Our long-awaited Round-Table Workshop took place on 5th of November 2021 in the historical building of the University of Zurich. The range of topics was very broad, and we can be only happy, that we used the available time for the Workshop up to its limits. We and our invited guests presented various types of corpora, not limited to Slavic and Romance varieties, as well as a great variety of methods working with them.
Dr. Magdalena Abadzhieva provided the audience with an introduction into Catholic Bulgarian literature, which represents an understudied phenomenon. A major figure of this tradition, Petăr Carski, translated various texts from Italian and Croatian into a Paulician dialect, producing unique booklets, dedicated to individual persons. These provide a remarkable source for further studies.
Dr. Maxim Makartsev presented some insights gained from his extensive field work in Albania and adjacent areas, studying recent language changes in local Slavic and Romance dialects. His detailed overview showed the dynamics of both autochthonous dialects, showing more Albanisms, and immigrant dialects from Sandžak, which, on the other hand, show more features typical of the Balkan Sprachbund.
Prof. Evangelia Adamou discussed the major question concerning all studies of language contact – namely, the nature of this contact. Focusing on varieties of Romani in multiple countries, a difference could be observed between persisting contact-induced changes and dynamic changes, more typical of individual bilinguality. Ethnic consciousness and education showed themselves to have a profound influence on the results.
Members of the Working Group Romanoslavica also presented their data: dialectal sources of Istrian Romance varieties, collected by Alberto Giudici, and a browser for historical literature designed by Ivan Šimko and Olivier Winistörfer.
PowerPoint slides of all presentations can be downloaded here.