Atlas of the Balkan Linguistic Area (ABLA)

The Atlas of the Balkan Linguistic Area is an online database of language contact phenomena as attested in the Balkan languages.

ABLA consists of 100+ phonological, morpho-syntactic, semantic, lexical, and sociolinguistic features. Each feature is matched to a map covering 60 localities and language varieties spoken across all Balkan countries and their periphery. We also provide examples to illustrate each value for each feature. Examples are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) or other Latin-based transcriptions found in the published sources. They are glossed following the Leipzig Glossing Rules. Finally, each map is accompanied by a chapter co-authored by the project contributors.

ABLA is not only the first online database for the Balkans, an area shaped by multilingualism in forms that are rapidly disappearing, but could further serve as an example for other linguistic areas in the world.

Cite: Evangelia Adamou and Andrey Sobolev (Eds.) (2023). Atlas of the Balkan Linguistic Area. https://abla.cnrs.fr/

The online database is hosted by HumaNum.

This research project is funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR-21-CE27-0020) granted to Dr Evangelia Adamou (CNRS) and the Russian Science Foundation (22-48-09003) granted to Dr Andrey Sobolev (Russian Academy of Science) (2022-2025).

The content of this website is licensed under: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

The website was developed by Evangelia Adamou, Tanguy Solliec, and Edouard Sombie. It was created by Volta Jazz.