No. LV (2024)
Articles

The Atlas of the Balkan Linguistic Area program

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  • Evangelia Adamou,
  • Andrey N. Sobolev
Evangelia Adamou
Oral Tradition Languages and Cultures Lab French National Center for Scientific Research Paris, France
Andrey N. Sobolev
Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2298/BALC2455069A

Published 26.12.2024

Keywords

  • areal linguistic typology,
  • Balkan linguistic area,
  • linguistic databases,
  • linguistic atlases,
  • dialectology,
  • minoritized languages,
  • methods of linguistic research
    • ...More
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How to Cite

Adamou, E., & Sobolev, A. N. (2024). The Atlas of the Balkan Linguistic Area program . Balcanica - Annual of the Institute for Balkan Studies, (LV), 69–84. https://doi.org/10.2298/BALC2455069A

Copyright (c) 2024 Balcanica - Annual of the Institute for Balkan Studies

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This article presents the Atlas of the Balkan Linguistic Area (ABLA), a French-Russian research program that created an online database of language contact phenomena documented in the languages of the Balkans. This resource will be open access after its launch in 2025, enriching the fields of Balkan and areal linguistics. Specifically, ABLA consists of 93 phonological, morpho-syntactic, semantic, and lexical features. Each feature is matched to a map covering 60 localities across Balkan countries. Each map is accompanied by a chapter co-authored by the project contributors. The paper offers some preliminary results for the feature “Infinitive: Forms”. The online database in Wordpress is hosted by Huma-Num in France. ABLA, to be published by de Gruyter, is not only the first online database for the Balkans, an area shaped by multilingualism in forms that are rapidly dis- appearing, but also an example for other linguistic areas in the world.

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