BALKAN AND SLAVIC LANGUAGES

This course makes part of the common courses related to the curriculum of international politics. Its purpose is to provide the students with initial methodological instruments in the field of linguistics and philology.
The main objective of this course is to present the complex mosaics of the Slavic and the Balkan languages so that the students can be introduced to the fields of Slavic and of Balkan linguistics.

1. Detailed course objectives
Know and understand linguistic and cultural diversity that characterizes the Slavic and the Balkan area from a comparative point of view.
Learn about the principal characteristic traits of the cultural heritage and the written and oral traditions of the Slavic and the Balkan area.
Learn about the studies on the linguistic and cultural complexity of the Slavic and the Balkan area.

2. Ability to apply knowledge and comprehension
Know how to utilize correctly the linguistic terminology for all the processes that characterize the formation of the Slavic and the Balkan languages and their development.
Reflect upon linguistic variation between the Slavic languages as due to diachronic processes and between the Balkan languages as due to processes of contact.

There are no prerequisites for this course

The program of this course will include discussion of different aspects of the sociolinguistic and multucultural situation of the Slavic and the Balkan linguistic areas. We will consider in detail the Slavic branch of Indo-European: the number of Slavic languages; where they are spoken today and their historical homeland; their relationship to one another according to general principles of classification. As far as the Balkan area is concerned, the course will present and illustrate the numerous linguistic elements that the Balkan languages (Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Macedonian, and Romanian) share in their grammar and cultural vocabulary. The course will also touch upon issues of language contact and the formation of the Balkan Sprachbund as a linguistic phenomenon which constitutes the object of study of Balkan linguistics. The aim of the course is to introduce students to the complexity of the two areas from point of view of their formation via processes of divergence and convergence which have shaped the grammatical system and the lexicon of these languages.

Comrie B. G. Stone, D.Short & G.Corbett "Slavonic Languages" in B. Comrie (ed.) The Major Languages of Eastern Europe. Routledge, London, 1990, pp. 56-143.
Comrie, B. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Syntax and Morphology, B. Blackwell, Oxford, 1981.
Dvornik, F. The Slavs. Their Early History and Civilization, Boston, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1956.
Fici Giusti, F. Le lingue slave moderne, Unipress, Padova 2001
Friedman, V.A. “Grammatical Categories and a Comparative Balkan Grammar,” in Norbert Reiter, ed., Ziele und Wege der Balkanlinguistik (Balkanologische Veröffentlichungen, Vol. 8) (Berlin: Osteuropa-Institut an der Freien Universität Berlin, 1983), pp. 81–98.
Jakobson, R. Slavic Languages. A condensed Survey. Harvard University, King's Crown Press, 1955.
Stankiewicz E., The Slavic Languages. Unity in Diversity, Mouton de Gruyuter, 1986.
Tomic, O. The Balkan Sprachbund properties. An introduction. In: Tomic, O. (ed.) Balkan Syntax and Semantics. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2004.
Tomic, O. Balkan Sprachbund Morpho-syntactic Features. Springer, 2006. Ch. 1 (pp. 1-34). Banfi, E. Linguistica balcanica. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1985.

The students' progress will be verified by way of a written exam. The exam will feature two questions one chosen by the student, and a second one obligatory.

Lectures will be held in the classroom and the students will avail themselves of various materials uploaded in moodle for additional preparation

Italian

written