Exploring the Parameters of a Central European Sprachbund

This paper sets out a case for identifying a Carpathian Sprachbund comprising Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Kajkavian Croatian, Hungarian, Yiddish and the Bavarian-Austrian dialect of German. It investigates the distribution of eleven possible Sprachbund-forming features: five phonological (absence of tones, initial stress, phonemic opposition of length in vowels, absence of a palatalization correlation, the presence of medial l), six morpho-syntactical (a basic three-tense verbal system, an analytical future formed with an inchoative plus the infinitive, an original perfect as the only simple preterite, a pluperfect formed from a double perfect, a pre-posed definite and indefinite article). The information gathered comfortably satisfies the minimal conditions for establishing the existence of a Sprachbund set out by Sarah Grey Thomason, W.P. Schmid and others. The levels of participation of the individual languages also seem to be commensurable with those of the languages of the well known Balkan Sprachbund as set forth by Jouko Lindstedt

Czech · German · Germanic languages · Infinitive · Linguistics · Phonology · Slovak · Verb · Language and Culture · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Mathematics · Philosophy · Romani and Gypsy Studies

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