Balkan tongues

[Mike Morgan]

Dave Kaufman asked:

> Is Bulgarian the only Slavic language to have articles?  I've studied
Russian, which of course has
> no articles, and I'm thinking most of the other Slavic tongues don't
either, with the exception of
> Bulgarian.  Was Bulgarian the only Slavic language to be so influenced by
this Romance and Greek
> trait of having articles?

Macedonian also has articles (with the literary dialect actually having a
triple series - parallel to the triple series of demonstratives). Of course,
some (Bulgarians mostly?) would argue that Macedonian is JUST a dialect of
Bulgarian. And the same MIGHT be said for the Prizren Serbian (bordering on
Macedonian), which is reported (e.g. p. Comrie & Corbett, 386) to have
widespread postposed articles.

In South Slavdom, but outside what would normally be thought of as the
Balkan Sprachbund area, we also find both definite and indefinite articles
(en and ta, respectively) in Slovene (although discouraged in the literary
language) (ibid, p. 411). It must also be said that these articles are pre-
rather than postposed. (We also have the theoretical issue of whether we can
really justify a separate category of articles in Slovene, since they appear
NOT to be formally distinguished from the demonstrative adjectives.)

And clearly far outside the Balkan Sprachbund area, postposed articles are
ALSO found in SOME northern Russian dialects. (Sorry, I tried to track down
a source - other than my aging memory of years long gone when I was an
active Slavicist - but came up blank.)

Sources cited:

Comrie, Bernard & Greville G Corbett (1993) The Slavonic Languages. London &
New York: Routledge.

Mike Morgan
Kobe City University of Foreign Studies
Mike.Morgan at mb3.seikyou.ne.jp

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