Why is the definite article in Balkan languages always called a suffix when it really seems to be part of the inflection?

Question

The Scandinavian languages have a suffix definite article which is pretty straightforwardly tacked on to to the ends of nouns: -en, -et.

But in languages of the Balkan Sprachbund, Romanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Albanian it is not so simple.

For some genders in some languages, depending on other attributes of the noun form such as number, it may be a simple tacked on suffix like Romanian masculine singular -ul.

But in most cases it's not simply tacked on at all but just one of several factors that contribute to deciding which inflectional ending to take, such as gender, number, and case.

Typically the result might be that the indefinite vs definite form differ by having different final vowels such as Albanian Tiranë -> Tirana, but there can even be internal changes such as Albanian Shkodër -> Shkodra.

Yet in all these languages it's widespread and seemingly standard to still refer to all of these languages as having a definite article suffix rather than talk about "definiteness" as a noun property. Why?

Answer 1

I don't see why a definite article suffix and "definiteness" as a noun property contradict each other. The "definiteness" is achieved by attaching a suffix morpheme to the indefinite version.

And just to comment on your comparison between Scandinavian languages and e.g. Albanian, I don't see much difference. I know nothing about Albanian, but from your examples, I would assume that '-a' is the definite article suffix, and 'Tiranë -> Tirana' and 'Shkodër -> Shkodra' are results of vowel elision in the last syllable of the stem.

The exact same phonomenon happens in e.g. Danish.

måne -> månen 'moon -> the moon'
morgen -> morgnen 'morning -> the morning'

Answer 2

There's actually been a lot of work on this kind of issue in morphosyntax. I'm not sure exactly what the best starting point is, but you might want to take a look at this Dost/Gribanova WCCFL paper on Bulgarian, since you mention that as one of the languages of interest, and this paper directly addresses the issue of whether definiteness is an "affix". I know there's been some subsequent research on definiteness in several of those languages, but I'm just not as familiar with it, so can't point to it as easily. (But check on google scholar what papers cite this, and cite the Embick & Noyer paper.)

Answer 3

The lines are blurry, but there are some good reasons to see these as distinct suffixes and not inflections:

etymology

Some of the suffixes evolved from previously separate words like determiners and pronouns like ille and tъ. In fact, in Romanian the suffix itself is declined and can also occur separately for emphasis.

grammar

In Macedonian, Bulgarian and Balkan Romance, the suffix is or can be appended not to the noun but to the adjective if there is one, again revealing its origin as a separate word.

morphology

These languages have number and have or had noun case, so there as a separate established notion of what qualifies as noun inflection.

regularity

Unlike with declensions, there really are no internal nor unpredictable changes to the words, occasionally the final portion changes due to elision but that happens in languages where articles precede the noun too.

Western tradition

Definite articles in Western and Central European, Mediterranean and Semitic languages were the obvious analogy, both to the linguists who first worked on this and to the educated speakers of these Balkan languages.

(The neighbouring West Slavic, East Slavic, Finnic, Iranic and now Turkic languages have no definite articles.)

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All that said, it is common to simply avoid the question by referring to the definite forms of a noun for these languages. (That's how Wiktonary declension tables refer to them for Albanian, Armenian and Bulgarian. For Romanian they say definite articulation.)

Although no writing system is phonetic, that is often a local ideal, so where -ë + -a or -ă + -a is pronounced as -a would be, the tendency is to write -a.

Answer 4

As for even more recent work, Harizanov and Gribanova have the following paper: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7473d2rt

It directly addresses those properties of DEF that make it seem both like an "affix" and not like one.

The role of morphological and phonological factors in Bulgarian allomorph selection, with Vera Gribanova. 2011. In Morphology at Santa Cruz: Papers in Honor of Jorge Hankamer, (eds) N. LaCara, A. Thompson, and M. A. Tucker. Santa Cruz, CA: Linguistics Research Center.

Answer 5

In Bulgaria, the definite article did start as a separate word, which loosely translates to "this one". or "he", "she" and "it" for the 3 genders, so Bulgarian ended with different suffixes for each gender.

As example:

котка+тя = котката [kotka + tya = kotkata] {cat+she} FEMALE

куче+то = кучето [kuche + to = kucheto] {dog+it} NEUTRAL

елен+той = еленът [elen + toy = elen't] {deer+he} MALE

кон+той = конят [kon + toy = konyat] {horse+he} MALE

(It seems the ending for male words had been abbreviated to simply the letter T with a vowel between it and the last consonant of the word).

The origin of the article as a separate word is also clearly visible, as stated above, in the way the suffix is added to the adjective before the noun while leaving the noun in its indefinite form, but carrying the gender of the noun. In case of multiple adjectives, only the first one gets the suffix:

голяма+тя бяла котка = голямата бяла котка [goljama+tya byala kotka = golyamata byala kotka] {the big white cat}

In that way Bulgarian is similar to English, German, Spanish, and other European languages where only the first of a series of adjectives is "affected" by the definite article.

Answer 6

I haven't an authoritative answer, but it seems to me that this is mostly because Indo-Europeanists are not used to thinking about "definiteness" as opposed to a "definite article".