Days 1 and 2

I just set the schedule yesterday, and I am already rethinking some of it. I was going to present on vocabulary at the Midwest Slavic Conference, but it looks like I might be able to present on some of the verbs that I had been working on up until last week. I still haven't heard back from the conference organizers, so I'm not certain that that's what I will be doing.

What have I been doing?

Today I spent the morning putting my data into shape so that I could analyze it through the statistical and programming software R. But, since I haven't used it for about a year and a half, I need some time to remember how to use it!

One of my current projects is working through Gunnar Svane's book Slavische Lehnwörter im Albanischen (Slavic Loanwords in Albanian). Like my skills with R, my skills with German are not in full gear, so it is a bit of a project. Anyways, it seems to be a really valuable tool for my research. Since I might not be presenting on vocabulary in the next couple of weeks, I'll probably put it on hold once I finish the introduction (maybe tomorrow?).

My other project is working on Turkish with my friend Josh. He's off to Turkey soon, so we're trying to study every day. It's good to revisit Turkish, just one other language tool to shake the rust off. I am so lucky to be working with languages day in and day out!

Writing Schedule

To this point I have written about:

Introduction (Dissertation Prospectus)

(Ch. 6) Perfects and Preterites in Dialects of Serbian, Montenegrin, Macedonian, and Albanian

Partially written:

(Ch. 2) Language Contact Theory - from presentations at the American University in Kosovo

(Ch. 4) Phonology - in Zeitschrift für Balkanologie 46/2 (2010), 155-183.

(Ch. 5) Morphology - likewise in ZfB 46/2

(Ch. 7) Results of the Modified Perfect Questionnaire (MPQ)

(Bibliography)

To be written:

(Ch. 1) Historical and Sociolinguistic Setting and Scholarship

(Ch. 3) Lexicon (Vocabulary) - although this is what I am presenting on at the Midwest Slavic Conference, April 14-16, 2011

(Ch. 8) Conclusions

Target dates for completions:

Introduction: April 2011

Ch. 1: Feb. 2012

Ch. 2: Mar. 2012

Ch. 3: May 2011

Ch. 4: Oct. 2012

Ch. 5: Nov. 2012

Ch. 6: completed Dec. 2010

Ch. 7: Dec. 2011

Ch. 8: April 2012

Dissertation defense: May 2012

About the dissertation

Research Question

The question I am seeking to answer is "What have ethnic relations been like between Slavs and Albanians during the middle ages" and "What can the state of languages, as they are now, tell us about the cultures in the past."

Approach

There are many ways to investigate languages. This project looks at language as something of a cultural artifact - as an insight into the populations that use the languages. In particular I am looking at how languages have influenced each other - what parts of Albanian are in Slavic dialects and what parts of Slavic are in Albanian dialects, etc. Taking into account many different parts of the languages: vocabulary (Lexicon), sounds (Phonetics and Phonology), roots, prefixes, and suffixes (morphology), and grammar (Syntax), I want to understand how the language communities have influenced each other.

Why does this matter?

I think it depends on who you are. This topic has political and strategic significance in that Slavic and Albanian populations have been sources of conflict that have required international intervention in Kosovo, and Western Macedonia in the past 15 years. Understanding the relationships between these communities over the past several centuries is likely to help in finding places of mutual interests and hopefully build dialogue for future, peaceful, collaboration.

This dissertation also aims to contribute to the scholarship on Slavic and Albanian languages. Serbian, Macedonian, and Albanian have strong traditions for the scholarship on individual languages. Sometimes the aspect of how they relate to neighboring languages is poorly represented. In the same vein, dialects, and varieties of these language in general are poorly represented, and I hope that this scholarship will provide ways for appreciating the variety found in the dialects. Finally, these are also areas that are poorly represented in English literature, so I hope that my dissertation can also be a helpful tool for English language researchers, and other scholars who work with English to be able to access the work of scholars in Serbian, Macedonian, Albanian, Russian, German, etc.

Finally, why does it matter to me? In addition to what I have written above, as I am concerned with the politics and scholarship on the Balkans, I have a personal interest in these communities. I have been so blessed with good friendships in all of the countries that I have visited. This is certainly not a matter of choosing which side I am on, but rather on trying to reconcile conflicting perspectives about language, history, and communities, that I hope I can contribute to friendly relations in the future.

Turning a New Page

Today I am turning a new page in my research, and I want to keep track of how I am doing it. This is my first day on a Presidential Fellowship at the Ohio State University to write up my dissertation: Slavic-Albanian Language Contact, Convergence, and Coexistence. I am creating this blog as a way of organizing my thoughts, as well as documenting the work that I am doing. I don't know that this will be of any interest to others, but I am going to use it as a work log to show what I am doing.

Soon I will add details about what I am doing: Prospectus, Introduction, references, chapters, maybe even notes of things that I am reading from, as well as a schedule of when I am hoping to get other things completed related to the dissertation.

In addition to writing about writing my dissertation, I hope to write (perfectively) the dissertation in the process.