Methodological considerations

Since Romani is a non-territorial language with discontinuous spread of population, it is not obvious that its dialects should form a geographical continuum. The mobility of Romani communities adds to the difficulty in assigning dialectal features to a particular area. As a result of migrations, it is not unusual for several different dialects to be spoken in one location, or for speakers of a particular dialect to maintain ties with one another, irrespective of their location. Boretzky (1998b) has therefore referred to the dialects of Romani, and to those of the southern Balkans in particular, as ‘insular’ dialects.

There is nevertheless evidence that, at least in some regions, speakers of Romani form social networks with Rom from neighbouring communities in stable settlement patterns, allowing innovations to spread over a geographical continuum in much the same way as is the case in ‘territorial’ languages. In line with the assumptions of the theory of geographical diffusion (based on the earlier ‘wave-theory’), an innovation is introduced in one location, spreading gradually over time and space, creating transitional zones as it advances. Elšík et al.'s (1999) investigation of transitional zones between the Northern Central and Southern Central sub-groups in southern Slovakia illustrates how innovations can be variable in these zones. A typical feature of the Southern Central sub-group is the loss of final -s. In the Northern Central transitional dialects, final -s is lost in some lexemes (dive ‘day’) but not in others.