What is an example of a sprachbund?

Examples include areas of Papua New Guinea, the Amazon basin, and the Australian desert. Other situations involve geographic proximity between different language communities with only slow spread of features across languages, creating so-called sprachbund or linguistic areas.

What language do the Balkans speak?

The Balkan languages are traditionally defined as Albanian, Modern Greek, Balkan Romance (Romanian, Aromanian, and Meglenoromanian), and Balkan Slavic (Bulgarian, Macedonian, and the southernmost dialects of the former Serbo-Croatian, which dialects are called Torlak).

Which countries are included in Balkan?

The Balkans are usually characterized as comprising Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia—with all or part of each of those countries located within the peninsula.

Who introduced systemic functional grammar?

Michael Halliday
Systemic functional grammar (SFG) is a form of grammatical description originated by Michael Halliday. It is part of a social semiotic approach to language called systemic functional linguistics.

Who founded the Balkan language?

That was accomplished by Saints Cyril (Constantine) and Methodius, who translated the Bible into what later became known as Old Church Slavonic and who invented a Slavic alphabet (Glagolitic). In the early 21st century the modern Macedonian language was spoken by about two million people in the Balkan countries.

What are the features of the Balkan sprachbund?

Several features are found across these languages though not all apply to every single language. The Balkan sprachbund is a prominent example of the sprachbund concept. The languages of the Balkan sprachbund share their similarities despite belonging to various separate language family (genetic) branches.

Who coined the term Balkan language area?

The term “Balkan language area” was coined by the Romanian linguist Alexandru Rosetti in 1958, when he claimed that the shared features conferred the Balkan languages a special similarity. Theodor Capidan went further, claiming that the structure of Balkan languages could be reduced to a standard language.

What languages were influenced by the Balkan languages?

Another language that may have been influenced by the Balkan language union is the Judaeo-Spanish variant that used to be spoken by Sephardi Jews living in the Balkans. The grammatical features shared (especially regarding the tense system) were most likely borrowed from Greek.

What are the loanwords of the Balkan Union languages?

Loanwords. Several hundred words are common to the Balkan union languages; the origin of most of them is either Greek, Bulgarian or Turkish, as the Byzantine Empire, the First Bulgarian Empire, the Second Bulgarian Empire and later the Ottoman Empire directly controlled the territory throughout most of its history,…