Observations on the Functions of the Verbal Person in the Balkan Languages
Abstract
Although the uses of the verbal person in the Balkan languages are indistinguishable from many other languages, they illustrate certain particularities: the diminishing personality between the members within this system allows the third person to express a subject that may be indefinite, or absent, or a non-subject altogether.
Two Balkan areas appear in the domain of the impersonal: the North (Bulgarian and Romanian) and the South (Albanian and Greek): the Southern area does not present any uniqueness. Albanian has parallels with Bulgarian, Romanian with Greek.
We can, however, consider certain features to be specific to Balkan languages: the function of the 2nd pers. sg. “in generic value”; the verb of possession “to have”, used impersonally in the 3rd pers. sg. as a verb of existence and finally, the tendency of grammaticalization of the noun “man” in the expression of impersonality.
In conclusion, in the Balkan languages, the category of the verbal person does not present particularities that reveal the results of any convergence.
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