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INTRODUCTION
This special issue of Linguistica features a collection of articles dealing with the mor-
phology of South Slavic Languages. The idea behind the volume came from a work-
shop we organized in the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, in June 2019, which 
brought to light various intriguing issues relating to the morphology of the South Slavic 
languages. This, in combination with the fact that there is no other article collection 
dedicated to South Slavic morphology, makes the current volume a unique contribution 
to the topic.
The South Slavic languages belong to the Slavic language family and form a dia-
lectal continuum. They are further divided into West (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian and 
Slovenian) and East (Bulgarian and Macedonian) subgroups. Some of them are part of 
the Balkan sprachbund and thus share features with non-Slavic languages spoken in 
the Balkans. The languages discussed in this volume present a variety of issues relating 
to morphology and its interaction with other domains of grammar such as phonology 
and syntax. 
The six articles in this special issue examine a range of morphological phenom-
ena either in a cross-linguistic manner across the South Slavic languages (Arsenijević; 
Wumbrandt et al.) or focus on a specific linguistic phenomenon in a single language, 
such as Bulgarian (Popova/Spencer), Croatian (Petrak) and Slovenian (Simonović; 
Simonović/Mišmaš). The frameworks used by the authors are diverse and so are their 
approaches to morphology and its interplay with syntax, semantics and phonology. 
They either contribute new theoretical insights or provide new descriptive evidence and 
theoretical argumentation for existing analyses.
The individual contributions are presented in alphabetical order. Boban Arse­
nijević’s article deals with -ie nominalizations across the South Slavic languages. 
He proposes a new analysis of the phenomenon, taking into account the prosodic 
as well as semantic properties of the roots which combine with this suffix. Marta 
Petrak elaborates on the phenomenon of loan affixes in Croatian and provides a 
diachronic as well as synchronic analysis of the prefix među-. Inflectional mor-
phology, and more specifically the expression of volitional mood, is the topic of 
Geri Popova’s and Andrew Spencer’s article; the authors examine the inflectional 
and analytic forms of expressing volitional mood using the concept of periphrasis, 
basing their account on data from Bulgarian. Marko Simonović proposes a new 
analysis of stress assignment in Slovenian deadjectival and deverbal nominaliza-
tions. He focuses on the suffixes’ influence on stress assignment in Slovenian and 
proposes, within a Distributive Morphology framework, that the affixes involved in 
these nominalizations should be treated as roots. Similarly, Marko Simonović and 
Petra Mišmaš combine Distributive Morphology and Optimality Theory to ana-
lyze the suffix -ov- in Slovenian, providing a unified account of an affix which has 
traditionally been considered polysemous. Finally, Susi Wumbrand, Iva Kovač, 
Magdalena Lohninger, Caroline Pajančič and Neda Todorović revisit the is-
sue of finiteness in South Slavic complement clauses, a topic which touches upon 
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morphology, syntax and semantics, and contribute both interesting cross-linguistic 
data and an innovative analysis.
All papers were subject to rigorous, double-blind review; they received comments 
from expert peer reviewers and were further read by the editors. We are grateful to the 
following colleagues who acted as reviewers and contributed to the realization of this 
volume: Bożena Cetnarowska, Antonio Fábregas, Valentin Gusev, Sabina Halupka-
Rešetar, Nikos Koutsoukos, Franc Marušič, Tatjana Marvin, Bożena Rozwadowska, 
Florian Schaefer, Marko Simonović, Penka Stateva, and Rok Žaucer.
The Editors
Ljubljana, November 2020
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