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Slavic on the Language Map of Europe: Historical and Areal-Typological Dimensions
Conceptually, the volume focuses 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.
Fully concentrated on the areal-typological and historical dimensions of Slavic, the volume offers 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. The volume integrates new approaches towards the areal-typological profiling of Slavic as a member of several linguistic areas within Europe, including SAE, the Balkan Sprachbund and Central European groupings(s) like the Danubian or Carpathian areas, as well as the Carpathian-Balkan linguistic macroarea. Some of the chapters focus on structural affinities between Slavic and other European languages that arose as a result of either grammatical replication or borrowing. A special emphasis is placed on contact-induced grammaticalization in Slavic micro-languages
Fully concentrated on the areal-typological and historical dimensions of Slavic, the volume offers 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. The volume integrates new approaches towards the areal-typological profiling of Slavic as a member of several linguistic areas within Europe, including SAE, the Balkan Sprachbund and Central European groupings(s) like the Danubian or Carpathian areas, as well as the Carpathian-Balkan linguistic macroarea. Some of the chapters focus on structural affinities between Slavic and other European languages that arose as a result of either grammatical replication or borrowing. A special emphasis is placed on contact-induced grammaticalization in Slavic micro-languages
490 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 8, 2019
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February 23, 2023
This is a collection of papers mainly on features that the Slavic family or members thereof share with other languages in Europe, building on the notion of e.g. “Standard Average European” or the work of Heine & Kuteva (Heine contributes a paper). Some chapters are interesting enough – I especially liked Andriy Danilenko’s on how, through Romanian–Ukrainian contacts, Balkan features have spread to the Carpathians. However, this volume clearly did not get adequate peer review.
Two papers are very objectionable. The first is Vit Boček’s “Early Slavic-Romance Language Contacts”. The author muses on influences from Romanian to Slavic in terms of the vowel inventory of each and assumes this contact occurred late and in modern-day Romania. Nowhere does the author draw on Aromanian evidence – Aromanian and Romanian shared the same inventory before subsequent developments in each, and moreover the common ancestor of both Aromanian and Romanian had contacts with Proto-Albanian that likely impacted on the vocalism. In fact, the very word “Aromanian” is not found in his contribution at all, even though other chapters in this collection are aware of Aromanian and its impact on neighboring languages.
The other weak chapter, even more baffling than the first, is Paul Wexler’s. This scholar is notorious for his theory that Yiddish is not the result of German-speaking Jews moving eastward through Europe, but rather Jews in the Khazar Empire changing all their vocabulary, for some reason, to German. This hypothesis has already been criticized for decades, but here not only does Wexler uphold it yet again, but now he insists there were all kinds of Iranian lexical and cultural influences flowing into Slavic beyond the textbook examples, and until a late date. Nowhere is this supported by any evidence, claims that should have got some citation don’t have one, and any editor should have spotted some of these howlers (e.g. “Chuvash is closely related to Khazar”).
Two papers are very objectionable. The first is Vit Boček’s “Early Slavic-Romance Language Contacts”. The author muses on influences from Romanian to Slavic in terms of the vowel inventory of each and assumes this contact occurred late and in modern-day Romania. Nowhere does the author draw on Aromanian evidence – Aromanian and Romanian shared the same inventory before subsequent developments in each, and moreover the common ancestor of both Aromanian and Romanian had contacts with Proto-Albanian that likely impacted on the vocalism. In fact, the very word “Aromanian” is not found in his contribution at all, even though other chapters in this collection are aware of Aromanian and its impact on neighboring languages.
The other weak chapter, even more baffling than the first, is Paul Wexler’s. This scholar is notorious for his theory that Yiddish is not the result of German-speaking Jews moving eastward through Europe, but rather Jews in the Khazar Empire changing all their vocabulary, for some reason, to German. This hypothesis has already been criticized for decades, but here not only does Wexler uphold it yet again, but now he insists there were all kinds of Iranian lexical and cultural influences flowing into Slavic beyond the textbook examples, and until a late date. Nowhere is this supported by any evidence, claims that should have got some citation don’t have one, and any editor should have spotted some of these howlers (e.g. “Chuvash is closely related to Khazar”).
Displaying 1 of 1 review