Conflicting Nationalist Discourses in the Balkan Slavic Language Area

Abstract

The Balkan Slavic language area forms the south-eastern part of the South Slavic dialect continuum. This area consists of the Bulgarian and Macedonian languages and the south-eastern dialects of Serbian (the Torlak or Prizren-Timok dialects). As all the Balkan Slavic dialects are part of the Balkan linguistic area,1 the external boundaries of the Balkan Slavic area can be defined in terms of certain structural features, which are referred to as Balkanisms. The important Balkanisms in Balkan Slavic are the loss of the infinitive, the loss of case declension, and the use of enclitic definite articles. In addition to the Balkan Slavic languages, the Balkan linguistic area encompasses the Balkan Romance languages, Greek, Albanian, and the Vlax and Balkan dialects of Romani (Lindstedt 2000; Asenova 2002).