults, and Other Terms of Abuse
For our purposes here, taboo refers to socially negatively sanctioned expressions that are sometimes labeled obscenities or swear words, as opposed to, for example, the kinds of taboo expressions that refer to dangerous animals, religious practices, etc.Footnote 285 Thus, for example, the use among Albanian Muslims of the euphemism mish miku ‘meat friend.abl’ for mish derri ‘pork’ (lit., ‘meat pig.abl’) – in order to avoid mentioning an unclean animal forbidden by Muslim religious law – is outside the purview of this section. Henderson 1991: 7 provides a useful characterization of obscene vocabulary that be cited here:
The effect of obscenity is to break through social taboos … Thus obscenity is most often used to insult someone … to make curses, to add power to comedy, jokes, ridicule, and satire. Its efficacy in all these functions resides in its ability to uncover what is forbidden, and thus to shock, anger, or amuse …. Very often the exposure is hostile and serves to degrade the object.
Following the methodology employed by Razvratnikov 1979, 1988–1989, we can identify three broad categories of obscene lexical items: (1) body parts, (2) bodily actions and products (sexual and excretory), and (3) abusive and insulting terms and expressions, many of which tend to be culture bound in one way or another.Footnote 286 Taking English as our basis of comparison (owing to the fact that English is the language of this book and not to any inherent qualities of English-language obscenities), the basic relevant lexical items are given in Table 4.19.Footnote 287
Table 4.19 Classes of taboo items in the Balkans
| 1 | BODY PARTS | |||
| prick/cockFootnote 288 | cunt | |||
| balls | tits | |||
| ass/arse (incl. asshole) | ||||
| 2A | BODILY ACTIVITY VERBS (all sexual) | |||
| fuck | suck/eat | (irrumate)Footnote 289 | jack off | |
| 2B | BODILY FUNCTIONS AND PRODUCTS (all used as both nouns and verbs in English) | |||
| shit | fart | piss | cum | |
| 3 | INSULTS (PEOPLE) | |||
| bastard – bitch | ||||
| faggot – dykeFootnote 290 | ||||
| whore – pimp | ||||
| [stupid – nasty]Footnote 291 | ||||
Taboo expressions and insults, when they enter one language from another, generally do so as ERIC loans, whereas euphemisms can be colloquial or learnèd. Colloquial euphemisms tend to be metaphors, and in some cases the cross-linguistic identity may be typological rather than areal, i.e., due to an inherent property of the thing described rather than language contact. Thus, for example, words meaning ‘eggs’ can also function in the meaning ‘testicles’ in various languages (e.g., BSl, Grk, Trk), but this commonality is not necessarily explained as a borrowing, since the shape of the two items in question is suggestive in and of itself (cf. the same in Sanskrit). Learnèd euphemisms, on the other hand, can be either metaphors or borrowings, but do not qualify as ERIC loans, due to their learnèd nature. The difference can itself be a source of humor, as in the following anecdote recounted here in its Macedonian version, where a learnèd borrowing is contrasted to a colloquial expression:
A young woman from a village is boasting to a girlfriend that she has had an affair with an intellectual. The girlfriend asks what it was like. She explains that the intellectual had a penis. The girlfriend, unfamiliar with the term, asks what it means. The young woman replies that it is just like a village kur only smaller.Footnote 292
The taboo on mentioning certain human organs connected with sexual activity or excretion (as well as the activities themselves and their products) is not by itself a modern phenomenon in Europe, although the contexts in which these expressions appear have varied over time. Thus, for example, the language of Aristophanes abounds in expressions that even today are forbidden or self-censored in roughly equivalent Euro-Atlantic public media (Henderson 1991).Footnote 293 Even in Aristophanes, however, certain lexical items were used precisely for their shock value. At issue, then, was not whether the words were taboo, but the contexts in which they could be used for certain kinds of dramatic effect. To this can be added the fact that in many languages, the native terms for so-called private parts are simply the noneuphemistic ones, but they become obscene either in context or as a result of contact with another culture’s prudery (cf. the removal of most of Japan’s Shinto phallic fertility shrines during the Meiji period as a result of European influence; see Kinoshita & Palevsky 1992: 30). That said, however, it is also certainly the case that sexual and excretory organs and their activities form a special category in all the European (and many other) languages, and they are deployed in various forms of verbal abuse in many diverse cultures.
In the context of Balkan linguistics, it is striking that in fact relatively few obscenities are borrowed and in most languages the terms are of native origin, albeit that these terms often go through a cycle that can be identified as a kind of pollution, i.e., a word starts out as a euphemism and eventually becomes so closely associated with the obscenity that it originally stood for that the old euphemism becomes a new obscenity. Thus, for example, Ancient Greek οἴφειν ‘to mount,’ which continues the Indo-European root *yebh- ‘to have sexual intercourse’ (cf. Sanskrit yabhati ‘copulates,’ Slavic (j)eb- ‘fuck,’ Sogdian a-yāmb ʻcommit adultery’), was already considered to be a Doric provincialism by the time of Aristophanes, when βινεῖν was the vox propria for ‘fuck’ (Henderson 1991: 35).Footnote 294 In Modern Greek, however, that word is completely obsolete, and the verb γαμώ, originally ‘marry,’ is now the verb for ‘fuck.’Footnote 295 In Balkan Slavic, however, as in most of the rest of Slavic, most of the languages have preserved (j)eb- as the obscene verb. In the sections that follow, we give coverage for both native and shared vocabulary precisely because the semantic field as a whole is typically ERIC, but this particular semantic field is quite specific, is not covered in any other Balkan handbook, and is subject to folk beliefs such as the claim that many of them are of Turkish origin, e.g., Grannes 1969, who notes (quoting from 1996: 109) that “Skok 1935: 254–255 affirme que dans les langues balkaniques les jurons sont souvent d’origine orientale” (‘Skok affirms that in the Balkan languages, swear words are often of eastern origin’). This is not so much a statement of fact as of sociocultural attitude. While certain Turkish obscenities have penetrated into the Balkan languages, often with altered meaning, the actual patterns of borrowing are in fact much more complex. Given the richness of the field, however, we only cover some basic terminology.
4.3.9.1 Body Parts
Balkan languages show both differences and similarities in the distribution of dedicated versus metaphorical terms for body parts. Thus, for example, both English and the Balkan languages have specific terms for vagina/vulva – English cunt, Slavic pizda and its derivatives (pička etc., Bulg putka is of different origin, BER VI), which is cognate with Albanian pidh (Hamp 1968; but note also piçkë, piç, from Slavic), Grk μουνί (likely from Vtn mona), Trk am, Rmi mindž, BRo pizdă/kizdă (a borrowing from Slavic). Romani is the source of BSl mindža, which in turn is the likely source of Trk mınca/minco (since final -inç – devoicing is automatic – is permissible in Turkish). On the other hand, terms for ‘penis’ in English such as cock, dick, prick all have other potential meanings (although in context they are unambiguous), while in the Balkan languages SSl kur and its derivatives, albeit etymologically related to CoSl *kurŭ ‘cock,’ are unambiguous (but see Loma 2004 for alternative explanations). The phallic qualities attributed to the rooster are such that the parallel between English and Balkan Slavic is merely typological. Bulgarian also has East Slavic huj.Footnote 296 The bird metaphor is also the source of Balkan Romance pulă < Lat pulla ‘birdie, etc.’ According to Meyer 1891: 176, Albanian kar, which is the vox propria, is borrowed from Romani, for which this word preserves the original meaning, cf. Prkt kāṭa ‘penis.’ The word also occurs in Romanian slang car ‘idem’ (Leschber 1995: 158, cf. also a carici ‘to fuck,’ Armjanov 2001: 69, karam ‘fuck v.’ archaic).Footnote 297 Of a different source are AGrk πέος, πόσθη, which are derivatives of PIE *pes- (*pes-os and *pos-dhā respectively; so also Lat penis < *pes-ni-), and Rmn/Aro puță (which is diminutive) from VLat pūtium (cf. Lat praeputim), the source also of ModGrk πούτσος (not diminutive); cf. also Alb pucarak ‘spirited, brave person.’ Turkish sik is both the noun and the verbal root meaning ‘fuck’ (cf. to bone in English, from boner ‘erection’, and to ball from balls ‘testicles’, for typological parallels). For ‘testicles/balls,’ BSl made/măde, Rmn coaie, Aro coalje, hãrhãndeale, boashe, Alb herdhe, ModGrk αρχίδια (these latter two from PIE *Hórǵhis ‘idem’), Rmi pele (Skt pela), Trk taşak (also = Jud) are unambiguous (but cf. Trk taş ‘stone’), whereas English balls, nuts, etc. are metaphorical (cf. ‘eggs’ mentioned above). Words for ‘arse’ are generally native: Mac gaz/Blg găz, Alb bythë, Rmi bul, Trk göt, Grk κώλος, but note Rmn cur (related to κώλος, with rhotacism, or possibly from Latin colon), Jud kulo (possibly from Greek, though it could well be inherited from Latin; cf. French cul).Footnote 298 Romanian găoază ‘ass(hole)’ does not have a simple etymology, but at least the influence of BSl seems likely. Various equivalents for ‘tits’ do not present any specifically Balkan or contact features.
4.3.9.2 Bodily Activities, Functions, and Products
In general, like body parts, obscene expressions relating to bodily activities, functions, and products are of native origin in the Balkans. Excretory functions such as ‘piss’ and ‘fart’ lend themselves to onomatopoeia, and yet Mac/Blg prdi/părdja, Alb pjerdh, Grk πέρδομαι (MedGrk denominal πορδίζω), Jud pedar are all cognate with English fart, thus from PIE *perd-, possibly itself onomatopoetic. Rmn/Aro băși/bes (Lat vissīre) is likewise onomatopoetic, while Rmi kha[n]jarel (khand ‘stink’ < OInd gandha- ‘odor’), and Trk osur- (cf. *ASR- (Clauson 1972: 250)) are connected to ‘odor.’ Rmn pîrdalnic (WMuntenia purdalnic) ‘damned, diabolical, devil’ is a borrowing from BSl. The noun is generally derived from the verbal root.
The forms Rmn/Aro pișa/kishat, and Jud pišar are imitative from VLat *pissiāre, and Buck 1949: 273 cites the Romance as the origin of SSl piša-. The VLat form, through OFrn pisser, also gives English piss, Russ písat’ (3pl písajut); OCS has sьcati (PIE *seikw- ‘pour’), which only survives in North Slavic. Alb pshurrë is probably also imitative (although Meyer 1891: 420 connects it with IE *sū-ro ‘salty, sour, bitter’; cf. OCS syrъ ‘cheese,’ cognate with Albanian hirrë ‘whey’ (Vasmer 1986–1987: s.v.)). Grk κατουρώ (AGrk οὐρέω) is cognate with Lat urina, the source of Eng urine via a borrowing. Rmi mut[a]rel (= Skt mūtra-) < PIE *meu-, cf. OCS myti ‘wash’ and Eng mud. Trk işe- also looks onomatopoetic (but cf. Clauson 1972: 255).
Like ‘piss’ and ‘fart,’ ‘shit’ is generally native. The imitative/nursery form kaka- is Indo-European (PIE *kakka- (Pokorny 1959: s.v.), *kak(k)eha- (in the terms of Mallory & Adams 1997: 187)) and survives in Romance, Slavic, Greek, Albanian, Celtic, and Armenian, albeit in registers varying from the nursery to the obscene; Rmn/Aro căca (V), căcat (N)/cac, cãcat are in this latter category, as is Jud kagar. BRo cacat is the relevant noun, but most Balkan languages have distinct nouns and verbs. For verbs, Alb dhjes and Grk χέζω are cognate with one another and also possibly cognate with Rmi xiel, xlijel, xinel, xendel (ptcp. x(l)endo), if this is related to Skt had- ‘excrement’ (IE *ǵhed-, cf. Mallory & Adams 1997: 187). Boretzky & Igla 1994: 116 suggest the influence of Grk χύνω ‘pour; ejaculate’ or χέζω ‘shit’ on the Romani form (cf. also Paspati 1870: 315). Strandža Bulgarian nasihesva ‘to make number two [of a dog]’ is probably from or at least influenced by the Greek (cf. BER IV: s.v.). BSl sere/sra ‘shit.3SG.prs/shit.3SG.aor’ is from Common Slavic but is of disputed origin (Hamp 1975a suggests a possible Old Iranian loan; BER VI: s.v. summarizes the problems). Trk sıç- is old and native. For the noun, BSl has both Mac gomno/ Blg govno and lajno, and the former may ultimately be cognate with Rmi khul ‘shit’ (Skt gūtha- (Monier-Williams 1899: s.v.), Prkt gūh).Footnote 299 ModGrk σκατό (usually plural σκατά; from AGrk σκῶρ, gen σκατός) has been connected to the Slavic verb cited above (IE *sóḱṛ, Mallory & Adams 1997: 186; but cf. Hamp 1975a). Alb mut is ultimately from IE *meug/meuk- ‘slip, slide, slime’ (Lat mūcus). Aro merdu, Jud medra continue Latin merda ‘shit’ with cognates in Balto-Slavic and Germanic (e.g., OCS smrьděti ‘stink,’ English smart ‘hurt’), but the Romanian continuation is desmierda ‘caress.’ Turkish bok (old and native) is also used in Judezmo, which, however, also has Romance privada in this meaning. Turkish bok has entered Bulgarian in bokluk ‘garbage, trash’ (both literal and figurative), a derivation and meaning that is absent in modern Turkish.
With regard to sexual activities, while all the Balkan languages are capable of expressing various sexual acts, the only act for which all the Balkan languages share an obscene vox propria is ‘fuck,’ and some also have dedicated verbs for ‘jack off.’ Many verbs and nouns have possible sexual overtones, and there are expressions using nonobscene words that have obscene meanings in the appropriate context, e.g., Greek τσιμπούκι ‘(Turkish long-stem) pipe’ but also ‘blow job,’ Mac puši ‘smoke’ but also ‘give a blow job,’ Alb jargë ‘slime, spit, phlegm, drool’ but also ‘prostatic fluid (pre-cum), vaginal secretion,’ etc. For ‘jack off,’ Grk μαλακίζομαι, Mac drka are dedicated verbs. Rmn malahie ‘jack off,’ from Grk μαλακία, is attested from the seventeenth century, coinciding with the beginnings of the eighteenth century Phanariote domination of the Romanian principalities. As noted above, Slavic (j)eb- and ModGrk γαμώ are the relevant words for ‘fuck’ in Balkan Slavic and Greek respectively. Balkan Romance has fută/futã (Lat futuere), Turkish has sik-, which as a noun is ‘cock.’ Albanian qij (Arv qienj) is not from Latin inclinare (Meyer 1891: 226) since there is no /l / in the Arvanitika. Orel (1986: 361) suggests Latin coïre, but the /nj/ of Arvanitika presents a problem for such a solution. Topalli (2017: s.v.) proposes a native origin from PIE *(s)k(h)ai- ‘hit;’ cf. Lat caedō ‘lie with,’ Skt khidati ‘strike’).Footnote 300 Balkan Romance, like the rest of Romance, preserves a specifically Latin (or Italic) development, fut-. Romani kurrel is native, cf. Skt kuṭṭayati ‘bash, pound,’ but note also del bul ‘hit ass’ whence Rmn a buli.Footnote 301 As noted above, the Turkish root sik- is both ‘cock’ (noun) and ‘fuck’ (verb). In general, Balkan equivalents of ‘cum’ (noun or verb) are not dedicated forms, an exception being Rmi čhorajbe, a deverbal noun from čhor- ‘spill,’ meaning ‘cum’ (noun) in both Romani and Macedonian. The (historical) causative čhoravel can mean ‘ejaculate’ or ‘urinate,’ but the deverbal noun is unambiguous.
4.3.9.3 Insults
Unlike the names of body parts, functions, and products, insults are a rich area of ERIC loans, and many of them are indeed from Turkish, or at least were from Turkish into the twentieth century (cf. pezevenk ‘pimp’ and orospu ‘whore’ discussed below). The causative/passive imperative siktir which can be translated ‘get fucked,’ whence also ‘fuck off,’ is borrowed into all the Balkan languages, although it is merely rude rather than obscene, the source meaning now being unknown in the various borrowing languages.Footnote 302 Consider in this context the gradations from get lost! to scram! to buzz off! to go to the devil/hell to (British) piss off!/(North American) fuck off!. The imperative serves as the basis for derived verbs meaning ‘to chase off/send someone to hell, etc.’ in all the Balkan languages, e.g., BSl sikter[d]is[uv]a (with numerous variants), Aro sictărescu, Rmn a sictiri, Alb sikteris, Grk σιχτιρίζω, Jud siktirear.Footnote 303 The shape of the vowel in the second syllable is itself an indication of oral transmission. In the West Rumelian dialects – in contrast to East Rumelian dialects and the Turkish standard, which is based in part on these latter, as they include Istanbul – high front /i/ is backed to /ı/ (realized as schwa in languages with no high back unrounded vowel) in closed syllables. Thus, Albanian has siktër as well as standard sikter, the Aromanian of Greek Macedonia has siktãr, and western Aegean Macedonian dialects have siktər. By contrast, Bulgarian and Judezmo have siktir, Romanian and the Aromanian of Greece have sictir, and Greek has σιχτίρ, all with the East Rumelian vocalism (and Greek with the regular development of κ > χ before a stop). Standard Macedonian and BCMS have sikter, as does the Aromanian of North Macedonia. Here the Macedonian /e/ looks like an older schwa that fell together with secondary jer, while the BCMS and Aromanian forms appear to have entered from Macedonian.Footnote 304
Turkish sik also occurs in Blg nasik(i)me ‘I don’t give a hoot’ from Turkish sik-im-e ʻpenis-my-DAT’ plus the Bulgarian directional preposition na. BER IV: s.v. nasikmè notes that Romani has me kar-es-te ‘my penis-OBL-LOC,’ which, however contains a locative rather than a dative.
Obscenities involving the mother of the addressee are widespread, although the force varies among cultures. Thus, for example in Kilivila, a language of the Trobriand Islands, kwoy inam ‘fuck.IMPV your.mother’ is jocular, kwoy lumuta ‘fuck your.sister’ is serious, and kwoy um kwava ‘fuck your wife’ is a deadly insult (Malinowski 1929: 409).Footnote 305 Henderson’s observation on the nature of obscenity cited above is especially apt here. Still, the command to go fuck someone or something is widespread or perhaps universal. In some languages, however, the imperative is at least in competition with an indicative or optative, sometimes involving the first person. Thus, for example, in BCMS, the most common formula involves a first-person singular present plus second person ethical dative – jebem ti + DO – while in Albanian, the most normal form is a 1SG OPT (with or without second-person ethical dative) – [të] qifsha + DO. In Turkish the optative or gnomic present (geniş zaman, see §6.2.4.2.6) are in competition with the 1sg definite (confirmative) past – DO + siktim – which is also common. The use of the descendants of the Common Slavic perfect (using what is historically the resultativel-participle) in various modern Slavic languages is potentially ambiguous between a past and an optative reading (cf. Friedman 2012b and §4.3.4.1.1 above). Thus the BCMS jeb’o te pas mater and the Russ job tvoju mat’ could both be interpreted as either past resultative or archaic optatives.Footnote 306 In terms of Balkan specificities, however, a phrase of the type ʻyour motherʻs cunt’ – BSl pička ti majčina, pizda materina, putka ti mamina, Alb pidhin e s’ëmës, BRo p/kizda mă-tii, Trk ananın amı, Rmi te dakiri mindž, Grk της μάνας σου το μουνί – with ‘cunt’ in the accusative (as the implied object of ‘I fuck’) in those languages that mark it, is an idiom that, within the European context, is specifically Balkan in its idiomaticity.Footnote 307 Imprecations of the type corresponding to English fuck your mother involve a first person subject rather than an imperative, but the verb can be optative, preterite, or present depending on the language.
While the phrase meaning ‘eat shit’ is inherently offensive, in the Balkans it has the idiomatic meaning ‘talk nonsense/slander, lie etc.’ (cf. Eng to bullshit): Mac jade gomno, Alb ha mut, Rmn mânca căcat, Trk bok yemek, Rmi hal khul. In Judezmo, komer medra means ‘to suffer in silence, submit to humiliation,’ but the expression medra ke koma means ‘he lied outrageously,’ in keeping with the Balkan idiom.
Words meaning ‘whore’ appear to spread readily. In the Balkans, as elsewhere in eastern Europe, Slavic kurva is found in all the languages (as noted in footnote 287; Loma 2004 provides a plausible Greek source for the Slavic, but Slavic is the source for the rest of Eastern Europe). Romani lubni generally occurs in slang registers, often with a masculine referent, in which case it means ‘faggot’ rather than ‘whore,’ e.g., Trk lubun, lubunya, Grk λούμπα, λουμπίνα, etc., although in Epirot Grk λούβου preserves the meaning ‘whore’ (cf. Theodoridis 1966: 133–134). Romanian bulangiu ‘faggot, bastard/s.o.b.’ is from Romani bul ‘ass’ with the productive Turkish agentive suffix (cf. Alb bythexhi ‘idem’ but with the native Albanian base bythë). Relations with Venice are seen in the occurrence of Italian putana ‘whore’ in Albanian (putanë), Greek (πουτάνα), Aromanian (putanã), and Macedonian (putana). Turkish orospu ‘whore’ and pezevenk ‘pimp’ are treated below.
Mention should be made here of a Balkan term of abuse whose proposed etymologies include all the main branches of the Balkan sprachbund except Indic (Romani), i.e., the ancestor of Albanian, Hellenic, Latin, Slavic, and Turkish. This word, which has a number of meanings, not all of which are pejorative or current, but one of the most common of which is ‘bastard’ in both the literal and various figurative senses of the word is the following: Alb kopil, BCMS kȍpīl (in Kosovo kȍpilj), Blg kópele, Mac kopile, Aro copil, copelă, Rmn cópil (vs. copíl ‘child’), Rmi kopíli, Trk kopil, and also Ukr kópyl.Footnote 308 The most broad-ranging summary of the various etymologies can be found in BER II: s.v. kopele i kopile, but Skok 1972: s.v. kopīl should be consulted for additional details. It is not our place here to judge among the various arguments or even adduce them. Our point here is that this is a Balkanism, regardless of its origin, and, moreover, in many instances a shared abusive term.
Turkish was the source of a significant number of insulting terms in all the Balkan languages that were still well attested in the nineteenth century. A few of these, e.g., BSl budala, Alb budalla, Grk μπουνταλάς ‘fool’ (< Trk budala ‘fool[ish]’) are still widely understood and employed. Like many other Turkisms, however, most of the terms of abuse have become archaic. Thus, for example, Grannes 1969 cites a number of terms from nineteenth-century Bulgarian, many of which are now archaic, quaint, obsolete, or simply unknown, much like English rapscallion, guttersnipe, and floozy – all of which are insulting but none of which are current – or scoundrel, which is negative, but sounds bookish and does not have the power of its colloquial equivalents. In some cases, however, an abusive Turkism retains its power in some Balkan languages but not others. Thus, for example, Trk pezevenk ‘pimp’ is still very rude in Romani, Albanian (pizeveng), and Cypriot Greek, but old-fashioned for most speakers of Balkan Slavic (although some speakers still consider it vulgar), and archaic or forgotten by Balkan Romance speakers and in mainland Greek. Turkish orospu ‘whore’ (BSl orospija) is very rude (vulgar) in Albanian and Macdonian, but generally old-fashioned in Bulgarian, mildly abusive in Romani, and archaic or forgotten in Greek and Balkan Romance. Turkish köpek ‘dog’ was still an Aromanian insult as kjopek (alongside native cãne) in the twentieth century although not recorded in any of the dictionaries (Polenakovikj 2007: s.v.). Romani džukel ‘dog’ is the source of Macedonian slang džukela ‘street dog, bitch, s.o.b.’
4.3.9.4 Ethnophaulisms and Ethnonyms
The term ethnophaulism was coined by Roback 1944 in the context of World War Two to mean ‘ethnic slur’ or ‘ethnic term of pejoration.’ The line between an ethnophaulism and an ethnonym can be as fine as the difference of context and intonation. As in other parts of Europe, Roms and Jews were objects of prejudice in the Balkans. Thus, for example, the main Balkan languages share cigan/țigan/τσιγγάνος/çingene ‘Gypsy’ (Alb&BSl/BRo/Grk/Trk) and çifut/čifut/cifut/τσιφούτης (Alb&Trk/BSl&Jud/BRο/Grk) ‘Jew,’ which have doubled as ethnonyms and ethnophaulisms. Nonetheless, there are certain Balkan specificities. In the case of τσιγγάνος and related terms, the proposed etymology from Bzyantine Greek ἀθίγγανος ‘heretic’ (lit., ‘untouchable’) is problematic on several counts.Footnote 309 On the other hand, there are good reasons to judge Turkish çengene/çingene as of Central Asian heritage, relating, perhaps, to contact between the early Roms and Turkic tribes, cf. Turkic čiɣan ‘an old Turkic appellation for low-caste slaves’ (Matras 2011: 257). This works well as the source of Greek τσιγγάνος, which is then taken up elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire and beyond. Unmediated çingene was also used in the Balkans as a kind of Turkish code-switch in languages other than Greek. Similarly, Turkish çifut (ultimately from the Arabism Yahudî, from Heb Y’hudi ‘Judahite, Jew’) and its derivatives survive in all the Balkan languages (having entered directly from Turkish, as seen in the word-initial č-, whence Grk τσ-), although the meaning ‘Jew’ survives only in Albanian. In Greek, the word means ‘miser,’ and modern Greeks are often no more aware of the connection with the original meaning of ‘Jew’ than are most Americans of the fact that gyp ‘cheat’ began as an ethnic slur on Gypsies (Roms).Footnote 310 Romani džut ‘Jew’ is also ultimately from y’hudi, but via Iranian (cf. džuhuro ‘Judeo-Tat’); i.e., the ethnonym entered Romani before the Roms entered the Byzantine Empire.
Terms meaning ‘Aromanian’ similarly double as ethnophaulisms or ethnic stereotypes. Thus, for example, βλάχος is used in ModGrk to mean ‘shepherd’ but also ‘bumpkin’ (perhaps influenced by the ModGrk βλάκας ‘idiot’ from AGrk βλάξ ‘idem’). The Greek Κουτσόβλαχος, literally ‘lame Vlah,’ is sometimes used for Aromanians, but is generally considered pejorative. Similarly, in BCMS territory, Cincar has been used to refer to Aromanians as opposed to Romanians. The origin is said to be the typically Aromanian change of /č/ to /c/ as exemplified by tsintsi ‘five.’ By extension, and not unlike čifut, the term is also associated with miserliness, as the Aromanians in these regions were often urban merchants. By contrast, the term Vlah referred to Romanian speakers in BCMS territory, but was associated with Aromanian speakers, many of whom were shepherds, in the southern Balkans.Footnote 311 As a result, in modern colloquial Albanian, vlah means ‘shepherd’ and the folk word for Aromanian is çoban, a Turkism that in all the other Balkan languages means ‘shepherd.’ (In the literary language, Vlah [pl. Vleh] is now used to mean ‘Aromanian.’) We can note also that Meglenoromanian speakers are the only Balkan Romance group to adopt the exonym Vlah (Megl vla, pl. vlaši) as an autonym, all other groups retaining a word derived from Romanus (Rumîn, Armîn, Rămăn, etc.). Moreover, in Catholic dialects of BCMS, Vlah came to refer to Serbian speakers (as Orthodox Christians, some of whom may have shifted from Romance to Slavic, and some of whom were traditionally shepherds cf. Sikimić & Ašić 2008). In Judezmo, Blahu meant simply ‘Christian’ (Benor 2009; Heb arel, literally ‘uncircumcised,’ was also used; cf. Yiddish and Judeo-Italian goy from Hebrew ‘nation’ – already attested in this meaning in Talmudic times). At present, the use of Vlah to refer to a Serb is an ethnophaulism (the corresponding terms for Croat/Catholic and Bosniak/Muslim are Šokac and Balija, respectively – the former derived from a region in Croatia, the latter from a common Muslim proper name).Footnote 312 Albanian speakers did not begin using the term shqip and Shqiptar until after the Turkish conquest. It is unknown in southern Italy and Greece, where speakers use the term arbërisht for their language. Like Greek αρβανίτικα and Turkish Arnavut, these forms are all ultimately from Alban- (with Tosk rhotacism, a Greek sound change of l to r – see §5.4.4.9.1 – and Turkish rounding after /v/, as appropriate). Although the form Šiptar was normal in Slavic into the 1950s, like other ethnonyms it could be used pejoratively, and in connection with the rejection of Yugoslav attempts to create a Šiptar identity in Yugoslavia as distinct from Albanac for Albanian of Albania, the term is now exclusively pejorative in Slavic (see Elliott 2017: 145–192). The pejorative Albanian term for Slav is shka (pl. shqe), which derives ultimately from the Slavic autonym Slověne (via the Latin/Greek Sklaven-). It is interesting to note that the Arvanitika word for Greek is shklerisht, i.e., ‘Slavic’ (with Tosk rhotacism). There is debate concerning whether this term was brought to the Peloponnese and then reapplied to the new foreign language or whether in fact at the time the term became fixed in Arvanitika, the neighboring foreign language in the Peloponnese was still Slavic. In Greek, Βούλγαρος (Aromanian vărgăr) ‘Bulgarian’ is also used as a slur meaning ‘stupid,’ and until the nineteenth century, Ἕλλην(ας), now ‘Greek,’ meant ‘pagan’ – a crime punishable by death in Byzantine times – the Middle Greek autonym being Ρωμαίος ‘Roman,’ now Ρωμιός (Turkish Rum), which in the second half of the twentieth century came to have a pejorative sense in Greek meaning ‘Balkan bumpkin Greek,’ but now has a more positive value, not unlike, perhaps, the ambivalence associated with cowboy in the southwest of the United States. In Turkish, the arnavut ‘Albanian’ was stereotyped as stupid, stubborn, and/or violent. Turkish arnavut inadı ‘Albanian stubbornness’ is still a proverbial expression. Any ethnonym can be rendered insulting in Turkish with the addition of pis ‘filthy’ (a Balkan Turkism still in use in Albanian). The Turkish word for ‘infidel,’ gâvur (dialectal kaur) could be used as an insult for Christians, but it was also adopted as an autonym by some Balkan Christians.
In Judezmo, a number of nicknames were used cryptoglossically for outsiders, e.g., los verdes ‘the green ones’ for Muslims referring to the fact that the color is sacred in Islam. By extension, the Hebrew-derived nickname karpasis ‘green vegetables’ is also used. A nickname used in Sarajevo was almesha (lit., ‘plum’), referring to šljivovica ‘plum brandy,’ forbidden by Muslim law but still the most popular alcoholic beverage. An interesting example of fractal recursion (Gal & Irvine 1995; Irvine & Gal 2000; Gal & Irvine 2019) is Judezmo kweshkos ‘fruit pits, stingy’ (from Spanish) to refer to Ashkenazic Jews (cf. çifut, etc. cited above). Judezmo words for Christians come from Hebrew, e.g., arel ‘uncircumcised’ (noted above) or trefán ‘not Kosher’ (see Benor 2009 for additional details).
Finally, we can mention the Romani terms gadžo/gadži/gadže ‘non-Rom (M/F/PL)’ and gomi/gomni ‘non-Rom, peasant.’ These terms can be purely descriptive in a neutral context, like the opposition Yid/Goy ‘Jew/non-Jew’ in Yiddish.Footnote 313 These terms have entered the slang of Bulgarian and Greek in the forms gádže and γκόμεν-α(F)/-ος(M) / gómen-a(F)/-os(M), respectively, meaning ‘[extra-marital] intimate person’ (Igla 2018).Footnote 314
4.3.10 Isosemy
As noted in §4.3, in contact situations, the semantic structure of words and phrases can come to converge, with the semantic range of a word in one language copied onto a corresponding word in another language, thus extending the range of the word in the copying language. We adopt the term “isosemy” for such equivalence relations on the semantic side holding among items in languages in contact (see Footnote footnote 83). For example, Alb burim has both the concrete sense of ‘spring (of water)’ but also the more metaphorical sense of ‘source of information,’ a range of usage which exactly matches Grk πηγή and BSl izvor. In the Greek of Southern Albania, the verb αγαπώ, which means ‘love’ throughout the Greek-speaking world, has come also to mean ‘want,’ thus matching the range of Albanian dua, which has the same two meanings; thus the question τι αγαπάτε when asked by a server in a café means ‘What do you want?’ not ‘What do you love?’). Macedonian here uses saka in both meanings, so that što sakaš can mean ‘What do you want?’ but also ‘What do you love?’; interestingly, Bulgarian distinguishes the two: kakvo iskaš means ‘What do you want?’ whereas kakvo običaš means ‘What do you love?’. The polysemy of saka in Macedonian and thus the convergence with Albanian is therefore an innovation. Similarly, to take another example from the Greek of southern Albania, μηχανή means ‘car,’ as opposed to ‘machine, apparatus; motorcycle’ in the rest of Greek, a meaning shift which can be attributed to influence from the somewhat similar-sounding Albanian makinë ‘car.’Footnote 315 Additionally, in the Greek of Palasë in southern Albania, ψημένος, the mediopassive participle of ψήνω ‘bake, roast’ and thus literally ‘cooked, roasted,’ can mean ‘mature,’ just like the Albanian participle pjekur (cf. pjek ‘I bake,’ see Joseph et al. 2019), and note also the Macedonian participle pečen ‘experienced’ (cf. peč- ‘cook, roast’).
A somewhat extensive case of isosemy is seen in the various uses of the verb ‘open.’ In Albanian, Macedonian, and Turkish ‘open’ (Alb hap, Mac otvori, Trk aç-) is used in reference to turning on lights, lighting fires, lighting ovens, and such, and the meaning with lights is found as well with Greek ανοίγω. Moreover, there is convergence in a metaphorical sense of this verb: Sandfeld 1930: 7, for instance, cites the parallel phrase for what is literally ‘my appetite has opened,’ meaning ‘I have a healthy appetite,’ Blg otvori mi se ištah, Rmn mi s’a deschis pofta, Alb m’ u hap ishtai,Footnote 316 Grk άνοιξε η όρεξή μου, Trk iştahım açıldı. Moreover, metaphorical uses extend to derivatives; in particular, the participial forms, Grk ανοιχτός, Mac otvoren, and Alb hapur, as well as Trk açık are used for indicating shading of colors, so that ‘light blue’ is etymologically “open(ed) blue.” Importantly, this usage is absent from earlier stages of Greek or Slavic, so it is reasonable to assume that contact with Turkish is the basis for this use. Albanian and Macedonian seem here to show the most parallelism in the uses of ‘open.’Footnote 317
It can be hard to determine both the directionality of influence and the paths of diffusion in some instances, although the occurrence of the Turkish Arabism iştah is a smoking gun when it comes to ‘appetite’; still, the fact of convergence is undeniable and it is difficult to dismiss contact as the reason for the convergence. Moreover, these examples can be multiplied across all of the Balkans,Footnote 318 and similar convergences involving phraseology can be seen in §4.3.10.1 below (cf. also Papahagi 1908).
These instances of isosemy involve content words, but there are cases that involve function words and thus border on the grammatical. One that has been mentioned variously in the Balkanistic literature at least since Seliščev 1925 is the convergence of locational and directional meanings for the question word ‘where?’, thus both ‘in which place?’ and ‘to which place?’ (i.e., WHERE versus WHITHER) (see Table 4.20).
Sandfeld 1930: 191–192 mentions this convergence, but he notes that it occurs elsewhere in the Romance languages and can be seen as well in Vulgar Latin; Modern English can be added to the list of languages with such a multiple use of ‘where.’ The Greek usage could be due to Latin influence, but while Sandfeld is willing to say that the usage in Albanian and Balkan Slavic is due to contact, he is uncertain as to whether it is influence from Romance or from Greek.
As this last example shows, it is clear that some of these developments can be found outside of the Balkans. The ‘want’/‘love’ nexus, for instance, is found in Spanish, where quiero, originally ‘want,’ also means ‘love.’ Such is the case also with the meaning shift seen with Greek θέλω ‘want,’ which at some point in the Postclassical period took on the meaning ‘need,’ as in το στιφάδο θέλει αλάτι ‘the stew needs (lit., ‘wants’) salt.’ The same development is found in the use of Macedonian saka and Aromanian va as in Mac saka mnogu odenje do Bitola = Aro Va multu imnari pãnã Bituli (Markovikj 2007: 166) ‘It is necessary to make a lot of trips to Bitola (lit., ‘it.wants much going to Bitola’). This shift has an intriguing parallel in Albanian, where duhet ‘(it) needs’ is formally the mediopassive form of dua ‘want,’ and in Bulgarian where iska se ‘be required’ is the intransitivized form of iskam ‘want.’ Such usages of ‘want’ as ‘need’ occur elsewhere in Balkan Slavic and Balkan Romance. A similar meaning is seen in the English adjective wanting, as in His response was found wanting (i.e., ‘needing something more’). In this last case, one needs also to take note of Italian volere ‘want’ and its derivative volerci ‘need, require’ (with locational element -ci), suggesting that Italian or perhaps even Late Latin influence might have been involved in some of the languages.
These extra-Balkan parallels raise the specter of the shifts in meaning simply being natural changes that any language can undergo without any contact influence. While we acknowledge this possibility, we do not see it as a compelling counter-argument; even if such were the case, the convergence is real and contributes to the sense of sameness that one sees, and which speakers seem to feel, among the languages of the Balkans in on-going contact situations. Moreover, one could argue that it is contact that allows the natural shift to take hold in any particular language.
4.3.10.1 Phraseological Isosemy
The focus of discussion up to this point has largely been on words, though there have been a few parallels brought to light involving more than one word, for instance the Verb-NOT-Verb phrasal parallel (§4.1), the consideration of whole-word reduplication (§4.3.7), and even the various uses of ‘open’ where the combination with particular objects is at issue (§4.3.10). Such cases make it clear that the parallels in the Balkan lexicon are not restricted to single words (as already observed by Papahagi 1908 and Gilliat-Smith 1915/1916). As might be expected, given the extent to which various features of the Balkan languages match up, there are numerous parallels that extend beyond the level of the individual word to phrases and sentences. In fact, Sandfeld 1930: 205 says that the phraseological parallels “are so numerous that one would scarcely exaggerate in saying that it is rather the exception when these languages differ completely from the phraseological point of view.”Footnote 319
These parallels are striking and involve more than just borrowed material; rather, they are essentially calques, showing the same conceptual structure but built with lexical material from each language on its own. And, as noted first in §3.2.1.7 and §3.4.2.2, and reiterated above in §4.3, such phraseological calques have a special value here in that they provide prima facie evidence for bilingualism – there could not be the word-for-word/morpheme-for-morpheme glossing in a calque without bilingualism; since there was no overt classroom-style learning of the other language, the existence of extensive calquing must reflect a situation where natural acquisition was going on, due to interactions on a day-to-day basis (or intermarriage). Moreover, the interactions that these calques document reflect shared experiences that the speakers of the various languages could draw on, so that there is a cultural component to them as well, beyond the purely linguistic.
In some instances the source is known, but in others, as noted elsewhere (§4.3.10), the source and/or the directionality of the diffusion cannot be determined. In such cases, the fact of a convergence alone is sufficient to make the parallels interesting, as they are necessarily based on a matching of surface material in one language with corresponding pieces from another language. Determining the source of “whither” and “whence” convergence is less important than the recognition that linguistic material passed between the speakers involved (cf. Ilievski 1973).
The material that is available on this topic is considerable and rich, with important studies by Papahagi 1908 (supplemented by Çabej 1936), Jašar-Nasteva 1962/63, Ikonomov 1968, and Djamo-Diaconiţa 1968, as well as material to be found in Sandfeld 1930 and the observations in Gilliat-Smith 1915/1916; see also Markov 1977 and Thomai et al. 1999.
In what follows, we can give only a sampling of the types of parallels to be found, and the sorts of categories, i.e., shared experiences, they show. Given the age of some of these sources, and the fact that they documented usage from over a century ago when a greater percentage of the population of the Balkans than now lived in villages, some of these expressions are no longer current or may even be archaic or quaint, at least in some locales. Their value to Balkan linguistics, however, is not diminished by these subsequent developments.
We organize the material into two main groupings, covering on the one hand shared idioms, and on the other shared expressions from various aspects of daily life.
4.3.10.1.1 Idiomatic Expressions
Thomaj et al. 1999 supply c. 5,000 more or less shared idioms in Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Romanian, and the former Serbo-Croatian. Absent from their compilation is a very striking set of expressions in the Balkans that involves verbs of ingesting, most notably the verb for ‘eat,’ which, when occurring together with various objects, forms combinations that refer to some negative event or consequence. These are all either constructs loosely based on, or direct calques of, Turkish models.Footnote 320 For instance, ‘eat’ + ‘a blow’ means ‘get a beating,’ where the model is Turkish kötek ‘blow’ + yemek ‘to eat.’ Here are some examples from various languages (4.16):
(4.16)
Trk: yağmur yemek ‘get soaked’ (lit., ‘rain eat’) bok yemek ‘say something stupid’ (lit., ‘shit eat’) kötek yemek ‘get a beating’ (lit., ‘a.blow eat’) Mac: jade kjotek ‘get smacked’ (lit., ‘eat smack/blow’) jade stap ‘get a beating’ (lit., ‘eat stick’) jade dožd ‘get soaked’ (lit., ‘eat rain’) jade gomno ‘say something stupid’ (lit., ‘eat excrement’) Grk: τρώγω ξύλο ‘get a beating’ (lit., ‘eat wood’) φάγαμε γκολ ‘we had a goal scored against us’ (lit., ‘eat.PST.1pl goal’) Alb: ha baltë ‘suffer badly’ (lit., ‘eat mud’) ha dru ‘get a heavy beating’ (lit., ‘eat wood’) ha dajak ‘get a heavy beating’ (lit., ‘eat a club/cudgel’) ha mut (lit., ‘eat shit’) ‘talk nonsense’ (mos ha mut ‘shut up’, lit., ‘don’t eat shit’; cf. an Albanian internet meme “KEEP CALM AND MOS HA MUT”; for the original “KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON”).
A shift from a basic meaning of ‘eat’ to ‘take in’ (“ingest” in the broadest sense) seems to be involved here, and while it is a natural enough shift to allow for independent origin in each language, the convergence of particular types of direct objects accompanying this verb and the negative meaning associated with the combination, so that EAT has become SUFFER, marks these as likely calques on the model provided by the Turkish construction. Some of the languages show extensions of this usage that are not strictly speaking calques or based on Turkish; Greek, for instance, has τις φάγαμε από τους Ιταλούς ‘we lost to (suffered a loss by) the Italians’ (lit., ‘them.WEAK.ACC.F.PL eat.PST.1PL from/by the.M.PL.ACC Italians.ACC’), with an unspecified (but feminine plural) weak object pronoun, thus “we ate those-things (e.g., losses) at-the-hands-of the Italians.”
Another characteristic idiomatic use of a verb of ingesting is seen with the verb for DRINK, which is (or used to be) used as well with ‘cigarette’ or ‘tobacco’ (etc.) as the object, giving the meaning ‘smoke,’ e.g., Alb pi cigarë, Grk πίνω τσιγάρο, Aro beau tsigară, Mac pie cigari [PL], Rmi piav tsigaro/tutuno (‘tobacco’), all ultimately based on Trk sigara/tütün içmek, although the usage, as just indicated, is now considered old-fashioned or obsolete in some of the languages.Footnote 321 Despite its obsolescence for ‘smoke’ in some Balkan languages, DRINK still figures in a usage with ‘pill’ as the object: Grk πίνω χάπι, BSl pie [h]apče, Alb pi hap, Rmn bea hap.Footnote 322 In Romani, ha ‘eat’ also serves as the basis for ‘understand,’ normally as a derived form, e.g., haljovel.
Yet another Turkish-based expression is the use of the verb ‘know’ with a language as a complement, either as an object or in an adverbial form, as the unmarked colloquial way of saying ‘to (be able to) speak a language’ (4.17):Footnote 323
(4.17)
Alb: e di shqip? ‘Do you know (= speak) Albanian?’ (lit., ‘it know.2SG Albanian’) Grk: ξέρεις ελληνικά? ‘Do you know (= speak) Greek?’ Rmi: džane[s] romane[s] ‘Do you know (= speak) Romani?’ Mac: znaeš po-našinski ‘Do you know (= speak) our (language)?’ Trk: türkçe biliyor musun ‘Do you know (= speak) Turkish?’ (= “the.Turkish.way(ADV) know (bil-) Q-you”)
Although these examples are verb-centered, calques need not be so. Sandfeld 1930: 120 notes the extraneous use of ‘all’ accompanying the preposition ‘with’ in Macedonian, Balkan Romance, and Albanian, a pattern he attributes to calquing on Albanian as the model, (4.18):
(4.18)
Alb me gjithë priftiu ‘with the priest’ (lit., ‘with all the.priest’) Mac sose baltija ‘with the axe’ (lit., ‘with.all the-axe’) Aro cu tut căpitanlu ‘with the captain’ (lit., ‘with all the.captain’) Rmn cu cal cu tot ‘with the horse’ (lit., ‘with horse with all’)
These widely distributed expressions have readily determinable sources. Less certain, but no less interesting and important are expressions that are broadly represented but without an obvious path of diffusion, as well as other more localized idiomatic convergences. A few choice examples include the following, from Sandfeld 1930 and Papahagi 1908 (unfortunately neither of these sources included Romani or Judezmo), (4.19–4.28):
(4.19)
‘hold your tongue’ (lit., ‘gather your tongue/mouth’)Footnote 324 Alb mbledh gojën (‘mouth’) Aro adună-ţi gura (‘mouth’) Grk μάζεψε τη γλώσσα σου (‘tongue’) (Sandfeld, 112)
(4.20)
‘run for your life!’ (lit., ‘flee that we flee!’) Alb ikëni të ikëmi Aro fudziţǐ s-fudzim Blg běgajte da běgame (pre-1944 orthography) Grk φεύγετε να φεύγουμε (Papahagi, 129)
(4.21)
‘once and for all’ (lit., ‘one and good’ (F)) Alb një edhe mirë Aro ună ş-bună Rmn una şi bună Grk μια και καλή (Papahagi, 134)
(4.22)
‘a complete ass’ (lit., ‘a donkey and a half’) Alb gomar e gjysmë Blg magare i polovina Rmn un măgar şi jumătate Grk ένας γάιδαρος και μισός (Papahagi, 135)
(4.23)
‘we are very good friends; we’ve been through thick and thin together’ (lit., ‘we have eaten bread and salt together’)Footnote 325 Alb bukë e kripë hëngrëm bashkë Aro sare ş-pîne mîcăm deadun Rmn a mînca pîne şi sare împreună Grk ψωμί και αλάτι φάγαμε μαζί (Papahagi, 151)
(4.24)
‘I prophesize’ (lit., ‘I throw at the stars’) Alb e heth ndë ūj [sic] Aro aruc tu steale Rmn arunc în stele Grk ρίχνω στα άστρα (Papahagi, 157)
(4.25)
‘daily’ (lit., ‘day with [the] day’) Alb ditë me ditë Aro dzuă cu dzuă Rmn zi cu zi Grk μέρα με τη μέρα (Papahagi, 159)
(4.26)
‘undoubtedly; pointlessly’ (lit., ‘without word”) Alb pa fjalë Aro fără zbor Rmn fără vorbă Grk χωρίς λόγο (Papahagi, 167) Mac bez zbor
(4.27)
‘without a doubt’ (lit., ‘without other’)Footnote 326 Alb pa tjetër BSl bez drugo Rmn fără de alta Grk χωρίς άλλο (Sandfeld, 210)
(4.28)
‘shoot a rifle’ (lit., ‘throw a rifle’) Alb shtij dufeki Aro arunc tufek’a BSl hvărljam/frlam puška (Blg/Mac) Grk ρίχνω τουφέκι Trk tüfenk atmak (Sandfeld, 93)
Among the calques that are limited in representation across the languages are the following, showing different pairings of languages involved in the convergence (4.29):Footnote 327
a.
Grk το ξέρω απ’ έξω ‘I know it by heart’ (lit., ‘it.N.ACC.SG know.PRS.1SG from outside’) Rmi džanav les avral ‘I know it by heart’ (lit., ‘I.know it from outside’) (Agía Varvára, cf. Messing 1988: 61) b.
Grk παίρνω κάποιον τηλέφωνο ‘call someone on the phone’ (lit., ‘take.PRS.1SG someone.ACC.SG telephone.ACC.SG’) Alb marr dikë në telefon ‘call someone on the phone’ (lit., ‘I.take someone.ACC on phone’) c.
BRo ună stămînă dao ‘one or two weeks’ (= Aro; lit., ‘one week two’) BSl eden den dva ‘one or two days’ (= Mac; lit., ‘one day two’)
Such expressions serve as important reminders that even those with wide representation surely involved language-by-language (really, speaker-to-speaker) diffusion and presumably at some point were restricted to perhaps as few as two languages.
While the calques discussed so far have involved expressions, there are also calques at the level of word-internal structure.Footnote 328 Thus, the Turkish compound alış-veriş ‘commerce,’ lit., ‘taking-giving,’ has been borrowed as such into some of the languages,Footnote 329 e.g., Alb allishverish ‘business deal, commerce; dirty business, fraud,’ Grk αλισβερίσι ‘commercial dealings.’ However it is also calqued into a compound with appropriate recipient language pieces: Alb dhënë-marrë (cf. dhV-, suppletive root of ‘give,’ marr-, root of ‘take’), Grk δοσο-ληψία (cf. δο- ‘give,’ ληπ- from root λαβ- ‘take’), Blg zemane-davane (cf. zem- ‘take,’ dav- ‘give’), and Rmn dat-şi-luat (lit., ‘giving-and-taking,’ with da- ‘give’ and lua- ‘take’). Mac na ti daj mi (lit., ‘here you.dat give.IMPV me.DAT’) ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,’ is of a similar type.
These calques are all interesting in their own right but their importance for understanding the Balkan contact situation cannot be overestimated. Still, Friedman 1986c sounds an important note of caution, one that certainly holds here, as with any putative contact phenomenon:
Jašar-Nasteva 1962/63 in her excellent work on Turkish calques in Macedonian gives 350 examples, but a number of these are also identical with English usage, e.g., the use of ‘fall’ to mean ‘come/occur’ as in Bajram se paǵa v nedela = Bayram pazara düşer = ‘Bayram falls on a Sunday’ (p.130), svekrvin jazik = kaynana dili = ‘mother-in-law’s tongue (a type of plant with long spiny leaves)’ (p.122). Given that the English is not likely to be a Balkan calque, the Macedonian expressions cannot be definitely attributed to Turkish without some sort of documentary evidence.
4.3.10.1.2 Shared Experiences – Shared Expressions
Besides the idiomatic expressions just described that often reveal the arbitrariness of the connection between form and meaning in language, there are also expressions that while arbitrary in their own way, nonetheless are rooted in practices and actions of speakers and the societies and cultures they live in and so draw some motivation from them. Such shared experiences allow speakers to reflect in their language ways in which they interact with their culture and with their social environment, that is with other people as they go about their daily lives. We thus focus here on shared expressions that are tied in some way to social and cultural experiences that are common across the Balkans, specifically those rooted in folk culture as well as those with a more mundane, but no less significant, basis.
4.3.10.1.2.1 Shared Expressions Rooted in Folk Culture
Storytelling is an important part of traditional culture, and the opening of tales is often characterized by a traditional expression peculiar to the genre. The English once upon a time is a clear example of such an opening formula. There is a traditional opening of folktales common to much of a region from the southeastern quarter of Europe across Asia as far as the northwest of the Indian subcontinent: There was [and] there wasn’t.Footnote 330 The formula is well represented throughout Turkic, in Iranian and in Arabic, but also in Czech and Hungarian.Footnote 331 In the Caucasus, the opening is found in Armenian, Georgian, and Daghestanian but not in Nakh or Northwest Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adyghe). Although the opening occurs in Hindi, it is not attested in Sanskrit, so the source seems to be Middle Eastern or Turkic. In the Balkans, the formula is only partially present. Table 4.21 gives a representative selection of typical folktale openings from the Balkans and from areas where there was-there wasn’t openings are typical.
Table 4.20 WHERE/WHITHER in the Balkans
| Grk | πού |
| Alb | ku |
| Blg | kăde/gde |
| Mac | kade; kaj (COLL) |
| Rmn | unde |
| Aro | iu |
| Megl | iu |
| Rmi | kaj |
As can be seen from Table 4.21, Turkish and Aromanian pattern together. Balkan Slavic has the pattern attested, but the formula in parentheses is more common. Romanian has a positive/negative juxtaposition, but its version translates as ‘there was and as never [before].’ Albanian juxtaposes two finite verbs forms, but the second is not negated. Greek also has a double juxtaposition, but without a verb. The Romani data are especially varied, as is appropriate for its dialectal distribution. The was-wasn’t type is actually best attested in Vlax dialects, especially North Vlax. A double was with a complementizer (similar to the Albanian) or conjunction as connector is well attested for both Vlax and Balkan dialects, although many (perhaps most) tales in Balkan Romani begin with the third-person imperfect of ‘be’ followed by jekh ‘one/indefinite article’ plus a substantive (thagar ‘king,’ Rom ‘Rom,’ Xoraxaj ‘Turk,’ phuro ‘old man,’ etc.). This is similar to the Meglenoromanian opening ‘one time there was.’Footnote 333 As it turns out, therefore, the introductory formulae for folktales in the Balkans illustrate well what Hamp 1989a identified as differential bindings. The was-wasn’t type – clearly of Ottoman origin in the Balkan context – is present, but other developments are some form of reduplication (as in Albanian, Greek, and Romani) or a different sort of positive plus negative (as in Romanian). At the same time, the Czech and Hungarian formulae suggest differential paths of spread and retention for this particular formula.
Table 4.21 ‘Once upon a time’ in the Balkan languages and some relevant others
| bir | varmış | bir | yokmuş | [Turkish] | ||||
| one | exist.NCNFV | one | not.exist.NCNFV | |||||
| bilo | ne | bilo | (si | imalo | edno | vreme) | [Macedonian & Bulgarian] | |
| was.N | not | was.N | REFL.DAT | there_was.N | one | time | ||
| tsi | shi | ira | ma | nu | shi | ira | [Aromanian] | |
| what | and | be.IMPF.3SG | but | NEG | and | be.IMPF.3SG | ||
| ină | ṷară | fost- aṷ | [Meglenoromanian] | |||||
| one | time | be.PTCP-have.3SG | ||||||
| a | fost | odată, | ca | niciodată | [Romanian] | |||
| have.PRS.3SG | be.PTCP | once | as | never | ||||
| ishte | se | na | ç’ishte | [Albanian] | ||||
| be.IMPF.3SG | that | us.DAT.it.ACC what-be.IMPF.3SG | ||||||
| μια | φορά | και | έναν | καιρό | [Greek] | |||
| one | time | and | one | time-period | ||||
| sas-pe | kaj | nas-pe | [Romani]Footnote 332 | |||||
| was-REFL | that | not.was-REFL | ||||||
| ulo | kaj | ulo | ||||||
| sine | kaj | sine | ||||||
| was | that | was | ||||||
| sas | haj | sas | ||||||
| was | and | was | ||||||
| una | bes | abie | [Judezmo] | |||||
| one | time | was [lit., ‘had’] | ||||||
| era | bwen | |||||||
| was | well | |||||||
| bir | var | idi | bir | yox | idi | [Azeri] | ||
| one | exist | was.CNFV | one | not.exist | was.CNFV | |||
| bir | bar | eken | bir | žok | eken | [Kazakh & Kirghiz] | ||
| one | exist | was.NCNFV | one | not.exist | was.NCNFV | |||
| bir | bor | ekan | bir | yoq | ekan | [Uzbek] | ||
| one | exist | was.NCNFV | one | not.exist | was.NCNFV | |||
| iq’o | da | ara | iq’o | [Georgian] | ||||
| be.AOR.3SG | and | not | be.AOR.3SG | |||||
| iwk’un | ur, | q:aiwk’un | ur | [Lak] | ||||
| be.PaGe | is | NEG.be.PaGe | is | |||||
| zow-n, | zow-n-ānu | [Tsez] | ||||||
| be-UW | be-UW-neg | |||||||
| bak | bak-e | |||||||
| be.PRF.3SG | be.PRF-NEG | [Udi] | ||||||
| yeki/yake | bud | yeki/yake | nabud | [Persian & Tajik] | ||||
| once.it | was.AOR | once.it | not.was | |||||
| kaan | ya | ma | kaan | [Arabic] | ||||
| was.3SG | or | NEG | was.3SG | |||||
| vahām | gayā | thā | aura | vahām | nahīm | thā | [Hindi] | |
| there | gone | was | and | there | not | was | ||
| linum | e | chi | linum | [Armenian] | ||||
| be.PRS.PTCP | is | NEG | be.PRS.PTCP | |||||
| egyszer | volt, | hol | nem | olt | [Hungarian] | |||
| once | be.IMPF.3SG | where | not | be.IMPF.3SG | ||||
| bylo | nebylo | [Czech] | ||||||
| there.was.N | there.wasn’t.N | |||||||
There are also many shared conceptual structures in proverbial expressions that can be found across Balkan languages, as collected by Djamo-Diaconiţa 1968 and Ikonomov 1968, where one finds parallel wording and phrasing, parallel semantics, and parallel use in parallel situations. Not all are restricted just to the Balkans, but they have value nonetheless in that they help to show the Balkans as a cultural “zone”; Djamo-Diaconiţa writes quite movingly about the “wisdom and the bitter truths that [these proverbs] express as well as their stylistic beauty [which] assure them a large circulation among many peoples in diverse languages” and observes that “also, in the past, over a long period, proverbs were considered guides in daily life, containing legal and moral recommendations.” As such, they represent shared cultural experiences and shared semantics, encapsulated in pithy sayings, to which speakers could refer, and respond. There is some looseness in the expressions, in that they are not always point for point identical, but they share all the key elements. In what follows, a few select proverbs from Djamo-Diaconiţa’s collection are presented; some may be dialectal or archaic in form, but that is not unexpected, given the material.
For instance, for expressing contempt for the lazy and for those who shirk duties, one can say (more or less) “Not all flies make honey” (4.30):
(4.30)
Alb s’bëjnë mjaltë gjithë mizat (= ‘not make honey all flies.def’) Aro tute muştile nu fac n’are (= ‘all flies.def not make honey’) Blg Vsjaka muha med ne bere (= ‘every fly honey not gathers’) Grk δεν κάνουνε όλες οι μύγες μέλι (= ‘not make all the flies honey’) Rmn nu fac toate muştele miere (= ‘not make all flies.def honey’)
and for the need to economize and plan for “rainy days,” one can say (more or less) “(Save) white money for a black day” (4.31):Footnote 334
(4.31)
Alb ruaj paran e bardhë për ditë të zezë (= ‘preserve money.def.acc white for day.pl pc black.pl’) Aro bani albi pentru zile negre (= ‘money white for days black’) Blg beli pari za černi dni (= ‘white money for black days’) Rmn stringe bani albi pentru zile negre (= ‘gather money white for days black’) Grk τ’άσπρα για τες μαύρες μέρες (= ‘the white [coins] for the black days’)Footnote 335 Mac beli pari za crni denovi (= ‘white money for black days’) Trk ak akça kara gün içindir (= ‘white silver.coin black day for.is’) Rmi pharne pares miźinav kales dives resav (= ‘white money I.conceal, (for a) black day I.grasp’) [Džambaz])
To convey the idea that one has to put in effort to obtain some desired object (or that the one who complains profits from it), a proverb roughly comparable to the English The squeaky wheel gets the grease is said, with the following content, more or less, “If a baby does not cry, it will not suck (i.e., nurse)” (4.32):Footnote 336
(4.32)
Alb pa mos qarë një fëmijë, nuk i ep e ëma gjijë (= ‘without not crying a child not to.it gives mother breast’) Aro ficiorlu cari s-nu plîngă nu suge (= ‘child.def if dms-neg cries not sucks’) Blg deteto dogde ne zaplače majka mu ne mu dava da bozae (= ‘child.DEF until NEG cries mother its neg it.dat gives dms it.sucks’) Rmn copilul pînă nu plînge nu suge (= ‘child.def until not cries not sucks’) Grk αν δεν κλαίει το παιδί βυζί δεν τρώει (= ‘if not cries the child breast not eats’) Mac duri ne zaplačit deteto majka mu ne mu daat da cicat [= Ohrid] (= ‘even not cries child.DEF mother its not it.dat gives dms nurses’) Trk ağlamıyan çocuğa meme vermezler (= ‘cry.neg.prog child.dat breast give.neg.pl’)
And, as a call to vigilance even when there seems to be nothing ominous on the horizon, much like the English Still waters run deep, one says, more or less, ‘Water sleeps but an enemy does not’ (4.33):
(4.33)
Alb lumi flen armiku nuk flen/Lumi fle, hasmi s’fle [Ikonomov 1968: 45] (= ‘river.DEF sleeps enemy.DEF not sleeps’) Aro apa doarmi duşmanul nu doarmi (= ‘water.DEF sleeps enemy.DEF not sleeps’) Blg voda spi, a neprijateljat ne spi (= ‘water sleeps and/but enemy.DEF not sleeps’) Grk το νερό κοιμάται ο εχθρός όμως όχι (= ‘the water sleeps the enemy however not’) Mac vodata spijat, a dušmanot nikogaš (né spiet) [= Ohrid] (= ‘water.DEF sleeps and/but enemy.DEF never (not sleeps)’) Trk su uyur duşman uyumaz (= ‘water sleeps enemy sleeps.neg’)
For the bitter truth that love is blind, Bulgarian and Turkish share a proverb (Ikonomov 1968: 139) (4.34):
(4.34)
Blg ljubovta e kato muha: i na med kačva, i na govno kačva Trk sevda sinek gibidir, bala da konar, boka da konar ‘Love is like a fly, it lands on honey, and it lands on shit.’
Djamo-Diaconiţa’s and Ikonomov’s rich collections have many more such examples, some of which are found in just a subset of the languages, and some of which are found outside of the Balkans. Djamo-Diaconiţa’s interest is not just in documenting but also determining, to the extent possible, what the source language/culture is. Even in the absence of a clear origin, the point of the convergences in this domain is clear: proverbial expressions provide a particularly transparent case of shared cultural and linguistic calquing leading to shared phraseology.
4.3.10.1.2.2 Shared Everyday Expressions
Speakers of different languages who nonetheless know, to some extent, the other languages in the linguistic marketplace have a degree of common linguistic ground with other speakers. The common experience of daily life together with common languages brings the opportunity for convergence in the phrases that are part of the “glue” of daily interactions, and this is seen in the Balkans. In a sense, it is the phrasal equivalent of the shared discourse items discussed in §4.3.4, though here with calquing, essentially involving common conceptual structures, instead of replication of material. We survey here a variety of these expressions, including a number of greetings. The topic of greetings in an intense and sustained language contact situation is treated at the level of lexical borrowing in §4.3.4.2.2 with reference to instances of borrowed terms used in greetings. In this section, shared greeting structures are documented, reflecting calques across the languages.Footnote 337
As §4.3.4.3.2 makes clear, attention-getting words have been borrowed in the Balkans, but interestingly there is one such word that has been both calqued and copied: Turkish uses buyurun, the imperative (plural) of the verb buyurmak ‘to command,’ as a way of saying to an interlocutor, especially a potential patron in a store or restaurant or the like, “you have my attention.” The equivalent expression in Greek is ορίστε, an imperative (plural) of the verb ορίζω, which in Medieval Greek meant, among other things, ‘command,’ though the Ancient Greek verb and the Modern Greek verb mean ‘determine, fix, assign, master,’Footnote 338 and the same is true of Albanian, where urdhëroj ‘command’ in the imperative urdhëro (singular)/urdhëroni (plural) is used, as Newmark 1998: s.v. puts it, to signal “respectful attention to another person’s needs or requests.” Macedonian uses poveli/povelete (SG/Pl), and Bulgarian uses zapovjadaj/zapovjadajte (SG/Pl). Most of the Balkan languages also borrow the Turkish, sometimes with slight changes in form, e.g., BSl bujrum (and bujrumte, with the BSl 2PL marker), Alb bujrëm, Aro buiurun, Jud buyrun.Footnote 339
Also in the realm of patronage and custom, Greek and Albanian show parallel structures for asking ‘How much is it/how much does it cost?’. Literally, the expression is ‘how.much does.it.make’: Greek πόσο κάνει and Albanian sa bën.
Moving more in the direction of conversational exchanges, for ‘what is your name?’, as Papahagi 1908: 151 gives it, one finds ‘how do they say you?’, with the pieces ordered just so (‘how you.ACC say.3PL’), although other parallel collocations such as ‘how do you call yourself / how are you called’ (in brackets below) also occur:
(4.35)
Alb qysh të thonë? [si qyhesh] Aro cumu-ţĭ dzic? Blg kak te kazvat? [kak se kazvaš] Mac kako te vikaat [kako se vikaš] Rmn cum îţĭ zice? Grk πώς σε λένε? [πώς λέγεσαι]
Here Romani uses sar si to anav, lit., ‘how is your name.’ And, Sandfeld 1930: 208–209 points out that the answer to a superfluous question for which there is an affirmative response, thus something like ‘of course’ or ‘naturally,’ is the same across the Balkans, lit., ‘how not?’:
(4.36)
Mac kako [da] ne? Rmn cum nu? Grk πώς όχι? Meg cum nu? Aro cum [di] nu? Alb si jo? Rmi sar na?
The Greek is often shortened to simply πως?! (lit., ‘how?!’). Sandfeld takes this to be a pattern that goes back to Ancient Greek and so presumes that Greek is the model here.
Perhaps the most striking conversational parallels come in the area of greetings. For ‘welcome!’, one finds ‘well (that) (have.)you.come’:Footnote 340
(4.37)
Alb mirë se erdhët Blg dobre došli Grk καλώς ήρθατε Mac dobrodojdovte Trk hoş geldiniz Rmi mišto aljan Rmn bine aț vănit Aro ghini vinitu Jud [seas el] byenvenido
Here it is worth noting that Bulgarian represents the original Slavic use of the resultative, while Macedonian uses the aorist. Similarly, Romanian uses a perfect while Aromanian uses an aorist. These differences between the two respective closely related languages reflect areal patterns: Romanian with Bulgarian, on the one hand, and Macedonian and Aromanian with Greek and Albanian, on the other. Moreover, Turkish, like Macedonian, uses the confirmative DI-past (see §6.2.5), which, along with Greek and/or Albanian, could have influenced the Macedonian and Aromanian usages.Footnote 341
Importantly too, and characteristically Balkan (unlike ‘welcome’ routines in other European languages), there is an obligatory response on the part of the arriving person, lit., ‘Well (that) I/we.have.found [you]’:Footnote 342
(4.38)
Alb mirë se ju gjeta Blg dobre nameril Grk καλώς σας βρήκα Mac dobro [ve] najdov Trk hoş buldum Rmi mišto arakhljum Rmn bine am găsit Aro ghini vi aflai Jud [seas el] byen fayado/tropado
Moving on from welcoming, we find parallels in asking how someone is, where there is one locution that is particularly characteristic of the Balkans:Footnote 343
(4.39)
Alb Çka po bën? Mirë. Aro Tsi fats? Gine. Blg Kakvo praviš? Harno. Grk Τι κάνεις? Καλά. Mac Što praviš? Arno. Rmn Ce mai faci? (Fac) bine. (mai ‘more; still’) Rmi So kere? Šukar. WRT N’aparsın? İyi. (= “ne ‘what’ + yap- ‘do’ + ar ‘present tense’ -sın ‘2SG’)
This pattern is distinctly informal and colloquial. Today in the Balkans it is taken as emblematic of Balkan sociality: lit., ‘what are.you.doing?’ for ‘how are you?’, for which an adverbial response (‘well’) is also considered typical.
Expressions of thanks are also subject to numerous contact phenomena as well as changes over time. Thus, for example, the normal Balkan Romani expression is ov sasto (lit., ‘be healthy’ [male addressee]; cf. the use of Aromanian sănătate ‘health’). This corresponds closely to Macedonian da si (mi) živ [i zdrav] ‘may you (SG) be alive(M) (me.ETH.DAT) [and healthy],’ which is now a bit old fashioned. The Greek να είσαι υγιής ‘may you be healthy’ is not current in ModGrk, but in a reduced form, a presumed ναείς, the result of a clipping of είσαι ‘are’ together with the mood marker να, appears to be the source of another Romani expression nais tuke ‘thanks to.you,’Footnote 344 and note also the colloquial Albanian Rrofsh ‘may you be preserved.’ Greek is the direct source of Aromanian haristo (Grk ευχαριστώ) as well as Macedonian spolajti, mentioned in §4.3.4.3.1, which is from Grk σ’πολλά έτη ʻto many yearsʻ (older σπολλάτη, which was used as an expression of thanks in Greek). The current expression for ‘many years’ in ModGrk is χρόνια πολλά, which, however, as noted above, has different uses, mostly congratulatory in nature.Footnote 345 Macedonian spolaj ti today is considered rural or old- fashioned except in Aegean Macedonian, where it is now emblematic vis-à-vis Standard Macedonian. Moreover, as noted in §4.3.4.3.1, spolaj is reinterpreted as a kind of imperative, so that spolajvi can be used as a 2PL. Relevant here also is Romanian a mulțumi ‘to thank,’ with 1SG mulțumesc ‘(I) thank you,’ a verb derived ultimately from Latin multus ‘many’ via use in the birthday wish and congratulatory expression la mulț ani, lit., ‘to many years’ (Cioranescu 1958–1966: 545).Footnote 346 The French merci, spelled with medial -s-, e.g., Trk mersi, is a common colloquial ‘thank you’ in the eastern Balkans, i.e., Bulgarian, Greek, Romanian, and Turkish. Albanian and BCMS share the etymological notion of ‘praise’ or ‘honor’ in their current standard, viz. Alb falemnderit (1SG speaker, versus faleminderit for 1PL (or “royal we”) speaker(s)) from fal ‘offer, grant’ + nder ‘honor,’ and BCMS hvala from hval- ‘praise.’ The BCMS has been borrowed into Macedonian as fala. The semantics are similar to Bulgarian blagodarja from the adverb blago ‘well, kindly, etc.’ + darja ‘I grant, give,’ which is also the source of Macedonian blagodaram. Modern Greek ευχαριστώ is from an Ancient Greek deadjectival verb based on εὐχάριστος ‘thankful,’ a participial adjective from εὐχαρίζω ‘render thanks’ (εὐ- ‘well’ + χαρίζω ‘do a favor; please’); like Albanian, a 1pl form, Grk ευχαριστούμε, BSl blagodarime, is possible. It is probably the case that the Bulgarian/Macedonian formula is a Church Slavonicism that has its origins in a calque on the Greek.
Expressions of leave-taking are often ritualized with different versions for the person departing and the person staying, but here we simply note that wishing someone a good journey – for which English often uses the French bon voyage (although nowadays safe travels, travel safely, be safe, etc. have become increasingly common) – in the Balkans generally makes reference to a good road (BSl, BRo, Rmi), or good roads (Alb, Grk, Trk):Footnote 347
(4.40)
Alb rruga e mbarë Aro calea mbar/cale-ambar Blg dobar păt Grk καλό δρόμο Mac dobar pat Rmn drum bun (Old Rmn bună cale[a], Papahagi 1974: s.v.) Rmi šukar drom Trk iyi yolculuklarFootnote 348 Jud kaminos bwenos
We can also note here a leave-taking parallel between Albanian mirë u pafshim, Aromanian s’nã videm cu ghine, and Macedonian da se vidime za arno all meaning ‘may we see one another well/with good/for [a] good [thing/cause].’ The Albanian is a standard leave-taking, whereas the Macedonian is used for a somewhat longer absence.
There is one final phrase worth mentioning here, namely that used in Greek in the past for the game of “peek-a-boo” between older people and babies and children.Footnote 349 It is μπούλι μπούλι μπούλι μπούλι τζα!, with the μπούλι part used while the face is hidden and the τζα at the end when the face is revealed. This phrase is now obsolete but is still remembered by some contemporary speakers consulted. The pieces of the phrase have no meaning in Greek, except that τζα, as discussed in §4.3.4.3.2, is an attention-getting element that can be used for an unexpected appearance by someone, cf. Mac and Aro dza! in peek-a-boo. Regarding origin, τζα in Greek seems to be a borrowing from Albanian (see §4.3.4.3.2), so it is natural to look to Albanian for the rest of this phrase; as argued in Joseph 2010a, the Albanian verb mbyll ‘close, close together’ provides a suitable source: μπούλι would be the rendering of the 3SG past form (contemporary standard Albanian mbylli), so that the phrase would be ‘It-closed, it-closed, it-closed, it-closed … Here-it-is!’.Footnote 350 The key aspect of this account is that it depends on playful and friendly interactions between Albanian-speaking adults (or older children) and Greek babies in order for Greek speakers to pick up such a phrase. The etymological assessment of this phrase therefore gives some substance to the claims made here about the nature of the sociolinguistic setting for Greek and Albanian interactions, and by extension for other Balkan village interactions in the Ottoman period.
There are of course many other phrasal parallels, beyond those mentioned here, including a large number that originated in Turkish and spread from there into other languages in the Balkans. However, these examples suffice to show the pattern of convergence on the form and internal structure of these isosemous phrases.Footnote 351
4.3.10.2 Prepositional CalquesFootnote 352
A rather extensive domain for isosemy is found in the various uses that prepositions have across the Balkans. Sandfeld 1930: 191, has observed, for instance, that “on sait que roum. de et alb. për sont synonymes dans beaucoup de cas” (‘it is known that Rmn de and Alb për are synonymous in many cases’). Accordingly, we survey here some of the more salient convergences involving prepositional semantics and usage, with some necessary attention to differences as well.Footnote 353Bortone 2010: 241–246 mentions several such cases. For example, in Albanian, Bulgarian, and Modern Greek, the preposition with the Grundbedeutung ‘from,’ respectively nga, ot, and από, is used with verbs of knowing in the sense of ‘know about,’ as in (4.41), with ‘She understands/knows about cars’ given in these three languages:
a.
ajo merr vesh nga makinat (Alb) she.nom take.3SG ear from car.PL b.
tja razbira ot koli (Blg) she.nom understand.3SG from car.PL c.
αυτή ξέρει από αυτοκίνητα (Grk) she.nom know[PRS].3SG from car.PL.ACC
In this case, ‘from’ used in this way appears to be an innovation; in earlier stages of Greek, for instance, this sense of ‘(know) about’ was expressed by a different preposition, περί (with accusative case). The usage is found in other Balkan languages as well.
The Grundbedeutung ‘from’ figures in two other innovative uses. In the idiom ‘pass by (a place),’ Albanian and Greek use nga and από, respectively, matching the Turkish use of the ablative case, the prototypical ‘from’ case; cf. (4.42abc), with ‘s/he passed by the house’ in these three languages. Bulgarian has uses of iz, etymologically ‘from,’ meaning ‘go along, around, etc.’ that are also said to be calqued on the Turkish ablative, see (4.42de), meaning ‘he passes along the street/up and down the street’:Footnote 354
a.
Kaloi nga shtëpia (Alb) passed.3sg from house.DEF b.
πέρασε από το σπίτι (Grk) passed.3SG from the house c.
ev-den geç-ti (Trk) house-ABL pass-pst.3SG d.
minava iz ulicata (Blg) passes.3SG from street.def e.
sokak-tan geçer (Trk) street-ABL passes.3SG
And, in a more grammatical use, the form with the meaning ‘from,’ either via a preposition or the ablative case, is used for ‘than’ with comparatives, as with ‘sweeter than honey’ in (4.43), in most of the Balkan languages (with a hyphen added to the Turkish and Romani to signal the relevant suffix), though not in Albanian, as shown in (4.44):
a.
po-sladok ot med (Blg) cmpv-sweet from honey b.
posladok od med (Mac) cmpv.sweet from honey c.
γλυκύτερο από το μέλι (Grk) sweet.cmpv from the honey d.
mai dulce decât mierea (Rmn) more sweet from.how.much honey.the e.
avgin-dar pogudlo / daa gudlo (Rmi)Footnote 355 honey-ABL cmpv.sweet / more sweet f.
bal-dan (daha) tatlı (Trk) honey-ABL more sweet
(4.44)
më e ëmbel se / *nga mjalti (Alb) more PC sweet than / from honey.def ‘sweeter than honey’
In this case, to judge from the evidence of Classical Greek and Old Church Slavonic, where the genitive case on its own was used with comparatives, the use of the preposition for ‘from’ in (4.43) is an innovation, and thus plausibly contact-induced.
The preposition with the Grundbedeutung ‘with’ also shows some isosemy across some of the Balkan languages. The signaling of means of conveyance uses ‘with’ all over the Balkans, as shown in (4.45) for ‘by train,’ with a hyphen added to the Turkish to signal the relevant suffix:
(4.45)
Grk με το τρένο (το = DEF.ART) Alb me tren (INDF) / trenin (DEF) Blg s vlak Mac so voz Rmn cu trenul (DEF) Trk tren-le (‘train-with’)
Caution is necessary here, as ‘with’ is found all across Europe in this usage (with hyphens added for clarity of analysis):
(4.46)
Itl con il treno ‘with the train’ Swed med tåg-et ‘with train-the’ Grm mit der Eisenbahn ‘with the train’ Hung vonat-tal ‘train-ins’ Estn rongi-ga ‘train-ins’
Still, the facts of (4.46) make for a parallelism on the surface among the Balkan languages that in itself can be significant (see §4.3.10). With human means of conveyance, Greek and Albanian show a convergence in the use of ‘with’; (4.47) shows ‘with’ in the expression for ‘by foot’:
(4.47)
Alb me këmb ‘with foot’ Grk με τα πόδια ‘with the feet’
It is important not to get too focused here just on similarities and possible contact influences, because there are many differences, even in elements that show some convergence. For instance, even though there are some striking parallels in the use of me ‘with’ in Greek and Albanian, as just noted in (4.45) and (4.47), there are also differences. For instance, me can be used in Albanian in the expression of arithmetic addition, e.g., 6 me 7 është 13 ‘6 plus 7 is 13’ (Newmark 1998:s.v.),Footnote 356 whereas in Greek, συν, a learnèd borrowing (from Katharevousa) which otherwise in that register means ‘with,’ is used in that function. Moreover, some of the parallels are limited in scope and show some differences across the languages as well. For example, for the unit by which a sale is measured, e.g., sell oranges by the kilo, Greek uses με ‘with,’ thus με το κιλό ‘by the kilo,’ a usage which matches Turkish kilo ile/kiloyla (with the postposition ile ‘with’ in either its separate-word form or its fused harmonic form); Albanian here does not use me, employing instead a different construction altogether, and Balkan Slavic uses the preposition po (otherwise, ‘after’).
Assenova 2019, while emphasizing that minority Balkan languages in enclaves in Bulgaria, especially Greek and Albanian, show some innovative uses of prepositions that are not based in contact with Bulgarian or any other language, nonetheless documents some contact-induced shifts in prepositional meaning and usage leading to isosemy. We quote her here with minor editing indicated:
Specific uses of the Greek preposition από [‘from, by’ – VAF/BDJ], which are not attested in its corresponding prepositions in Bulgarian [in modern terms, Balkan Slavic – VAF/BDJ] and Albanian, were adopted by the South Albanian and Western Bulgarian [in modern terms Macedonian – VAF/BDJ] dialects, which were in contact with the Greek language. It will suffice to mention only a few of them:
The spatial meaning of “catching” is realized in the Albanian dialects of Zagorie and Myzeqe with the preposition prej ‘from’ instead of the preposition për ‘for’:
E zuri prej qafe (Zagorie) ‘He caught him by the neck.’ (Totoni 1962: 206)
E kap pi veshi (Seman, Myzeqe) ‘He caught his ear.’ (Thomai 1961: 109)
as in Greek:
πιάνω απ’ το χέρι ‘I catch his hand,’ δένω απ’ το δένδρο ‘I bind with the tree’
The expression of content, storage capacity […] affects the government of the verb “fill (full),” under the influence of Greek, where after γεμίζω/γεμάτος ‘fill/ full’ it is από that is used: γεμίζει από παιδιά ‘full [sic, ‘fills’ – VAF/BDJ] of[/with – VAF/BDJ] children,’ but με/me ‘with’ is also acceptable: στρώμα γεμάτο με μαλλί ‘a mattress stuffed with wool’ (Tzartzanos 1946: 89–90). The dialect of Goce Delčev (former Nevrokop, South-Western Bulgaria) […] has taken over the Greek structure: Pazar’e e păl’an’ ot narot for “pălen s narod” ‘The market place was full of people.’ (Mirčev 1963: 109).
Besides sounding the important caveat that even in contact situations languages can undergo their own internal developments, the facts Asenova offers here show the continued functioning of Balkan sprachbund processes in the post-Ottoman period.
4.3.11 Ethnographic Vocabulary
By ethnographic vocabulary we understand those items generally associated with folklore or traditional culture. At issue are terminologies for traditional practices associated with life cycle events (birth, marriage, death, etc.), the calendar cycle (spring, fall, mid-winter, etc.), genres and motifs in folk literature (e.g., types of songs), folk beliefs (e.g., types of spirits), and so on. These terms have been the focus more of ethnography than of linguistics. They overlap with, but differ from, Trubetzkoy’s Kulturwörter insofar as Trubetzkoy’s term is generally understood to reflect cultural specificities that are not necessarily connected with universal features of human life. Thus, for example, the Turkism kurban ‘sacrifice’ (and, in nineteenth-century Macedonian, also ‘eucharist’) is a classic Kulturwort, but insofar as it is connected with ritual practices, it is also ethnographic vocabulary. Similarly, kinship terms (§4.3.1), insofar as kinship is a cultural construct (Schneider 1968, 1984), are also ethnographic vocabulary. On the other hand, some ethnographic vocabulary does not fit neatly into other categories, and so a couple of examples are given here.
One example of ethnographic vocabulary connected with life cycle events is the term for a woman who has recently given birth. In Macedonian, the native terms derived from rodi ‘give birth’ – rodilka and porodilka – are less frequent than the Greek-derived leunka or lehonka (Lj. Risteski 2019: Map 5). Particularly significant in this regard is that, with the exception of a few isolated survivals of native terms, the pattern of distribution moves from southwest to northeast, just like many morphosyntactic Balkanisms. The term also appears in Aro lehoánă, and Alb lehonë. The source is Medieval Greek λεχώνα ‘woman in childbed’ (ultimately a derivative of PIE *legh- ‘lie’), an ν-stem formation replacing AGrk λεχώ(ς) ‘woman in childbed’ (cf. English lying-in ‘postpartum confinement’). Blg lehusa (whence Trk loğusa ‘idem,’ BER III: s.v.) appears to be a more learnèd borrowing from a related form involving a participle of the Classical Greek verb λέχομαι ‘to lie’ (or λέχω ‘lull to sleep’).
Another example of Balkan ethnographic vocabulary is seen in the Albanian genre of epic songs called këngë kreshnike ‘heroic songs,’ where kreshnik ‘hero’ is from BCMS krajišnik (Orel 1998: s.v.) ‘inhabitant of the Krajina (lit., ‘border region,’ today’s northwestern Bosnia, formerly known as Turkish Croatia).’ As Kolsti 1990 has discussed in detail, Albanian-Slavic bilingualism was a crucial factor in disseminating oral traditions. Thus, while the Albanian kreshnik in and of itself is merely a Slavic loan, it points to a much larger practice of multilingualism that characterizes the Balkan sprachbund when placed in its ethnographic context.Footnote 357
4.4 Register and Style
Differences in register in a given language are simultaneously among the most universal and the most language specific. Arguably, all languages have an elevated register, formal and informal registers,Footnote 358 and various linguistic means of indexing social relations. The most frequent of such means is lexicon, but grammar can also be deployed. Thus, for example, Javanese is famous for its complex grammatical and lexical means for indexing an intricate set of hierarchical social relations (Errington 1988). The so-called T/V contrast of informal versus formal second person pronominal address is a well-known distinction, which has also affected the Balkan languages (see §6.1.4.3). In multilingual societies, codeswitching can serve as another means of signaling register shift.Footnote 359 In this section, we examine some shared features of register development and shift in the Balkan lexicons. Owing to the fact that Turkish and Romani occupy, respectively, the historically most and least privileged of the Balkan lexicons in terms of pre-twentieth century social hierarchies, their lexicons each occupy specific positions that are pan-Balkan.Footnote 360 Other socially determined registers that involve either Balkan language contact or common experiences for the Balkans are also treated in this section.
4.4.1 The Position of Turkish
Turkish enjoyed a special prestige in the Ottoman Empire as the language of power, commerce, and urban status. Under the Ottomans, şehirli ‘town dweller’ was a privileged tax category that required a minimum of forty years residency, and knowledge of Turkish was de facto a part of acquiring this desirable status (cf. Ellis 2003: 2). Turkish was thus not only the language of the market place and inter-ethnic communication but also the language of urban sophistication and privilege. Thus, for example, it is significant that while speakers of Albanian, Aromanian, Greek, and Romani all code-switch into their native languages in the Macedonian ethnic jokes collected by Marko Cepenkov in the nineteenth century, Jews, like Turks, speak Turkish (Friedman 1995b). As freedom of movement increased in the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth centuries, larger numbers of non-Turkish speakers moved to towns and learned Turkish. The result was a flood of loanwords into the vocabularies of these new urbanites (cf. Koneski 1981: 187–189). In the mid-nineteenth century, for example, the Bulgarian writer Ivan Vazov (in Vazov 1955–1957: XIX, 335) described urban Bulgarian as poluturski ‘half-Turkish.’ At precisely the same time, however, new nation-building movements (invariably termed ‘renaissances’ or ‘rebirths’ since the ideology of the day required some sort of pedigree for a ‘nation’ to claim legitimacy) were attempting to establish new forms of identity, utilizing, among other characteristics or social facts, language. While the history of language in each nation-building movement has its specificities, one of the common features of these movements in the Balkans was the rejection and replacement of Turkish vocabulary in the formal registers of these new, standardizing languages. This in turn led to the stylistic lowering of Turkisms and the creation of a shared, informal register.Footnote 361 This process, like the ideology behind it, was repeated for each language from the nineteenth until the late twentieth centuries, so that in Greek, Romanian, the former Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Albanian, and Macedonian, the same Turkish word or derivational affix can have the same stylistic effect. Thus, for example, the Turkish agentive suffix -CI (see §4.2.2.4) can be used in all the Balkan national languages (Alb -xhi, Blg and Mac -džija, Rmn -gi, Grk -τζής) to form slang terms such as Mac politikadžija or Alb politikaxhi, both meaning ‘[corrupt] politician’ that can be contrasted to new words, such as Mac političar, Alb politikan as informal vs. formal register. In some cases, Turkisms are used for everyday physical objects but not for metaphorical extensions, e.g., Mac tavan stands for the ceiling in a building, but not, e.g., a price ceiling, for which the Gallicism plafon must be used (Friedman 1986c). If the metaphorical extension is pejorative, however, the opposite can apply, e.g., ModGrk είσαι ντουβάρι, lit., ‘you are a wall’ (ντουβάρι from Trk duvar), means ‘you are a blockhead,’ whereas είσαι τείχος, lit., ‘you are a wall’ (from AGrk τεῖχος), has only the literal meaning and cannot be used as an idiomatic insult.
Kazazis 1975 illustrates the result of this process of lowering in his discussion of a Turkish grammar of Ancient Greek. For example, Trk araba is the normal word meaning ‘carriage, cart, vehicle.’ It corresponds to AGrk ἄμαξα and ModGrk αμάξι. Modern Greek also has αραμπάς from Turkish, but this word is used only to mean ‘(ox)cart,’ and is pejorative when used as a synonym for ‘vehicle.’ As Kazazis 1975: 18 observes, for a Greek, seeing αμάξι translated into Turkish as araba “would be enough to produce at least a smile,” but when the same Turkish word is used to translate Ancient Greek ἄμαξα, “that smile often turns into outright laughter.” Kazazis’ point here is that the Modern Greek diglossia that produced the elevated formal register of Katharevousa in opposition to the everyday conversational Dimotiki – an official distinction that dominated Greek discourse from the nineteenth century until the official rejection of Katharevousa in 1976 – renders the disjunction between Ancient Greek and the colloquial register of Modern Greek especially salient. While the contemporary prestige of Ancient Greek vis-à-vis Modern Greek differs from that of Latin vis-à-vis Balkan Romance or Old Church Slavonic vis-à-vis Balkan Slavic (or Sanskrit vis-à-vis Romani), owing to differences in the processes of standardization, nonetheless the disjunction for those languages with standard forms is similar.Footnote 362
This transition did not follow a rectilinear path. On the contrary, there were various forms of language ideological resistance. Thus, for example, although Brailsford 1906: 86, whose philhellenism (and anti-Semitism) are reflected in his account with the claim that Turkish in Macedonia had only limited uses, Herbert 1906: 152–153 gives quite a different account of Bulgaria, one worth citing here.Footnote 363
In spite of all that has happened to the Ottoman Empire during the last two hundred years, Turkish is still of paramount importance. In Bulgaria the increase in the use of the Turkish tongue in daily intercourse was to me one of the most striking features of my recent revisit to the principality after an absence of twenty years. Under Turkish government, the Bulgarian knowing Turkish would speak the tongue only on compulsion, in a court of law, or when talking to an official or a gendarme, and he would, in front of his compatriots, be ashamed of his knowledge. Now it is a distinction and a sign of superior education, much as it is a distinction to know French in Germany and England. Formerly, when a Bulgarian not knowing Greek had to speak to a Greek not knowing Bulgarian, they had to employ an interpreter, if they had not some little common knowledge of French or German; now they use Turkish. The attendants in the inns of the smaller Bulgarian towns, where French and German are not spoken, know Turkish. A Bulgarian speaking to a Turkish subject of the principality is expected to know Turkish. The language has the glamour and the romance of five centuries of distinguished and often noble history, of which the events of the last thirty years have been unable to rob it. On what other supposition can one explain this striking fact that in the so-called Turkish theaters of the larger Bulgarian towns, Bulgarian plays, performed by non-Turks for Bulgarian audiences, are done in the Turkish language?
At that same time, however, Bulgarian writers were using Turkisms to signal uncouth, uneducated, “un-European” characters, thus both illustrating, and contributing to, the current of stylistic lowering that Turkisms were subjected to in all the Balkan languages (cf. Friedman 2010a: 7–9). As indicated above, the same scenario was repeated as each new Balkan standard language achieved acceptance. Thus, for example, a year after the official recognition of Literary Macedonian, Blaže Koneski in 1945 wrote an article in which, among other things, he severely criticized a Macedonian translation of Molière’s Le Tartuffe for being full of Turkisms, writing: “Toa znači … da go snižis … istančeniot poetski jazik na Moliera … do nivoto na našeto balkansko, kasabsko, čaršisko muabetenje.” (‘It means lowering the refined poetic language of Molière to the level of our Balkan small-town marketplace chit-chat.’); cf. also Ežov 1952: 211; Gołąb 1960; Markov 1955. Similar attitudes are expressed for the other standard languages, e.g., Close 1974: 119, 154, 199 on Romanian, Kranji 1965 and Žugra & Kaminskaja 2003 for Albanian. Kazazis 1977: 302–303, in his review of Dizikirikis 1975, sums up the Greek version of this attitude:
[…] depending on their origin, loan-words differ as to the degree to which they defile a language. Thus, the Romans, the Franks (‘[medieval] West Europeans’), the Venetians, all left their linguistic (read: lexical) imprint on Greek. Those were, however, civilized nations, so that their loan-words into Greek are not much of a disgrace and do not wound the ‘linguistic dignity’ of the Greeks as Turkish loan-words do (6ff. and passim). The latter are a shameful reminder of the centuries-long abject subjugation of the Greek nation to a culturally undistinguished people, the Turks.
For Greek, the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey mandated by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne resulted in a new influx of Turkisms, since many of these Christian refugees were monolingual Turkish speakers, and, for the most part, those who spoke Greek were town-dwellers who also knew Turkish. The status of the refugees, however, reinforced the stylistic lowering of Turkisms. Some Turkisms also spread beyond the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire when territories that had never been under Ottoman rule were united with territories that had in the new nation-state of Yugoslavia (similarly for parts of post-World-War-One Romania that had only briefly been Ottoman territory).
The position of Turkish loanwords in the various Balkan languages by 1989 was essentially that described by Kazazis 1972, i.e., (1) fully integrated, neutral loans; (2) low register, including informal, ironic, and pejorative; (3) historical/epic/archaic; (4) local color/dialectal/specialized lexicon. We have discussed neutral and low-register loans, as well as some historical loans in §§4.2.1.6 and 4.2.2.4 as well as in this section. The Balkan epic/folk poetic register is by its very nature archaic or archaizing, and it is especially hospitable to Turkisms, since these registers are, in their thematics and vocabulary, the product of the Ottoman period (Lord 1960: 305–308).Footnote 364 For Greek, this connection is ideologically undesirable, as illustrated by Notopoulos’s 1959: 1 attempt to create a seamless connection between Homeric epic through Byzantium to Modern Greek epic by passing over the crucial Ottoman period in silence:
From the days of Byzantium until recent times Greece has had to fight for survival …. [The songs] have instructed the generations in the modern counterpart of the Homeric aretê [sic], leventyá, the gallant attitude toward life. … The occasions for recitation are the many opportunities offered by the church for religious holidays and festivals, … and that indefinable mood for joyous expression in sheer living which the Greeks call by that unique word, kephi.
What this account fails to mention is the fact that during the period between Byzantium and “recent times,” it was the Ottoman Turks who brought to Greek both leventyá (λεβεντιά, from Turkish levend/levent ‘conscript, irregular soldier’ as well as ‘handsome, strong youth’ and ‘free, independent, adventurer, irresponsible’)Footnote 365 and kephi (κέφι, from Turkish key[i]f ‘pleasure, delight, enjoyment, merriment, tipsy, etc.’).Footnote 366
The role of Turkisms in registers that are “dialectal” vis-à-vis the standard sometimes functions as emblematic for speakers in those Balkan languages that were standardized in the twentieth century. Thus, for example, speakers from Bitola consider the Turkism nejse (Trk neyse) ‘nevermind, whatever’ (lit., ‘what it.may.be’) to be particularly characteristic of their dialect, and Kosovar Albanian uses many Turkisms where the colloquial Albanian of Albania has already adopted standard (non-Turkish) forms (Hughes 2003). This emblematicity of Turkish as colloquial has two further developments since 1989, one for national standard languages in post-communist countries, the other for languages that were only admitted to official use after 1991, i.e., Romani and Aromanian in the Republic of North Macedonia.Footnote 367
In the case of nation-state standard languages in post-communist countries, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Romanian, and Albanian all experienced the same penetration of Turkisms into registers from which they had formerly been excluded. This was especially true in popular media, which experienced a kind of colloquialization as democratization in which Turkisms served as emblematic. In the case of the former Serbo-Croatian, the break-up resulted in the Bosniak claim to Turkisms as Bosnian (Friedman 2005c), while Croatian pursued its long-standing puristic tendencies, and Serbian and Montenegrin more or less continued the pre-1991 lexical status quo.
In Romani and Aromanian, the forms for the 1994 Macedonian census – which was concerned with economic variables as well as enumerated individuals – provide excellent examples of how colloquial Turkisms can be used as standard even though they do not have this status in Turkish itself. In the questions pertaining to bathrooms and toilets, all those languages with established, elaborated norms used euphemistic neologisms or recent borrowings as their official terminology (P-2, VI.8 and 9 in Zavod za statistika na Republika Makedonija 1996): Mac banja, klozet, Alb banjo, nevojtore, Trk banyo, banyo-ayakyolu, Srb kupatilo, klozet. Except for the Serbian deverbal noun meaning ‘bathing place,’ all the words for ‘bath’ are Latinate borrowings. The Macedonian and Serbian words for ‘toilet’ are from the British [water]closet, while the Albanian and Turkish are neologisms that can be glossed as ‘necessarium’ and ‘bath-footplace,’ respectively. The Romani documents, however, used the Turkisms hamami and kenefi, respectively. Hamam is the standard Turkish word for ‘bath’ but has come to mean ‘Turkish bath’ or ‘public bath,’ while the kenef is considered vulgar in Turkish as well as in the other Balkan languages (BSl kenef, Alb qenef, Rmn cheneaf, and, though rare today, regional ModGrk κενέφι; for Turkish, the word entered via Arabic [Tietze 2016b: s.v.] and may well have started out as a euphemism that became polluted by its association with a dirty place, cf. §4.3.9). For Aromanian the forms were hàmami and hale, respectively. The latter, from Turkish helâ, appears in Albanian as hale, where it is considered colloquial, and in Macedonian as ale, vale, where it is a regionalism no longer understood in many areas.
For Judezmo, it is interesting to note that the position of Turkisms among educated élites during the late nineteenth century was subject to the same kinds of negative evaluations as was the case with co-territorial languages that had become or were aspiring to become vehicles for nation-states (Bunis 2023). On the other hand, colloquial Judezmo, as reflected, for example, in humorous texts (e.g., Bunis 1999, 2023), was not affected by such “modernizing” tendencies. And since Judezmo has never had the status of an official language anywhere, it was likewise not subject to the pressures that suppressed and then elevated Turkisms in former communist countries. It is thus the case that Judezmo occupies a unique position vis-à-vis Turkisms in the Balkans between the standardized nation-state languages, on the one hand, and locally recognized minority languages (Aromanian, Romani) on the other.
In sum, the position of Turkisms in the Balkan nation-state languages today is still a shared feature. Having been pushed down stylistically during the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, today, as in the past, they are part of a register that, depending on the context, can be earthy, familiar, and homey or crude, vulgar, and loutish. They can signal positive, old-fashioned values or backwardness. They can index the old-town urban or the isolated rural. These seeming opposites are in fact the Janus-faces of values that are carried by the term Balkan itself.
4.4.2 The Position of Romani
In the Balkans, as elsewhere, the marginalization of Romani speakers is reflected in the position of Romani elements in the various languages with which it has been in contact.Footnote 368 These elements are informal, colloquial, slang and cryptolectal, and taboo. Thus, for example, in Bulgarian gádže ‘girlfriend’ from Romani gadží ‘non-Romani woman’ is as ordinary, but also as strictly colloquial, as English pal ‘friend’ from Rmi phral (but also pral, pal in some dialects) ‘brother.’ Macedonian džukela ‘street dog, mutt, nasty person’ from Rmi džukel ‘dog’ is slang and stylistically lower than standard Macedonian kuče ‘dog.’Footnote 369 We can also note here Mac kăne from Aro cãne ‘dog,’ which in Macedonian is used only metaphorically to refer to an unpleasant person. For Greek we have πουρό, πουρός ‘(very) old, past one’s physical prime < Rmi phuro ‘old.M’ (Tzitzilis 2006, which provides important insights into the routes of Armenian lexicon into both Romani and Greek).
Göktaş’s 1986 lexicon of the slang of Turkish shadow-play (Karagöz) performers has a large number of Romani elements, e.g., çori ‘knife’ (Rmi čhuri), gaco ‘woman’ (Rmi gadžo/gadži) ‘non-Romani man/woman,’ habbe ‘food’ (Rmi habe ‘food’ (cf. ha- ‘eat’)), kerizci ‘singer’ (Rmi kerisar- ‘carouse’), Matiz, Matto, the performers’ slang name for the character otherwise known as Tuzsuz Deli Bekir (Rmi mato (f: mati) ‘drunk’), naş ‘go’ (Rmi naš- ‘run away’), peniz ‘letting someone else speak’ (Rmi phen- ‘say, tell’), piyiz ‘alcoholic drink’ (Rmi pi- ‘drink’). An interesting item is todi ‘Gypsy’ and its derivative todice, which means ‘[in] the slang of Karagöz performers,’ and which, perhaps, comes from Romani tho[v]di ‘placed, washed’ (perhaps a reference to Romani cleanliness practices). Kyuchukov & Bakker 1999 supply twenty-six Romani lexical items from the gay slang of Istanbul, and note the use of Romani lexicon among Turkish musicians, some of whom are monolingual Turkish speakers of Romani origin. Kostov 1970 also discusses Romani elements in Turkish slang. Leschber 1995 gives sixty main items as entries known in modern Romanian, among them dic! ‘look!’ (Rmi dikh ‘look!, see!’), e.g., dic la el! ‘get a load of him,’ gagiu, gagică ‘guy, gal,’ matol ‘dead drunk,’ şuriu ‘knife (especially the kind equivalent to our switchblade in form or function)’ (Rmi čhuri but śuri in most dialects in Romania), a hali ‘eat’ (Rmi 3SG hal), a pili ‘drink’ (Rmi 3SG piel), zbanghiu ‘unreliable, nuts’ (Rmi bango m/bangi f ‘crooked, lame, etc.’). Graur 1934 and Julliand 1952 also discuss Romani elements in Romanian. In the case of Bulgarian, most Romani vocabulary occurs in specialized jargons (Kostov 1956; see §4.4.3), but in addition to gádže cited above, we can note from Armjanov 2001 mató ‘drunk,’ bangija ‘stupid person; jalopy,’ and dikiz ‘sight, observation’ with derivatives, now obsolete. This last form appears to have entered via Turkish, where -iz is a common suffix on words derived from Romani (cf. the forms from Göktaş cited above) and the form dikiz is also attested (Aktunç 1990: 84; cf. also Leschber 2002). Petropoulos’s 1993 dictionary of Greek gay slang contains a number of items of Romani origin, e.g., δικέλω ‘see,’ ντικ ʻsight, eye,’ also ντικ! ʻthere you are!’; μπαρό[ς] ‘fat,’ cf. Aktunç 1990 μπαρό ‘customer, rich person’ (Rmi baró ‘large, big, important’); μπαγγόλος ‘squint-eyed,’ μπαγγόλα ‘deaf’; χαλ ‘food,’ χάλω ʻeat,’ χάλε κούλα ‘eat shit!’ (cf. ModGrk να φας σκατά!), χουλά ‘shit’ (Rmi khul ‘shit’); λούμπα, λουμπίνα, λουμπουνιά, λούμπω ‘bottom [passive male homosexual]’ (Rmi lubní ‘whore,’ lubikanó ‘lustful, debauched’); cf. also Kyuchukov & Bakker 1999 on Romani in Turkish gay slang and §4.3.9 on taboo lexicon of Romani origin. See also Leschber 2009ab and the references therein on Romani lexis in other Balkan languages and in reference to the discussion in §4.4.3 below.
4.4.3 Slang, Cryptoglossia, Jargon
So-called secret languages are types of registers insofar as they generally consist of lexical items embedded into the grammar of the language from which they are hiding.Footnote 370 As in English and many other languages, various kinds of syllable shift, insertion, and word-play are among the techniques used to disguise speech. These types of secret languages are used by various social groups usually defined by age (e.g., children, teenagers, youth) or social or professional category (students, gays, masons, carpenters, musicians, the Karagöz players mentioned in §4.4.2, etc.). From a Balkan linguistic perspective in this section, the interesting point comes when these languages borrow lexical items from other Balkan languages, as is the case in a variety of professional jargons, which, owing to social factors, are usually limited to men from a specific region or village. Thus, for example, the secret languages of North Macedonia borrow from Albanian, Aromanian, Greek, Turkish, and Romani, although Jašar-Nasteva 1953abc makes the point that Albanian elements are especially prominent.Footnote 371 The secret mason’s language of Goce Delčev (formerly Nevrokop in Pirin Macedonia, now the Blagoevgrad [Gorna Džumaja] district of SW Bulgaria) has a similar lexical profile (Karastojčeva 2010). Many such expressions are also shared with masons’ secret languages in the Rhodopes (Keremedčieva 1995) and central Bulgaria (Ivanov 1974). The material in Kacori et al. 1984 gives similar evidence of the importance of Albanian for secret languages in southwestern Bulgaria in general. In Albania, secret languages in southern Albania tend to borrow from Aromanian, Greek, and Macedonian (Shkurtaj 2004; Sh. Demiraj & Prifti 2004).Footnote 372
Romani forms a significant element in a variety of in-group slangs such as those discussed in §4.4.2. We can mention here especially Kaliardá, the Greek gay slang recorded by Petropoulos 1993 for which the foreign sources of vocabulary tend to be Italian, French, and English as well as Turkish (Vunčev 2017: 47). However, as Asenova 2017 points out, the Turkish elements are basically those that have survived in colloquial Greek despite being excluded from formal registers, e.g., Kaliardá τζοβαΐρι ‘jewelry’ from colloquial MedGrk τζοβαΐρι ‘precious stone’ (< Trk cevahir) vs. literary πολύτιμος. Asenova 2017 also notes the fact that Romani supplies an important component of productive elements (she identifies about a dozen), e.g., λατσό ‘good, beautiful’ from Rmi lačho ‘idem,’ as in the Kaliardá λατσολιγγα ‘Katharevousa,’ where the second element is from Italian. In Stojkov 1968: 226–247, 1993: 340–362, there is a good survey of the topic for Bulgarian, with references, and he makes the point that Romani elements are found in slangs and jargons throughout Europe (and, we can add, the Western Hemisphere) – a point also made by Matras 2002: 249–250 in his discussion of the covert prestige of Romani (with references to Kostov 1956, 1970; Graur 1934; and Julliand 1952, among others, for Romani) – but relative degrees of such vocabulary have yet to be studied.
Turkish slang or informal usage is sometimes taken over into Balkan languages with the same meaning, e.g., Blg čaktisvam ‘I understand’ from Turkish çak- (1SG past çaktım), lit., ‘get, grab’ but with the same semantics as colloquial English I get it meaning ‘I understand it,’ or tarikat ‘clever, cool’ (Trk tarikat ‘dervish order,’ cf. Leschber 2007). As Shkurtaj 2004 points out, one of the reasons Purisht, a secret language used by labor migrants in a group of villages in southern Albania, is now moribund is that men going on labor migration more recently usually go to Greece and can simply use Albanian as their secret language.
In the case of Jewish languages, either Judezmo or Yiddish could be the source of Balkan Slavic slang aver ‘friend’ (cf. Heb ḥaver ‘friend, comrade’), but Yiddish must be the source of Blg redim ‘I speak/say’ (Yid redn ‘to speak, talk’), which points to a nineteenth-century origin for the term. In Judezmo itself, Hebrew had the high status of a holy language, but it was also available for cryptolectal purposes in secular contexts. Thus, for example Bunis 2011: 32 gives the following examples: No diburees, ke yodéah lashón! ‘Don’t speak because he knows the language’ (cf. Angloromani mursh akai! ‘[There is a] man there!’ [Matras 2010: 120]) and los enáim en las yadaim ‘eyes on the hands’ (caution against potential shoplifters). In these examples, only the function words no, ke, los, las, en are of Spanish origin, whereas verbs and nouns are all Hebrew, but not used in everyday Judezmo. Hebrew for Judezmo thus represents a register that can be both elevated and cryptolectal.Footnote 373
Religion also provided a secret language among the Orthodox Balkan Slavic speakers, albeit only for the clergy. According to Popovski 1951, this secret language involved simply spelling words, but using the Church Slavonic names for the consonants with reduplication of the initial consonant for a vowel, e.g., the name Stale becomes slovo tvrdo-ta ludi-le. While the illiteracy of the general population contributed to the code’s efficacy, the children’s secret language King Tut used in the United States follows a similar principle and is quite effective despite the literacy of the general population.
Here we can also mention an important aspect of cryptoglossia observed by Karastojčeva 2001/2002, namely syllabic play, which is an important element in secret languages everywhere.Footnote 374 When spoken fluently, such languages are difficult to understand even for native speakers of the base languages, but they are completely opaque to nonnatives, even those who have an otherwise excellent command of the language. According to Karastojčeva, such cryptoglossia is used only by children in eastern Bulgaria, much as only children use such languages in anglophone North America and much of North Macedonia. By contrast such word deformations form an important part of the secret languages of western Bulgaria (and, we can add, parts of North Macedonia). One lesson to be drawn from this difference is, perhaps, that in the more complexly multilingual environment of the western Balkans, the degree of multilingualism was such that word deformation in adult secret languages can be considered as a symptom of societal multilingualism.
Jargons differ from secret languages in that their vocabulary is specific to the profession, hobby, or other occupation they serve, as opposed to secret languages, which routinely have basic vocabulary (eat, drink, man, woman, etc.) in addition to possible specialized vocabulary. The border between jargon and slang is not rigid. Members of a given profession may also have professional slang, as in the case of the Turkish Karagöz players cited in §4.4.2. Jargon, as we understand it here, refers to the vocabulary used by members of a community defined by occupation, sensu lato, in referring to items defined as pertaining specifically to the occupation. This understanding of jargon suffices for our purposes here. It is, in a sense, technical vocabulary.
As an example, we cite the color terminology used in the hobby of dove-raising (golubarstvo) in Macedonian, where Turkish terms are used for the names of different types of birds, e.g., ak kuruk ‘white tail,’ kara kuruk ‘black tail,’ beaz (Trk beyaz) ‘[pure] white,’ sija (Trk siyah) ‘[pure] black’ (Cvetkovski 2017). This terminology can be treated as a technical subset of the colloquial standard (cf. Friedman 2011d). At the same time, it utilizes two layers of color vocabulary in Turkish itself, native and Arabo-Persian. Jašar-Nasteva 2001: 48 also gives Turkish terminology for horse colors in Macedonian: abraš ‘horse with white spots,’ dorija (doru) ‘dark-red, brown horse,’ alčo, alatest ‘red horse.’ The same types of Turkisms occur also in Albanian for color usage in dove- or horse-breeding, e.g., kara for a black creature.
A different domain of color terminology is found in relation to animal husbandry. Here we move from contact with Turkish, to contact between Albanian, Balkan Romance, Balkan Slavic, and Greek in a domain that is quintessentially rural, and by its very nature indifferent to the state insofar as is possible. As an example, we take some recent terms that involve white coloring on small cattle, Sobolev 2009a being a useful source for such terminology. In Kastelli (Peloponnesos, Greek), the Slavonicisms mb’elo and mb’ela are used for ‘white ram or lamb’ and ‘white ewe,’ respectively (Map 56), the Latinism fλ’oro, fλ’ora for ‘white goat’ (Map 86), and the Albanianisms λ’ara or mb’artsa for ‘white-bellied goat’ (Map 88). This second root turns up in Aromanian bardzi ‘white-bellied sheep’ (Map 56).Footnote 375 Another Slavonicism is derived from Slavic pьrčь ‘billy goat,’ which occurs thoughout South Slavic with the appropriate reflex for vocalic /r/. It also occurs in Alb përçak (Leshnja, Tosk), Aro pãrču (Turia [Grk Krania], Pindus, Greece), and Grk purčus (Eratyra, in western Greek Macedonia) (Sobolev 2009a: 172). See Kahl 2007 for a study of contact among Albanian-, Aromanian-, and Greek-speaking shepherds.Footnote 376
Finally, we can mention what is probably the best-documented Balkan contribution to occupationally based vocabulary, namely the role of Italian and Greek in shaping Turkish nautical terminology, and by extension, mariners’ jargon more generally in the Mediterranean, and thus the Balkans. Kahane et al. 1958 meticulously documents 878 words, 154 of them Greek, that passed from Italian and Greek into Turkish from the thirteenth through the eighteenth centuries, though in the course of so doing, numerous words are documented for Greek nautical usage itself, and for other Balkan languages, with various directions of diffusion. A few illustrative terms are Itl boma ‘boom,’ the source of Trk bomba/bumba ‘spanker boom,’ but also Grk μπούμα and Alb bumë ‘boom’; Vtn flama ‘pennant,’ source of Trk flama/filama ‘streamer,’ and related to Grk φλαμούρο(ν) ‘nautical banner,’ an alteration of Byzantine Grk φλαμοῦλον, from the derivative Lat flammula, itself the source of Alb flamur ‘flag’ and Rmn flamură ‘pennant’; Grk παξιμάδι(ν) ‘biscuit,’ source of Trk peksimat/beksimet (and variants) ‘hard biscuit,’ but also Alb paksimadh/peksimat (and variants), Rmn paximat/pesmet (and variants); and words for ‘harbor,’ Byzantine Grk λιμένιον, the source of OSrb limenь, and Trk limen, a variant of which, liman, is the source for the word in other Balkan languages, e.g., Alb liman, BSl liman, later Srb limān, Rmn liman, and ModGrk λιμάνι (thus, a reborrowing). See now also Panzac 2008 and Nolan 2020 and the references therein.
4.4.4 Other Sources and Types of Register Differences
Among the other sources of differences in register, we can identify shared ideology, shared experiences of extra-Balkan influences, and shared localizations. Shared ideologies that valorized earlier stages of a given language as more “pure” or “uncorrupted” were most powerful in Greek, where for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a puristic, Atticized, consciously archaizing, colloquial called Katharevousa dominated formal registers and was exemplary in the theorization of the term diglossia by Ferguson 1959. The relationship of Latin to Romanian and of Church Slavonic to Balkan Slavic was strong in this respect but never split the new standard languages in two as happened with Greek. For Romanian, French and Italian were more modern related languages of status and power, for Bulgarian it was Russian and for Macedonian, Serbian, especially after the Tito-Stalin break of 1948.Footnote 377 Attempts at Sanskritizing Romani have so far not had significant results. In terms of twentieth century power relations, French, German, and Italian have all had effects on their spheres of influence, e.g., Italian in the Albanian of Albania whereas in the Albanian of former Yugoslavia German supplied parallel vocabulary, e.g., skapamento versus auspuh ‘muffler’ (see also §4.2.1.7). Today, as almost everywhere else, English is a major source of new vocabulary. As we noted in §4.2.1, English in the Balkans is the Turkish of the twenty-first century. Moreover, English has entered every level of vocabulary: technical, unmarked colloquial, slang, etc. The one other source that we can note here that is specifically Balkan is localized language contact. Thus, for example, Albanian çupa ‘girl’ (DEF) and bishka ‘pig’ (DEF) are the source of these same words in southwestern Macedonian dialects. Today’s Macedonian speakers are often unaware of such words’ Albanian origins and consider them their own, emblematic dialectisms. Such examples could be cited everywhere in the Balkans where older patterns of dialect contact have been superseded by new borders.
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