The paper gives an overview over the most recent results of search for Balkanisms in the area of phonetics of standard languages and local dialects [Friedman, Joseph - in preparation; Sawicka - in preparation]. The phonetic phenomena of interest for the Balkan areal typology are presented: inventories, phonetic context, and frequency are taken under consideration. Areal splits into the Western Balkan, Central Balkan, and Eastern Balkan parts in phonetics are made evident, against the background of morphosyntax and lexicon. The possibility of a holistic typological generalization is questioned. Different phonetic processes in the native and borrowed lexicon are consistently discriminated. Difficulties like explaining phenomena without evident motivation and the donor - recipient problem for contact-induced phonetic phenomena are addressed. Special attention is paid to the research methodology, with very special interest in linguistic geography, dialectology, and anthropological linguistics.

A selection of phenomena to be included in a future pan-Balkan questionnaire and database is discussed, for example word stress, accommodative pronunciation with combinatory palatalisations, vowel reduction, the centralised vowel(s), vocalic clusters, restrictions on the intervocalic occurrence of voiced occlusives (lenition), the loss of [x], consonant clusters, phonologization of new palatalized / palatal sounds, mixing of affricates, consonant and vowel alternations and assimilations, gemination, sandhi phenomena, sentence intonation, etc.

References

Friedman, Victor; Joseph, Brian. The Balkan Languages. Cambridge: Cambrigde University Press. - in preparation.

Sawicka, Irena. Studies in Balkan Phonetics. Warszawa: Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk. - in preparation.