The grammaticalization of an indefinite article in Slavic micro-languages

Abstract

The present paper shows that full-fledged indefinite articles with referential, non-referential and generic functions have developed in two Slavic minority languages in total language contact, Molise Slavic (Southern Italy) and Colloquial Upper Sorbian (Eastern Germany). Language contact provided the impetus for this development against the resistance of a diachronic constant of Slavic that prevents the development of article systems outside contact situations. Language contact was also responsible, on the whole, for the specific structures of the article systems concerned, with a grammaticalized definite article only in Colloquial Upper Sorbian following the German model, whereas in the case of Molise Slavic, the structural conditions of Italian – with the absence of an ambiguity between a demonstrative pronoun and the definite article – prevented the development of a definite article. This means that the specific contact situation of this minority language provoked the violation of a supposed universal implication for the chronology of the development of articles, i.e. the emergence of a definite article before a (fully developed) indefinite article.