Evangelia Adamou, senior researcher, LACITO CNRS, Paris, France Andrey N. Sobolev, chief researcher, ILI RAN, St. Petersburg, Russia  
Title: Atlas of the Balkan Linguistic Area 

The paper presents a new French-Russian collaborative research project entitled “Atlas of the Balkan Linguistic Area” (ABLA). The project will build an online database of language contact phenomena as attested in the Balkan languages ​​and contribute to theoretical discussions in areal linguistics. ABLA will consist of more than 100 phonological, morpho-syntactic, semantic, and lexical features, drawing on a questionnaire. Each feature will be matched to a map covering more than 70 localities across all Balkan countries.     Each map will be accompanied by a chapter co-authored by the project contributors. The linguistic features in various languages ​​and dialects will be related to the socio-historical information available. The concept of “linguistic area” (Sprachbund) will be critically addressed among other important issues. Is it perhaps more accurate to say that, rather than a homogeneous linguistic area, one could identify a number of small linguistic areas that compose the larger Balkan linguistic area? We claim, that the Balkans are best understood as a socio-political and cultural area where people share a century-long common history and where multilingualism was widespread and constant over time. And we prefer to pay attention to the processes of convergence and relate them as much as possible to specific socio-cultural contact processes. The online database will be hosted by HumaNum via the Pangloss Collection. ABLA will not only be the first online database for the Balkans, an area shaped by multilingualism in forms that are rapidly disappearing, but will further serve as an example for other linguistic areas in the world.