This is a final report for a DFG-supported project. This project aimed to model language contact outcomes using the methods of statistical language research, social dialectology, as well as territorial dialectology in situations of unstable bilingualism among Slavic language varieties that show different degrees of structural affinity to the dominant language, that is, Albanian. Three of the Slavic varieties in question are part of the Balkan sprachbund and are therefore structurally closer to Albanian. Additionally, two Štokavian (non-Balkan Slavic) migrational dialects in Albania were researched. The focus was on identifying contact-induced features that would indicate a structural alignment of the varieties under investigation with either the Balkan sprachbund in general or Albanian in particular, with an investigation of how various sociolinguistic parameters in the linguistic biographies of the speakers and the initial structural affinity to the Balkan sprachbund were relevant to the outcomes of the respective contact. This is the first study of Slavic dialects in Albania and one of the few studies of Slavic dialects in general that focuses on their vertical or social continuity—that is, from the more conservative to the more innovative and contact-influenced sociolinguistic groups.

Their contacts with Albanian and other Balkan languages have led to quantitative and qualitative changes in the studied dialects that have been unevenly distributed across speakers due to a number of sociolinguistic factors. In situations where there was variation in the dialect before the contact, contact supported the structures that showed higher structural affinity to the Balkan sprachbund (e.g., the use of subjunctives instead of infinitives). It also led to the grammaticalization of forms not formerly attested in the varieties (e.g., in Štokavian: future marking with the petrified copula and article-like uses of the demonstrative pronouns; in Balkan Slavic, grammaticalization of the progressive aspect through various matter and pattern borrowings from Albanian).

The main instrument that was created during the project is the Corpus of Slavic Dialects in Albania (~600,000 word forms), which also serves language documentation functions, which is especially relevant as one of the dialects went extinct during the project, so the Corpus documents the speech of its last speakers. The Corpus has been made available online. Part of the data included in the Corpus are narratives on the traditional culture and oral history of the respective communities that should be of interest to not only the researchers, but members of the communities, language activists, and the general public.

Another instrument created during the project is a dataset focusing on Balkan and South Slavic causativity marking in the minority dialects of Albania, which moreover collects quantitative data for the first time regarding one of the least-researched Balkanisms, the so-called labile or ambitransitive verbs.

Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) DFG reference number: GZ: MA 8750/1-1, AOBJ: 661378 Project number: 429823235 Project title: Contact-induced language change in situations of non-stable bilingualism—its limits and modelling: Slavic (social) dialects in Albania