The Circum-Baltic Languages (review)

These twin volumes grew out of a six-year research program entitled ‘Language typology around the Baltic Sea’, sponsored by the Faculty of Humanities at Stockholm University and directed by one of the editors (Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm). They seek to unite the broad sweep characteristic of typological inquiries with the finer-grained detail typical of language contact studies. While K-T concedes that Circum-Baltic (CB) languages are not a true Sprachbund, she emphasizes that the contact situation in northeastern Europe has never been assessed holistically because the languages spoken there have traditionally been the domain of separate disciplines founded on genetic lines. Many facets of the historical interaction between the CB Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, and Finnic languages have therefore never received the attention they deserve.

Vol. 1 surveys individual CB languages from a historical perspective, with special attention to dialects and geographically minor language forms which exhibit some of the most interesting contact-induced features. Chapters by Laimute Balode and Axel Holvoet cover Latvian (3–40) and Lithuanian (41–80); ValeriyČekmonas discusses contact phenomena involving the rural Russian dialects of Old Believers in the Baltic during Tsarist times (81–100) and nineteenth-century Russian as spoken in Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius (101–36). Anne-Charlotte Rendahl examines Swedish dialects of the Baltic littoral, including the once substantial Livonian Swedish population (137–78). Johanna Laakso surveys Finnic languages (179–212). These articles mainly focus on typological features of special significance for language contact and dialect genesis.

Östen Dahl’s ‘The origin of the Scandinavian languages’ (215–35) gathers evidence to argue that Danish influence beginning in late Roman times homogenized previously differentiated local Germanic dialects across Scandinavia by circa 600 AD. To drive this point home, the conclusion of D’s convincing proposal is subtitled ‘Why do Swedes speak Danish?’ (231). The prevailing hypothesis hitherto was that the small, scattered Nordic settlements in pre-Viking times somehow managed to maintain strong linguistic unity over several centuries despite desultory mutual contact.

Other entries explore specific contact situations. Lars-Gunnar Larsson investigates Baltic contact features in Finnic (237–53). Stefan M. Pugh explores the role of contact in the formation of Karelian (257–70). Éva Ágnes Csató’s ‘Syntactic code-copying in Karaim’ (271–83) discusses northern Europe’s only long-established Turkic speech community, with 200 speakers in Lithuania. There are also articles on Baltic forms of Yiddish both past and present (285–311, Neil G. Jacobs), North Russian Romani (313–37, Aleksandr Yu.Rusakov), and CB features in Pskov-Novgorod Russian (339–59, Valeriy Čekmonas).

Most of the articles in the second volume deal with specific phonological, morphological, or syntactic features that developed in a single language due to contact or have come to be shared by more than one language. Many focus on typologically interesting features of the languages under consideration. These include passive and impersonal constructions in Baltic and Finnic (363–90, Axel Holvoet), nominative objects in East Baltic (391–412, Vytautas Ambrazas), Latvian and Livonian verbal particles (413–42, Bernhard Wälchli), Estonian verb aspect (443–80, Helle Metslang), Latvian and Estonian nominal morphosyntax (481–98, Baiba Metuzāle-Kangere and Kersti Boiko), and the Baltic and Finnic genitive (499–520, Simon Christen). Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm discusses partitive and pseudo-partitive nominal constructions (523–68), Leon Stassen non-verbal predication (569–90), and T...