Languages of Europe

Language expertise: 

Bulgarian – Spanish – Estonian – Finnish – French – Greek – Nashta – Northern Sami – Occitan – Polish – Pomak – Romani – Romanian – Scottish English – Serbian – Skolt – Vlach

Carte langues étudiées sur le continent européen

Fig. – The European languages studied at LACITO
(see this page for a key to symbols, and for access to LACITO’s global map)

The Lacito researchers are working on languages and oral tradition in the Balkans.

Our linguistic research on the Balkan Sprachbund investigates both the standard languages (Bulgarian, Greek, Romanian) and the oral varieties (Greek, Slavic, Aromanian and Vlach, Arvanite and Romani) spoken in Bulgaria, Greece and Northern Serbia.

Balkans

Lacito Balkan Languages
(Standard languages in yellow ; among the vernacular: in Pink Greek,
in Green Romani, in Blue Nashta and Pomak, in Purple Arvanite and in Orange Vlach)

Some of the specific themes currently being explored by Lacito members are:

1. Description of Balkan languages

Adamou (Evangelia), 2006, Le Nashta. Description d’un parler slave de Grèce en voie de disparition, München, Lincom Europa (Languages of the World/Materials 456), 109 p. (see here)
Petrovic-Rignault (Marijana), Description syntaxique et sémantique du valaque (un parler daco-roumain de Serbie), PhD, December 6, 2008.
Valma (Eleni), 2004. L’expression de la causalité en français et en grec moderne – étude contrastive. Université Paris VII – Denis Diderot, sous la dir. de Z.Guentchéva, 10 mai 2004.
— 2011. Etude à visée typologique des conjonctions causales en grec moderne – comparaison avec le français. München: LINCOM Studies in Language Typology. 120p. (présenté here)

2. Contribution of Balkan languages to typological studies

    • Typology of reflexive, middle and reciprocal constructions
    • Aspect, tense and grammaticalization
    • Clitic doubling phenomena

    Valma (Eleni). 2009, Étude morphosémantique du futur en parlers grecs de la Bulgarie, Contrastive Linguistics 3 : 25-40.

    3. Language contact

    • ANR EuroSlav 2010 Program (here)
    • ANR Clapoty Program (here in French)
    • Federation of Typology and Linguistic Universals Programs

    4. Orale tradition 

    Colombel V. de & Micheline Lebarbier (sous la dir.), 2008, Étapes de la vie et tradition orale. Conceptions universelles et expressions particulières, Paris, Peeters (SELAF 450 – Numéros spéciaux 34), 320 p.(here)

    5. Collaborative research

    This research is carried out in part in collaboration with the Department of General and Balkan Linguistics at the Sofia University (Prof. Petya Assénova and Prof. Vassilka Aleksova) through research collaboration agreements (Balkan dialects in Bulgaria, 2005-2006 “Rila”in French).

    Other collaborative programs include the University of Trondheim (Prof. Mila Dimitrova-Valchanova), the University of Venice (Prof. Iliyana Krapova) and the Balkanology Department of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Prof. Biljana Sikimić).

    Other collaborative projects
    Lost in intonation: the interaction of intonation and meaning in the speech of L1, L2 and heritage speakers of Greek and its implications for cross-cultural communication and education (2009-2010)
    Resp. Marina Terkourafi (University of Illinois) – Participant Lacito : Evangelia Adamou

    Invited conference speakers

    • 2 October 2008
      Brian Joseph – On the Need for History in Doing Balkan Linguistics (handout pdf )