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

36BRIAN D. JOSEPH(14)PositiveNegative (= Neg + Positive)1SG2SG3SGeniesien i1PL2PL3 PLerneet n ein "i1SG2SG3SGoni6 sion 'i1PL2PL3 PLome6t h eun 7The synchronic negator o derives from earlier u (Ancient Greek < ou >) andmost likely was extracted out of a contraction of/u/ plus vowel-initial forms ofverbs (e.g., auxiliaries in the present and imperfect tenses, the prefixed"augment" past tense marker in the simple past). Thus the contraction in thenegative forms is regular diachronically, deriving from */u + e/ and 3PL */u +i/, and for all but the third person plural form is synchronically regular also as /o+ e/; but for the third person plural form, the contraction is not regularsynchronically, for /o + i/ would not be expected to yield [u]. Similarly, reducedforms of 'be' show synchronic irregularities: the third person singular positiveform is en or n, but the corresponding negative is 6, with no [n].It must be concluded, therefore, that these facts concerning negative fusionin the Balkans are interesting from the perspective of the "linguistics of theBalkans" or the "comparative syntax of the Balkans" but not from the perspectiveof "Balkan linguistics" or "comparative Balkan syntax." Each languagereveals an interesting phenomenon, but its occurrence in each language need notbe attributed to language contact in any form and thus is not immediatelyrelevant to the concerns of the investigation of the Sprachbund as a contactinducedphenomenon.5. ConclusionThe extended examples in the previous section show the virtues of keeping bothtypes of pursuits in mind, and, clearly, researchers must be cognizant of both.Both enrich our understanding of language in general and of the languages in theBalkans specifically. The more we know about language in general, the betterable we are to judge the particulars of the languages of the Balkans, both interms of how these languages fit into the general domain of natural humanlanguages and in terms of how they fit into the more specific domain of "Balkanlanguages." Moreover, the two approaches work well together: pursuing thecomparative syntax of Balkan languages identifies possible candidates forcomparative Balkan syntax, and when working in the Balkans one must alwayskeep the Sprachbund in mind, even if we end up learning more about individuallanguages when we feel free to reject language contact and focus just on thelanguage-internal syntax of one language in comparison with the languageinternalsyntax of another.