The Palgrave Handbook of Romani Language and Linguistics

Yaron Matras, Anton Tenser, Yaron Matras, Anton Tenser

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030281045
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030281052
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Historical & Comparative Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Romani is the first language, and family and community language, of upwards of 3-4 million people and possibly many more in Europe, the Americas, and Australia. Documentation and research on the language draws on a tradition of more than two centuries, yet it remains relatively unknown and often engulfed by myths. In recent decades there has been an upsurge of interest in the language including language maintenance and educational projects, the creation of digital resources, language policy initiatives, and a flourishing community of online users of the language. This Handbook presents state of the art research on Romani language and linguistics. Bringing together key established scholars in the field of linguistics and neighbouring disciplines, it introduces the reader to the structures of Romani and its dialect divisions, and to the history of research on the language. It then goes on to explore major external influences on the language through contact with other key languages, aspects of language acquisition, and interventions in support of the language through public policy provisions, activism, translation, religious and literary initiatives, and social media. This comprehensive and groundbreaking account of Romani will appeal to students and scholars from across language and linguistics.

© The Author(s) 2020

Y. Matras, A. Tenser (eds.)The Palgrave Handbook of Romani Language and Linguisticshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28105-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Yaron Matras¹ and Anton Tenser^{2, 3}

(1)

School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

(2)

University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

(3)

College of Wooster, Wooster, OH, USA

Yaron Matras (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Anton Tenser

End Abstract

Popular images of the Romani language are often wrapped in the mystique that surrounds perceptions of the Romani people as supposedly hidden, withdrawn, and subversive. There is still widespread belief that Romani is an array of different languages, some of them haphazardly put together as an internal means of communication aimed primarily at concealing interaction from others, lacking in systematicity and drawing on random elements from different sources. Even some contemporary scholars speak occasionally of the ‘myth of the Romani language’ (Canut 2011) or suggest that it might have emerged as a ‘group ritual’ (Willems 1997, p. 83) or an improvised mode of communication ‘created along the trade routes’ (Okely 1983, p. 9). Still widespread is the reference to Romani in the plural, as ‘Romani languages’, despite the fact that already Pott’s (1844–1845) monumental work clearly demonstrated the diachronic unity of Romani and that political efforts since the early 1990s, in particular at the level of European institutions (see Matras 2013, 2015; Halwachs et al. 2013), have recognized the language as a marker of Romani identity and a potential access pathway to education and equal opportunities. Among the aims of this collection is to add yet another reference point to help dispel such myths and give a realistic perspective on Romani. Our principal agenda is to provide an up-to-date, state-of-the-art overview of research into the descriptive-historical linguistics and sociolinguistics of Romani.

Drawing on its early roots in the nineteenth century, the linguistic study of Romani in the first part of the twentieth century produced a number of reference grammars (Sampson 1926; Sergievski 1931; Barannikov 1934) and some substantial, groundbreaking research into historical relations with other Indo-Aryan languages (e.g. Grierson 1908; Woolner 1913–1914; Sampson 1923; Turner 1926; Bloch 1932). Post-war descriptive Romani linguistics saw the completion of a number of doctoral dissertations devoted to local and regional dialects (Kostov 1963; Kenrick 1969; Kochanowski 1963–1964) alongside more descriptive grammars (e.g. Gjerdman and Ljungberg 1963; Pobożniak 1964; Ventcel 1966), and the introduction of a Balkanist areal perspective on Romani (Friedman 1985; Boretzky 1986) as well as interest in contact phenomena and language attrition (Hancock 1970; Kenrick 1979; Boretzky 1985; Igla 1989).

The early 1990s saw growing interest in linguistic typology and the documentation of smaller and endangered languages. It was also the period of dramatic political developments surrounding the fall of communism and the opening of borders, allowing freedom of cultural and political association among the Romani communities of Central and Eastern Europe, and leading to a consequent increase in their public visibility. All this gave a new boost to interest in Romani. A new generation of doctoral dissertations examined typological features now in a theoretically informed perspective (Holzinger 1993; Matras 1994; Halwachs 1998), and new concepts were introduced into the study of contact and Romani-based mixed languages (Bakker and van der Voort 1991; Boretzky and Igla 1994). New forms of participatory research emerged, with linguists supporting language revitalization programmes, the development of literacy and educational resources, Bible translations, and various civil society and activist initiatives. The first International Conference on Romani Linguistics took place in Hamburg in 1993, bringing together specialist researchers from various countries. It has since been convening on a bi-annual basis, the thirteenth such event having taken place in Paris in late 2018. Enabled through grants from national and international research councils and partly in conjunction with a rising number of doctoral dissertations devoted to both individual Romani varieties and comparative studies, Romani has become the subject of considerable digital documentation work. Romlex, an online comparative dictionary of Romani dialects, was launched in 2001. The Romani Morpho-Syntax (RMS) database, launched in 2006, remains one of the most comprehensive online dialectological resources for any language, offering structural sketches of well over a hundred varieties of Romani based on first-hand fieldwork, accompanied by audio files and search functions. The online Atlas of Central Romani combines detailed maps with extensive analytical commentaries on the structural distribution of forms. Online lexical database resources also exist for so-called Angloromani and Scandoromani (the use of Romani-derived lexicon in varieties of English and Scandinavian languages, respectively). Further online resources document Romani language publications and serve as repositories for literacy and education materials in Romani.

In the absence of historical records of the language that pre-date early modern times, the growing corpus of comparative dialect material has allowed researchers to substantially expand our understanding of the historical development of Romani. The study of Romani has also enriched general linguistic discussion. It has had a considerable impact on the study of language contact, in particular the postulation of borrowing hierarchies (see Matras 1998; Elšík and Matras 2006; Elšík 2009; see Matras and Adamou, this volume), and on our understanding of the formation and functions of so-called mixed languages (see Bakker 1998; Matras 2010; see Bakker, this volume). While formal linguistic theory has taken little interest in the language (but see McDaniel 1989), consideration has been given to Romani in various cross-linguistic typological compilations (e.g. van der Auwera 1998; Kortmann 2003; Hansen and de Haan 2009; Boye and Kehayov 2016). Romani linguistics has made prolific contributions to the field of language standardization and language policy, with specialists noting the ‘paradigm shift’ that is exemplified by plurilingual and trans-national standardization practices in Romani (see, e.g., Matras 2015). The geographical diffusion, the impact of contact, and the exceptional historical journey of Romani as an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Europe have prompted attention to Romani in discussions of phylogenetics and the interface of genetics and language (see Pereltsvaig and Lewis 2015).

While anchored primarily in linguistic methodology, contemporary research in Romani linguistics has also informed and engaged with the cross-discipline discussions in the field known more generally as Romani Studies. Work in linguistic ethnography (e.g. Leggio 2015; Abercrombie 2018) lies in the immediate interface of linguistics and anthropology. For many anthropologists, their own knowledge of Romani not only facilitated their immersion in Romani-speaking communities but also opened an avenue towards an interpretation of the symbolic value of particular Romani concepts (see Sutherland 1975; Stewart 1997; Tauber 2006; Engebrigtsen 2007). Other researchers in the social sciences have drawn on epistemological notions from Romani linguistics to address issues such as the performance of identity narratives (Lemon 2000; Silverman 201...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. History
• Part II. Structure
• Part III. Contact
• Part IV. Variation
• Part V. Language Use
• Back Matter