A Balkan View on the Left Periphery: Modal and Discourse Particles

Anna Roussou

doi:10.3390/languages6020075

Abstract

The present paper discusses two sets of so-called particles in the Balkan languages, arguing that the correspondences attested in the E-languages reveal abstract properties at the level of the I-language. The first set involves modal particles which participate in the analytic expressions of the “future” and the “subjunctive”. Future markers are construed as V-related elements externalizing a scope position of the verb, while the subjunctive markers take their features from the nominal set. The second set of data involves the discourse marker “haide” which is argued to externalize features associated with the force of the sentence and its anchoring to the discourse participants. In the case of modal particles, the languages under consideration retain their own lexica, while in the case of the discourse marker, they share the same lexical item (lexical borrowing). Analysis of these phenomena supports an articulated left periphery which also accounts for the similar distribution of the discourse marker “haide”. At the same time, the different externalizations leave room for further microparametric variation.

Highlights

The languages of the Balkans (Greek, Albanian, Balkan Slavic, Balkan Romance, Balkan Romani, and their varieties) show typological similarities, they are not immediately related
The present paper considers these two basic sets of data, namely the modal particles which participate in grammatical relations and the discourse marker “haide” which has expressive content
As pointed out in the preceding section, a common characteristic of the languages of the Balkan peninsula is the use of a “modal particle” for the syntactic expression of the future or the subjunctive/infinitive

Summary

Introduction

The languages of the Balkans (Greek, Albanian, Balkan Slavic, Balkan Romance, Balkan Romani, and their varieties) show typological similarities, they are not immediately related. We will use the term “particle” as a descriptive term that unifies the two sets of morphemes under consideration, bearing in mind that it is used functionally and not formally at this stage Another case arises once we consider the discourse marker “haide” with the following realizations in Bulgarian (Tchizmarova 2005), Romanian In these two sections, the aim is to show that the lexical items under consideration are externalizations of different features associated with the left periphery. Languages 2021, 6, 75 how the various externalizations which reflect “surface similarities” can guide us to obtain a better picture of I-language properties

The Subjunctive and the Future

Modal Particles and the Left Periphery

The Empirical Data

From E-Language to I-Language