Bulgarian Language Islands on the Balkans

The main topic of this article is to illustrate language contacts and the language innovations they give rise to, by presenting data on the dialect of the Bulgarian Paulicians living in Serbian Banat. Isolated from the main language territory and surrounded by tree different languages (Romanian, Hungarian and Serbian) this form of Bulgarian language is an example of a language island. The analysis of the grammar features of the dialect show that archaic characteristics have not been preserved, but as a result of bilingualism, new features have been developed