Balkan studies seems alive and well everywhere these days. The abovementioned conference was attended by a number of Bulgarians and Moldovans; Minsk State University has a Balkan studies department. In Minsk, I learned from one of my Moldovan colleagues that Gavril Gajdarzhi passed away recently. Professor Gajdarzhi of Chishinau was one of the world's great Turcologists, a specialist on the Gagauz language and people, a group of Turkic Christians who settled in southern Moldova in the late 19th century. I respectfully acknowledge his contributions to our field in this volume of Balkanistica. A small biography and bibliography of his works appear at the end of this volume.

While at the conference, I was able to establish exchanges of Balkanistica with Minsk State Linguistics University, Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences. These make the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth institutions with which Balkanistica now participates in an exchange of publications. I feel that the gratis exchange of publications with Balkan, European and other institutions is an important means of promoting our fields, heightening the scholarly awareness of Balkanistica and disseminating worldwide the works of our contributing authors. I will continue to encourage these relations. If you have contacts with institutions of this kind which you believe would like to make such an arrangement with Balkanistica, please contact me with details. American and Canadian institutions are asked, of course, to subscribe to the journal to receive it. Please have a look at our website (http://www.olemiss.edu/~mldyer/balk/) to see which these institutions are.

Another sign that Balkan studies is alive and well comes from Brian Joseph in Columbus, Ohio. Professor Joseph reports that the first Kenneth E. Naylor Young Scholar's Prize in South Slavic and Balkan Linguistics has been awarded, in honor of a friend and colleague to many of us, who passed several years ago. In memory of Kenneth E. Naylor, Balkanist and South Slavic linguist par excellence, the Naylor Professorship in South Slavic Linguistics in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University established in 1999 a prize of $500 for the best unpublished paper by a young scholar on a topic in Balkan or South Slavic linguistics. The second such competition is now officially open. For more information, contact Professor Joseph by e-mail at (joseph.1@osu.edu).

The first winner of the Naylor Prize for 2000 is Grant Lundberg of Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah) for his paper "Possible Tonemic Oppositions in Haloze, Slovenia." We are pleased to present Professor Lundberg's paper in this volume of Balkanistica. It appears herein with the slightly modified title "Loss of Tonemic Oppositions in Eastern, Haloze, Slovnia: An Instrumental Study." Volume 14 of Balkanistica, in fact, contains six articles, three review articles and fifteen book reviews. I am proud to say that the topics covered herein are clearly the most diverse of the new volumes of the journal yet. As point of fact, included in this volume are our first articles related to Turkey and Slovenia. I urge you -- and I urge your colleagues through you -- to contribute manuscripts and reviews toward the continued good health of Balkanistica. Books in need of a review are also listed on the website.

Finally, I would like to extend thanks to those who have recently reviewed manuscripts for Balkanistica: Ronelle Alexander, Florian Beiber, Masha Belyavski-Frank, Isa Blumi, Keith Brown, Wayles Browne, Donna Buchanan, Susan Coles-Islam, Elinor Depalatovic, Steven Dickey, Jovan Donev, Ali Eminov, Grace Fielder, Victor Friedman, John Georgeoff, Robert Greenberg, Dejan Guzina, Jane Hacking, Barbara Halpern, Joel Halpern, Dennis Hupchick, Dina Iordanova, Brian Joseph, Kostas Kazazis, Dona Kolar-Panov, Christina Kramer, Lorraine Lees, Mark Levy, Natasha Marguli, Jelena Milojkovic-Djuric, Linda Nelson, Theo Prousis, Barbara Reeves-Ellington, Catherine Rudin, Joe Schallert, Philip Shashko, Gary H. Toops and Cynthia Vakareliyska. Special thanks are due Dennis Hupchick and Cynthia Vakareliyska for their superb editing help with this volume. Until next time ...

Donald L. Dyer, Editor

March 1, 2001, Oxford, Mississippi