Montenegrin-Albanian Linguistic Border: In Search of “Balanced Language Contact”

Abstract

The article aims to clarify the notion of “balanced language contact” and to model the situation of a language contact (in the present and the past) in one of the ethnically and linguistically mixed regions of the Montenegrin-Albanian linguistic border. The study focuses on the situation in the bilingual community of thevillageofVelja Gorana, located in the area of Mrkovići inSouthern Montenegro. The community of the village, as it seems at a first glance, provides a good example of a “balanced contact” situation. The language situation in Velja Gorana is described in the article as a set of micro-situations, or scenarios, developing on family and individual levels. Attention is paid not only to the communication in the family domain, but also to the external relations of the community members. Following on from this material, the authors attempt to develop a methodology for assessing the role of both languages in such communities in general, showing which factors influence individual linguistic behavior; how this behavior may change during an individual lifetime; how the different speakers’ strategies amalgamate in what can be considered as behavior of a multilingual speech community. Analyzing the information on the history of Velia Gorana, in particular, conducting a detailed examination of the origins, genealogies and marriage strategies of its families, allows the authors to reconstruct the mechanisms for the development of “linguistic exogamy” in the community of Velja Gorana and to make assumptions about the nature of the contact situation in this region in the past.