In this text I try to present formal and functional picture of the preposition ‘vo’ in the Macedonian dialects. Also, I show the geographic distribution of the preposition ‘u’ (with the meaning at, beside). This helps to see how the prepositions ‘vo’ and ‘u’ are spread over the Macedonian dialectal territory, and also to see their formal and functional distribution.

The prepositions ‘vo’ and ‘u’ are among the differential features that divide the western dialectal complex from southeastern dialectal complex. The two maps show that borders of their territories mainly correspond with the dialectal borders of two dialectal complexes.

Regarding their functional fields – in the frames of the spatial relations (static vs. dynamic) both forms cover same fields. Thus, regarding static relation, both ‘vo’ (western complex) and ‘u’ (southeastern and northern complex) are used as markers of the position of the localized object regarding the localizer, i.e. the situations where a localized object takes part of the space determined by the localizer. Regarding the dynamic relation, we can see the same results, i.e. both ‘vo’ and ‘u’ are used as markers of the adlative relation (goal) which is the approximation of the localized object to the inside or inside borders of the localizer.

The authors analyze the new book The place of the Macedonian phonetics within the Slavic and Balkan linguistic area from Irena Sawicka and Anna Cychnerska. The book is trying to shed new light on the place of Macedonian phonetics regarding its Slavic heritage and also regarding the contact changes that appeared during development of the Macedonian language in the Balkan linguistic league. Their research is conducted on Macedonian dialects represented in Common linguistic atlas (OLA) and in Phonological bases of the Macedonian dialects from B. Vidoeski. In their book, Sawicka and Cychnerska state that they use diachronic data, but their main goal is to present selected synchronic features from the Macedonian phonetics. They explain most of the phonetic features in Macedonian from an areal-typological aspect with special emphasis on the Balkan convergences. The authors of the book state that the Macedonian phonetic should be included in southwest type of Slavic phonetics. They conclude that the modern form of Macedonian phonetic, to large extent, was influenced by areal position of the Macedonian language and to its development in the Balkan multilingual territory.