Resumen de Introduction

Roland Marti, Jirí Nekvapil

• The topic of “Small and Large Slavic Languages in Contact” within the framework of the sociology of language calls for an explanation, particularly regarding the restriction to Slavic languages. The size of linguistic communities has long been recognized as an important factor for survival, elaboration, official recognition, international importance, influence on other languages, etc., even though sheer size isn't everything (cf., e.g., the former position of Flemish in Belgium, long dominated by the numerically inferior French, or the situation of Belarusian in Belarus as described in this issue). On the other hand, it is rather unusual to analyze the quantitative (and power) relationship between languages chosen on the basis of their genetic relationship, that is, the Slavic group of languages within the Indo-European family. There are, however, several reasons that justify this choice.