Studies in Balkan Phonetics

Abstract

This work is devoted to phonetic phenomena occurring in the languages and dialects which belong to the so-called Balkan Language League. The author accentuates, firstly, common phenomena, i.e. those that can be referred to as Balkanisms, and, secondly, the mechanisms of convergence in a multilingual environment. The work also identifies the centre and periphery of the Balkan Language League in terms of phonetics. The central area of Balkan phonetics overlaps with the area where convergence processes are still ongoing, also in the domain of morphosyntactic features, but the periphery is different. It is the only comprehensive study of Balkan phonetics from an areal perspective, although, due to the specificity of the phenomena under discussion, it focuses on areas with the strongest convergence.