Initial and non-initial clusters of a nasal sonant and homorganic stop in the Balkan languages

Abstract

The Balkan Sprachbund is a linguistic community which is defined by morph syntactic features. However it also has some phonetic peculiarities of which the most specifies ones are: 1. traces of the occurrence in all "proper" Balkan languages of the common phoneme (a nasal shwa) in Medieval Ages, and 2. specific functioning of the clusters containing a nasal sonant and a homorganic occlusive. The second feature is constituted by a set of various phenomena (quite trivial, as well as very unusual ones) which occur in Greek, Albanian, Macedonian, Italian, Rumanian. Processes regarding these clusters are extremely concentrated in the area of the central-western part of the Balkan Sprachbund. The common denominator of these - sometimes very different phenomena - is a tendency towards monophonemic value of the clusters in question. As a result of such a tendency an enormous number of options occur in the Balkan dialects - where clusters very often function as facultative realizations of voiced stops, or vice versa. The most unusual feature - when we regard it in European perspective - is the occurrence of the NT clusters at the beginning of words.

Balkanski jezički savez je jezička zajednica koja je određena morfosintaksičkim obeležjima. Za nju su, ipak, karakteristične i neke fonetske osobenosti, od kojih su najspecifičnije sledeće: 1. u "pravim" balkanskim jezicima postoje tragovi zajedničke foneme (nazalno šva) iz srednjeg veka, 2. specifičan način funkcionisanja klastera s nazalnim sonantom i homorganičkim okluzivom. Ovu drugu crtu konstituiše grupa fonetskih pojava koje se sreću u grčkom, albanskom, makedonskom, italijanskom i rumunskom, posebno u zapadnom delu centra balkanskog jezičkog saveza. Tim ponekad vrlo različitim fenomenima zajednička je tendencija ka upotrebi datih klastera u monofonemskoj vrednosti. Posledica te tendencije je veliki broj mogućnosti koje se sreću u pomenutim balkanskim jezicima, gde dati klasteri često funkcionišu kao zvučni završeci ili vice versa. Gledajući iz evropske perspektive, najneobičnija crta je pojavljivanje tih klastera na početku reči.