Comparative Syntax of the Balkan Languages (Oxford ... - Cryptm.org

IS BALKAN COMPARATIVE SYNTAX POSSIBLE? 23similarity has long been noted between Albanian and Macedonian regarding thefact that they both have a past perfect consisting of the past tense of 'have' witha (generally passive) participle, Greek can be added to this as well, forexample, Alb kisha lidhure 'I had lied', Grk ixa demeno I had tied',: , and Macimav storeno 'I had made'. However, as Friedman (1983) remarks, "[although]the superficial resemblance between the Macedonian and Albanian forms hasbeen noted at least since Sandfeld, these forms play very different roles in thestructure of their respective languages", especially in terms of the relationship toother verb tenses and formations in each language. Thus there are deeperdifferences in how these forms are embedded in their respective verbal systems,yet such differences are irrelevant to the similarity the forms show in terms ofsurface structure.Such an emphasis on surface structures is really to be expected if the basisfor the spread of such features—that is, the basis for the development of contactinducedareal convergences—is at least limited bilingualism, transfer, and reverseinterference, for surface forms are the point of contact between speakers. Itshould also be noted in this regard that lexical borrowing, which is aquintessentially surface-oriented phenomenon that is widespread in the Balkans,can easily shade off into construction borrowing and thus into the realm ofsyntax. This point can be illustrated by the Greek construction exemplified in(4a) consisting of repetitions of a perfective verb form with the morpheme for'not' sandwiched in between, but with the meaning "whether one VERBs ornot'. This construction, as noted by Banfi (1985.80), occurs with the verb'want' in several Balkan languages, as in (4b), the form being third person pluralin Albanian and the Turkish negation following the usual suffixal pattern for the17language:(4) a. Grk fiji defiji'whether one leaves or not'b. Grk deli de Bell - Blg sre ne sre - Rom vrea nu vrea'whether one wants to or not'= Trk ister isiemez•willingly or not' (lit."want-AORIST.3SG want-NEG.AOR1ST. 3SG")= Alb donin s'donin'whether they want to or not'One interpretation of these facts that suggests itself, in the face of the mild productivityit shows in Greek and the widespread occurrence of the 'want' formation,is that the 'want' construction is the starting point, which has spreadvia loan translation throughout the Balkans; but this borrowing has become thebasis for extension to other verbs, with the result that it has become a syntacticpattern rather just an isolated lexical form. In such a view, it is hard to distinguishsomething that is in essence lexical borrowing of a phrase from theborrowing of what is in essence a syntactic pattern. A surface borrowing canthus have repercussions into and throughout the syntax.