Andrii Danylenko - Slavic on the Language Map of Europe: Historical and Areal-Typological Dimensions

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs

Edited by

Volume

ISBN 9783110634976

e-ISBN (PDF) 9783110639223

e-ISBN (EPUB) 9783110635171

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

• Vt Boek

  Czech Academy of Sciences

  Department of Etymology

  Veve 97, 60200 Brno

  Czech Republic

• Walter Breu

  University of Konstanz

  Department of Linguistics

  Slavistik, Fach 179

  78457 Konstanz

  Germany

• Andrii Danylenko

  Pace University

  Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

  Dept. of Modern Languages and Cultures

  41 Park Row, New York, NY 10038

  USA

• Bridget Drinka

  University of Texas at San Antonio

  Dept. of English

  Main Building, 1 UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX 78249-1644

  USA

• Jadranka Gvozdanovi

  Heidelberg University

  The Slavic Institute

  Schulgasse 6, 69117 Heidelberg

  Germany

• Bernd Heine

  University of Cologne

  Institute for African Studies and Egyptology

  Nonnenwerthstr. 4850937 Kln

  Germany

• Helena Kurzov

  Czech Academy of Sciences

  Institute of Philosophy

  Jilsk 1, 11000, Praha 1

  Czech Republic

• Nataliya Levkovych

  Bremen University

  Faculty 10: Linguistics and Literary Studies

  Universitts-Boulevard 13, Gebude GW 2, 28359 Bremen

  Germany

• Lidia Federica Mazzitelli

  University of Cologne, Slavic Institute

  Weyertal 137, 50931 Kln

  Germany

• Motoki Nomachi

  Hokkaido University

  Slavic-Eurasian Research Center

  Kita 9, Nishi 7, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-0809

  Japan

• Robert Orr

  Independent Scholar

  2044 Arrowsmith Dr. #104C

  Ottawa, ON, K1J 7V8

  Canada

• Andrej N. Sobolev

  Russian Academy of Sciences

  Institute for Linguistic Studies

  Tuchkov pereulok 9, 199053, St. Petersburg

  Russia

• Thomas Stolz

  Bremen University

  Faculty 10: Linguistics and Literary Studies

  Universitts-Boulevard 13, Gebude GW 2, 28359 Bremen

  Germany

• George Thomas

  McMaster University

  Dept. of Linguistics and Languages

  1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4L8

  Canada

• Paul Wexler

  Tel-Aviv University

  Dept. of Linguistics

  Webb, 405, Ramat Aviv, 69978, Tel Aviv

  Israel

• Bjrn Wiemer

  Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

  Institute for Slavic, Turkic and Circum-Baltic Studies

  Jakob-Welder-Weg 18, 55099 Mainz

  Germany

This book is a collection of chapters largely based on the papers delivered at the International Symposium, Slavic on the Language Map of Europe, which took place on August 811, 2013 at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center of Hokkaido University in Sapporo (Japan). Inspired by vivid discussions during the symposium and numerous conversations with the participants in the aftermath of this event, the editors came up with an idea of preparing a comprehensive volume focusing exclusively on the areal-typological and historical sampling of Slavic as compared with other, primarily neighboring, languages used in Europe.

There were several reasons behind the initial intention to bring together scholars working in areal and historical linguistics. As recent research shows, Europe can be safely conceived as a linguistic area of some kind ().

When the idea of organizing a symposium was first hatched in 2011, it was clear to the editors that the place of Slavic in the linguistic landscape of Europe had often been discussed controversially in scholarly literature. To adduce a few examples, some authors treat Slavic languages as more marginal ).

The volume is composed of an introduction and 14 chapters written by renowned scholars and leading specialists in various fields of linguistics from North America, Europe, Israel, and Japan. The authors deal with evidence from both macro and micro Slavic languages spoken in Europe, while introducing new empirical data and theoretical generalizations about language contact and grammaticalization in different Slavic languages and their near and distant neighbors. What is most commendable is the fact that some of the studies are premised on the results obtained from fieldwork and linguistic experiments.

The book sheds light on some methodological and descriptive issues related to Slavic as viewed from the areal-typological and historical perspective (see , also in this volume).

First, the chapters offer new insights into a number of theoretical issues, including language contact, grammaticalization, mechanisms of borrowing, the relationship between areal, genetic, and typological sampling, conservative features versus innovation, and socio-linguistic aspects of linguistic alliances conceived of both synchronically and diachronically.

Second, the volume integrates new approaches towards the areal-typological profiling of Slavic as a member of several linguistic areas within Europe, including SAE ().

Third, some of the studies in this book concentrate on structural affinities between Slavic and other European languages that arose as a result of either grammatical replication or borrowing (see , pattern replication or borrowing of matter. Special emphasis is placed in those chapters on contact-induced grammaticalization, especially in Slavic micro-languages such as Molise Slavic and Kashubian.

When working on the volume, the editors focused on the relationship of the three key notions that essentially triggered the inception and subsequent realization of this project, to wit, language contact, grammaticalization, and areal grouping. Indeed, the intimate interrelation of these notions is more than obvious, a fact which is reflected in the structure of the proposed volume.

Uncontroversial though the aforementioned connection might seem, some explanation of these notions is in order here.

To begin with, the discussion of areal groupings in Europe has recently displayed an obvious bias in favor of the Western European languages, a bias which appears even more pronounced in the treatment of SAE as a linguistic unity (), but divorced from its Ukrainian neighbor, can hardly produce an adequate areal-typological and historical picture of the languages used in the area around the Baltic Sea.

: 115117). To use the same assessment framework, the default form is assigned today to the most advanced (core) languages of SAE (French, northern Italian dialects, German and Dutch) while the periphery Slavic languages, with rare exceptions (like Polish), characterized by a minimum of default features, appear inferior or underdeveloped in terms of the level of their convergence within Europe as a linguistic area.