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The position of Albanian
The Position of Albanian
Eric P. Hamp, University og Chigaco
(Ancient IE dialects, Proceedings of the Conference on IE linguistics held at the University of California,
Los Angeles, April 25-27, 1963, ed. By Henrik Birnbaum and Jaan Puhvel)
1. It is fashionable at conferences to come out with no clear affirmative assertion, but rather with a statement of all the many difficulties. While I have no taste for fashion, this should prove a fashionable paper, on this ground if on no other. It is often hard enough to say conclusively where the IE features of Albanian lie, let alone to identify them unambiguously and assign them to a restricted relationship of shared innovation. This is not to say that things are as G. Meyer is all too well known to have put it; there is plenty of good Indo-European material in Albanian but it is often ambiguous and represented by small numbers of examples for each feature and combination.
Furthermore, I am not yet in a position to say what I hope will be possible when the dialect materials from most enclaves have been sifted and compared. This applies particularly to the verb.
There are also relative unknowns that are important in the total question on which I do not feel adequately informed to hold a worthwhile opinion: Thracian, with Deev's bewildering material, is the notable example here.
2. There are ways in which our subject has been synthesized in the past that lighten our task somewhat: N. Jokl (Eberts Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte; articles "Albaner," "Illyrier," and "Thraker") gives a very just review; but he does nonetheless have his point of view. W. Porzig (Die Gliederung des indogermanischen Sprachgebiets [Heidelberg, 1954]) gives a fair and fairly complete summary, but he has no incisive point of view. Moreover, there has been a good bit of activity recently, for such a small field, and I have tried to sift through the output as fully as I could. Thus I hope to reach a fair degree of completeness in reporting, although, I suppose, at the same time some of my prejudices will show through.
3. When one looks over the ground to be covered, it seems that our subject falls naturally into three parts: the geographic position of Albanian in the Balkans; the corpus, location, and relations of Illyrian, Thracian, and their congeners; and the genetic ties of Albanian to its sister IE subgroups. These, in fair part, match three rather separate fields of expertise: "Balkan linguistics"; Classical linguistics, philology, and epigraphy; and Indo-European studies in the traditional sense. No one can be equally competent in all.
4. On the question of the earlier location of the Albanians, there is a good summary and batch of references in A. Rosetti, Istoria limbii romīne. II. Limbile bakanice3 41-44 (Bucureti, 1962). Rosetti, however, mistakenly repeats the myth that some Tosk dialects show Geg characteristics, thus pointing, allegedly, to a more recent dialect split. The isogloss is clear in all dialects I have studied, which embrace nearly all types possible. It must be relatively old, that is, dating back into the post-Roman first millennium. As a guess, it seems possible that this isogloss reflects a spread of the speech area, after the settlement of the Albanians in roughly their present location, so that the speech area straddled the Jireek line.
In this context it is possible to find almost every opinion. Many agree that Albanian lacks an old maritime terminology, yet D. Deev (Charakteristik der thrakischen Sprache 113 [Sofia, 1952]) thinks they have had it and lost it!
More positively, one may say that the mere absence of inherited maritime vocabulary can prove nothing. Recently, however, E. Ēabej (VII Congresso intemacionale di scienze onomastiche, 4-8 Aprile 1961, 248-249) has argued for the actual presence, insufficiently noticed heretofore, of certain preserved old terms. But it seems to me that these are for the most part inconclusive in themselves: dt 'sea' (related to 'deep') could refer to any deep water; vā 'ford, anchorage', mat 'beach' valė 'wave' could be applied to various bodies of water. A word like grykė 'narrows' is an easy metaphor ('throat'); anķ ( : an(ė) 'vessel') and some names of parts of boats (ballė 'forehead', pėlhurė 'sail', shul 'mast', lugatė 'rudder', belonging with lugė 'spoon') are also easily understood as metaphors; likurishtė 'polyp' (cf. likurė 'skin') and many other names, often fairly transparent compounds (p. 249), are descriptive and could presumably have arisen in their attested uses at almost any time. The word ngjalė 'eel' < *engella, even if related correctly to Illyrian 'EggelaneV, does not necessarily presuppose the sea. Thus, we still lack a demonstrated body of native marine morphemes, with no other morphological or semantic connections in the language to make transfer possible. For such an argument, only isolated forms will be convincing.
Even recent history is checkered: Shqiptar first appears in the fourteenth century. Albi occurs in an Angevin document of 1330; according to Ptolemy, in the second century the Albanoķ lived around Albanópolis (Kruja), where the ethnic has been recorded in modem times. The enclaves of Italy and Greece, to the extent that they use a traditional name, use this term: arbrésh (e.g., Vaccarizzo Albanese), arbėrķshte (Greece). The earlier data are rehearsed, with references, in H. Bari's Lingvistike studije (Sarajevo, 1954; abbr. LS), and Hmje nė historķn e gjuhės shqipe 7 (Prishtinė, 1955; abbr. Hymje; = trans. Istorija arbanakog jesika 30 [Sarajevo, 1959]).
The question of the names Elbasan, Arbėni, Albanopolis, Shqipėtar, Shqipėri is discussed at length, but somewhat inaccessibly, in Dh. S. Shuteriqi, Buletin pėr shkencat shoqėrore 1956:3.189-224 (abbr. BShkSh) and Buletin i Universiteiit Shtetėror tė Tiranės 1958:3.45-70 (abbr. BUShT) .
It is clear that in the Middle Ages the Albanians extended farther north (Jokl, Albaner §2); that there are persuasive arguments which have been advanced against their having extended as far as the Adriatic coast the fact that Scodra 'Scutari' (Shkodėr) shows un-Albanian development (see §6 below), that there is no demonstrated old maritime vocabulary (see above), and that there are few ancient Greek loans (Jokl, Albaner §5; but see §5 below); and that there are arguments in favor of old Dardania: Ni < Naķssos, with development as in pyll 'forest' < *pėżll < *padle(m) : paldem (Jokl, Albaner §5). Admittedly, many of the arguments are negative; they are dealt with further below.
In a series of studies, G. Reichenkron has recently elaborated on Albanian-Rumanian correspondences, and has even brought in Armenian. This latter argument is not new, having been first forcefully set forth by H. Pedersen (KZ 1900:36.340-341). Pertinent aspects of Reichenkron will be discussed below, but his work does not essentially alter the borrowing situation as it has been understood. S. Pucariu (trans. Die rumanische Sprache [Leipzig, 1943], from which citation is here made) reviews these matters under "Das autochthone Element" (pp. 203210) and in his discussion of common Latin inheritances (pp. 326-336).
Although he deals with other views (pp. 336-33 , he sees (p. 205) the Abanian-Rumanian elements as derived from Thracian, and thinks them inherited (as substratum) in Rumanian but loans into the Illyrian ancestor of Albanian. The richest account of this subject now is Rosetti Istoria II3, which commendably treats the Balkans as a historic unit. For Albanian-Rumanian the phonological correspondences are set out (pp. 103-106), as well as the lexical (pp. 106-121); many of these are too well known to need exemplification here in the gross, they are obviously true, and largely well understood. They point solidly to (1) a local native language, and (2) a special dialect of Latin.
G. Reichenkron (Romanistisches Jahrbuch 1960:11.19-22) rehearses succinctly a number of hypotheses, which I summarize here:
a) Not all Albanian-Rumanian correspondences are loans from Albanian into Rumanian; they may be from Illyrian and Daco-Thracian as sources.
b) "Autochthonous" elements of Rumanian show only in part Illyrian-Thracian-Albanian regularities; in part proto-Romance developments appear.
c) Most Albanian-Rumanian correspondences come from borrowings by Vulgar Latin (as precursor of Rumanian) in Dardania from an Illyrian substrate. Then, we suppose, pre-Rumanian moved north of the Danube and merged with a Daco-Romance dialect, which contained Thracian elements showing correspondences with Armenian (allegedly a sound shift, and certain affixes dealt with in Rom. Jb. 9; for details, see below).
d) Daco-Thracian yields Rumanian < IE *q before eu; < IE *s + front V, and IE *k; -f- < IE *p ( > p').
e) Of the residue of unexplained words, loans from Slavic and Magyar account for many.
f) Some ancient Greek loans are to be reckoned with, even though one would not expect Rumanian to borrow wholesale in areas where other Romance did not.
g) There are also some Germanic loans. Therefore, we must reckon with five IE components: Germanic, Latin, Greek, Dacian, Slavic.
h) We must be prepared for the situation where two unrelated etyma fall phonologically together but continue two meanings, such as OFr. mont 'world, mountain' < mundum, montem; this possibility has too often been overlooked.
Reichenkron's reasoning (Rom. Jb. 1958:9.59-105, esp. 59-62) on the Albanian-Rumanian sound correspondences runs as follows: Such correspondences might reflect either (1) Daco-Thracian to Rumanian, and to Illyrian, which later becomes Albanian; or (2) Illyrian, which later becomes Albanian, to Getian Thracian to Rumanian. On the basis of the assumption of a Thracian sound shift from IE, similar to that in Armenian, Reichenkron follows Gamillscheg's theory that the West Rumanian dialects (i.e., Dardanian and South Danubian) go with Albanian in their loan reflexes, while East Rumanian dialects go with Thracian and show sound-shifted reflexes. Thus
Hence, the main diagnostic reflexes are: IE d, g, g, > East Rumanian t, k, k, .
On the basis of this Daco-Thracian theory, Reichenkron tries to explain various difficult Rumanian words involving z, some of which may be related to some Albanian words. He tries to elucidate certain Rumanian words in zg- as being originally borrowed from Thracian forms with a prefixed *gh-, comparing certain Armenian developments. His attempt, which I consider unsuccessful or at best dubious, I criticize elsewhere, at least so far as the Albanian evidence goes. In any event, his main argument, whether right or wrong, would not need to affect our conclusions on Albanian, as it really has to do with the nature of Daco-Thracian and its putative reflexes in Rumanian.
Reichenkron argues repeatedly on the supposed direction of borrowing in a way that assumes that linguistic borrowing always moves from a higher sociological structure to a lower one. Without entering into the probably improvable factuality of these aspects of the cultures in question (the Dacians, Getes, and pre-Albanians), nor into the anthropologically unclear concept of equality and superiority of cultures, it is worth noting that in the case of cultures we know much about we could scarcely hypothesize in advance which way many categories of loans would move.
In the course of discussing shtrungė 'enclosure for milking animals', Rumanian strung, Reichenkron (Rom. Jb. 11.51-52) has an excursus on Baltic and Slavic pa/po- 'Art, After-, Nach-'. This argument loses force when we consider E. Westh Neuhard's article in Scando-Slavica 1959:5.52-63, showing that these Slavic compounds are caiques on German, built on a very slender inherited Slavic base; moreover, they seem to reflect a rather literary (or literate) cosmopolitan intrusion of German culture rather than contact on the folk level. Therefore, it would be all the less likely to see such an origin in this item of Rumanian folk culture. As for the interesting Baltic forms adduced by Reichenkron, two types of explanation seem to suffice to dispose of them as calques, too. The step terms of kinship seem clear calques on the long established Slavic use of this prefix (pįsynok). The other compounds of "approximation" seem again traceable to German diffusion, particularly when one considers how strong this influence has been, specifically in Lettish and Old Prussian. Thus the restricted size of the Old Prussian corpus, emphasized by Reichenkron in connection with the relatively large attestation of this feature, loses its probative value. Reichenkron goes on to urge a special relationship embracing Thracian, Slavic, and Baltic, based on a po/pa- prefix, in turn associated with dialect variants comprising the lone Rumanian postrung(beside strung) and the obscure and otherwise unelucidated pociump and pozmóc. With the above considerations, the assumption of such a special relationship dissolves into thin air. It should be noted, in fairness, that Reichenkron (p. 53) allows the possibility that the dialect form po-strung may arise from early Serbian contacts.
Reichenkron's further argument (pp. 52-53), giving an alternative to the conventional (i.e., Jokl's) accounting for pārīu 'brook', is, independently of the above question, susceptible of a different solution. Jokl had pārīu < pre-Albanian *per-rn- (> Albanian pėrrua, pėrroni; cf. Latin frnum > Rumanian frīu); Reichenkron suggests Thracian pa-(assimilated to pā-) + Latin rivus > rīu 'river'. Equally possible, if one insists on an alternative to *per-rn-, is *per-rvus.
5. Before continuing with the dimmer Balkan past, there are two sets of old loans in Albanian which lead us to a slender, but valuable, conclusion. It has long been recognized (since A. Thumb's basic article, IF 1910:26.1-20) that the ancient Greek loans are rare. Pre-Albanian was scarcely in close contact with Greek in antiquity. This places the Albanians north of the Jireek line.
However, Ēabej has recently argued (VII Congresso intemazianale di scienze onomastiche 250-251) that these Greek loans do not necessarily remove the pre-Albanians far from Greek territory; that is, that they fit well with a location in present-day Albania, in contact either with Doric Greek colonists or with the Northwest Dorians. His points on the Doric character of the loans certainly look persuasive: drapėn, Tosk drapėr 'sickle' < *drapanon rather than drepanon; kumbull 'plum' < kokkumhlon, brukė 'Tamariske' < murikh, trumzė 'thyme' < qumbra ~ qrumbh. The last three (and, for that matter, reflexes of the first) occur in parallel forms in the Greek enclaves of southern Italy (though the Doric nature of these dialects is another famous debate!). But this still does not tell us precisely where the Dorians in question were at the time of contact.
There are a few ancient Germanic loans: fat 'spouse', shkum 'foam', tirq 'trousers' (Goth. žiubrokis) look best. Bari (LS 73-91) has up-to-date pertinent detail. These are supporting evidence, but do not place things any closer geographically. Presumably the farther north and east the Albanians were, the better were their chances of contacts at this time with Goths, but the whole question is uncertain in the extreme.
6. W. Cimochowski (BUShT 1958:3.37-4 displaces the Albanians much less than others: to the mountains near the Mati, north to Ni. Ēabej (BUShT 1958:2.54-62) is even less willing to see them moved: on the basis of toponyms, he argues for a coastal region.
Particularly because of the relative inaccessibility of these articles, and because their theses have tended to be out of favor, it is worthwhile discussing them at some length. Cimochowski starts by reviewing, briefly and critically, Weigand's arguments (Balkan-Archiv 3.227-251) for a Thracian background for Albanian, and for an earlier home east of its present location:
a) Toponyms of Latin origin in Albania show Dalmatian, not Albanian, phonological development.
b) Inherited nautical and fishing terms are absent in Albanian. These facts are easily understood, says Cimochowski, since Albanian must have continued in remoter areas where Romance would not absorb it completely hence not in areas where such place names of Latin origin continued strongest. The Albanians would have lived inland from the seacoast, in the mountains, but not necessarily beyond the border of Albania.
c) Certain words, such as man 'mulberry, blackberry' are shared with Thracian (manteia). But this could merely show that there were contacts; besides, Thrace-Phrygian BrigeV are known to have lived near Durrės. Moreover, Ēabej thinks that even these words can be shown to be Illyrian. Cimochowski goes on to point out (p. 4 that karpė and mėn are shared in the Italian pre-Romance area; hence this alleged Thracian correspondence is vitiated.
d) Certain Thracian names are supposedly explained with the help of Albanian. Of these, only Dacia Maluensis ( : mal) is well explained in this way; Decebalus ( : ballė) and Burebista (burre + bisht) are surely wrong.
e) Albanian toponyms known from antiquity do not show Albanian phonological development. That should not be surprising; from the end of the tenth century the whole of southern Albania was overrun by Bulgarians. But that does not necessarily mean that there were no Albanians anywhere in Albania.
f) Old loans in Rumanian from Albanian and shared Albanian-Rumanian developments from Latin point to an eastern origin. But the nomadic habits of the Vlachs and the herding culture of the Albanians would have brought them into contact for perhaps long periods in the past. Moreover, granting that the Albanians may well have had eastern contacts, we still do not know exactly where the Illyrian-Thracian line was, and NaissoV (Ni) is regarded by many as Illyrian territory.
From these observations Cimochowski concludes only that the south of Albania, the north around Shkodėr, and the Adriatic seacoast are excluded as earlier Albanian territory; but this does not prove a Thracian relationship. There then follows a long discussion of the evidence for an Illyrian relationship, which will be taken up in part below, after which Cimochowski concludes, with Stadtmüller, that the home of the Albanians was somewhere in the vicinity of the Mat, stretching to Ni.
Ēabej's claim is even stronger than Cimochowski's. He first runs through the history of views on the early Albanian habitat in a convenient way: The Albanians continue the habitat of Illyrian (claimed by Thunmann, Hahn, Kretschmer, Ribezzo, La Piana, Sufflay, and Erdeljanovi). Half-Romanized Illyrians spilled south from the mountains between Dalmatia and the Danube (the view of Jirecek). In the third through sixth centuries, as nomads, they moved from the Carpathians south (Parvan, Puscariu, Capidan). They came from Pannonia (Procopovici, Philippide). Albanians and Rumanians were in Thracian territory between Ni, Sofija, and Skopje (thus Weigand). Albanians were in Dardania, where Illyria and Thrace meet, and moved to Albania in the late Roman period, so that the Slavs found them in the Bojana basin (Jokl, Durham, Skok). From the Balkan and Rhodope mountains they moved to Albania before the Slavs (Bari). They were in the Mati basin in Northern Albania, and expanded south in the Middle Ages (Stadtmiiller). This last location is too restrictive, according to Ēabej. However, in VII Congresso internazionale 245, Ēabej relates Mathis fluvius (Vibius Sequester) to mat 'river bank'.
Ēabej points out that villages in the Balkans are generally of recent date and changeable settlement. Hence for the study of toponyms city names and rivers are best. If we inspect such names attested by ancient sources, we find that many follow Albanian phonological development: Scardus > Shar, with no metathesis, as in Scardona > Skradin. Scodra > Shkodėr; Ēabej remarks that sk- > h- belonged to the pre-Balkan period, and compares (VII Congresso internazionale 244), for phonology, shkamb < scamnum and kulshedėr < chersydrus. (Rogame is a recent suffixation in -ame of rėge, and therefore no problem because of the medial -g-.) Barbanna > Buenė is regular, as shown by Jokl (IF 1932: 50.33 ff.), Slavia (1934-1935:13.286 ff.), Glotta (1936:25.121 B.). Lissus > Lesh (cf. missa > meshė, etc.); Ēabej points out (VII Congresso intemazionale 245) that Latin + CC is regular, a statement I can neither affirm nor control at the moment. Dyrrachium > Durrės, Isamnus > Ishm, Drivastum > Drisht show, as Krahe claims, the Illyrian initial accent. Shkum(b)ī < Scampinus is regular in the Central Albanian dialect, where pretonic ė > u and mb > m are expectable (VII Congresso internazionale 246). Aulwn > Vlorė may perhaps involve a Slavic intermediary. Thyamis > Ēamėria, as Leake saw in 1814, is accepted by Ēabej; however, one might expect s < t (cf. pus 'well' < Lat. puteus). Arachthos > Arta is supposedly better explained by Albanian than by Greek; but, apart from the surprising syncope, kt should yield ft or jt, and not t, from that time level. Ragusium (Ragusa) is Rush in Bogdan (1685).
Thus, says Ēabej, the seacoast has remained Albanian since antiquity.
The foreign names represent several layers of later intrusions, which Weigand failed to weed out, and treated indiscriminately, according to Ēabej (VII Congresso internazionale 243).
Bari (LS 25 ff.) gives an account that is as plausible on the other side of the debate, based on the careful work done by Skok on Balkan toponyms in relation to Romance. He sees Albanian as sharing with Thracian *kt > t (p. 26), but it should be noted that, as we shall see, V. Georgiev's "Thracian" has this, but that excludes his Daco-Mysian. Using the known symbiosis with the pre-Rumanians and the place names Ni, kup, and tip (p. 26), Bari places the Albanians in the Dardanian-Peonian region (p. 27). He then goes on to discuss (pp. 30-34) the problem of the location of the pre-Rumanians; whether they were spread out and far north of the Danube at that time need not concern us here.
It has long been recognized that there are two treatments of Latin loans in Albanian. Bari sets forth (LS 27-28, and Godinjak, Balkanoloki Institut, Sarajevo 1.1-16 [1957], esp. 7-11) a very convincing looking solution for this duality. Latin ct, cs gives Albanian ft, f (luftė 'war', kofshė 'thigh'), which matches Rumanian lupt, coaps; these would easily represent sound substitutions after IE *kt had become *t. (One problem I see in this is ftua 'quince' < cotónum, which would have to have become *ct- almost immediately to avoid falling in with kėta 'this [n.], these [m.]'.) This group also includes Albanian traftr < tract-. On the other hand, we have in derjt 'straight' < d(i)rectus and trajtonj a different outcome, which matches Old Dalmatian traita < tract-. Similarly, there are both Albanian a and e as reflexes of Latin a, which match Rumanian and Dalmatian developments. These, then, would look back to two chronological and geographical layers, one an "inner Balkan" and the other a "coastal Adriatic." Bari (Godinjak 13) considers that since Rumanian has loans from Albanian, but Albanian has practically none in the opposite direction, these Rumanian shapes must all be "Restwörter," not "Lehnwörter"; but, as Reichenkron (above) takes into account, the loan situation may easily be more complex than this.
7. There is, then, the question of where the Albanians were when the Slavs arrived. Bari discusses this (LS 28-29). Seliev thought that the Slavs met only Romans in Albania. He showed clearly that most Albanian territory was at least exposed to Slavs in the Middle Ages; only the central region is thin on Slavic toponyms, perhaps pointing to early concentration there by the Albanians. In my opinion, the chronology of the Slavs and Albanians in Albania is uncertain in the extreme. Bari (Hymje 77) considers the loss of intervocalic voiced C in Albanian as post-Slavic, after Jokl (IF 1926:44.37 ff.). This would explain Shkinikė 'Bulgaria' < Sclavinica; the etymon recurs clearly in the Greek enclavee as kerķte 'in the other [Greek] language'. But these could well have had a Latin etymon in the first place. Labėrija in the south has Tosk -r-from intervocalic -w- and the Slavic metathesized la-, but we could posit either order for the occurrence of these. Skok has Durrės 'Durazzo' < Dra < Dyrrachium (but note */dś-/ is required!). Yet pre-Serbian must have accented Dra on the second syllable. Moreover, to make matters more vexed, Cimochowski (Ling. Posn. 1960:8.133-145) posits Durracion [dur:akhion], taken into Illyrian as dśraku- (after *o > a) > *dśrra(An) > *dśrrėc(ė) > Dśrės; this enlarges on and sharpens the account referred to above in Ēabej's treatment of these names.
Perhaps it is naļve to look for neat, unbroken settlement areas, and doubly so for those familiar with the prenational state of the Balkans. On the present evidence, I cannot accept as a whole any one of the above vexed solutions; nor can I reject totally any one as clearly wrong.
An improvement of Bari's presentation of the name of the Bojana river (LS 29) might be to posit from Livy's Barbanna a form *baranna (note that Berat lost its Slavic -g-) = /baranna/ > *borjan(n)a (by Slavic adoption) > *bojana (in earlier Albanian; cf. ujė 'water' < *udrj). Here we would have all changes explained by known rules but no clear chronology.
Of course, in any event we could only prove the Albanians did, and never that they did not, precede the Slavs.
On the question of the erstwhile spread of the Albanian speech area, I. Popovic (Istorija srpskohrvatskogjezika 23 [NoviSad, 1955]) points out clear evidence of earlier remains in Crna Gora. But no argument can be raised on this, however well it may fit in with our general picture of the percolation south and west of the Albanians, for a similar argument could then be constructed for the older spread of the Tosk area to the south.
8. We must turn now to the troublesome and inconclusive question of Illyrian and Thracian, and their possible relation to Albanian.
Without entering into his arguments in detail for I find their longer range aspects unconvincing, and his safer observations of concordances no advance over those of earlier workers Bari (LS 24 and elsewhere) plumps for an Albanian-Armenian relationship, with Thracian as intermediate. More precisely, he would posit an Albano-Thracian and Phrygo-Armenian continuum. Note that this is quite a different relationship from that assumed by Reichenkron, above.
I.I. Russu (Cercetri de lingvistic 1958:3.89-107) finds Illyrian to be a satm language, and Thracian likewise; but since they have a clearly different toponymic and onomastic lexicon, they are not one and the same language. Illyrian would have been Romanized at an early date, and Albanian, since it survived as an independent, would more likely be from Thracian. But, Russu declares, the problem of Albanian is still not solved.
Rosetti (Istoria II3 51-63) reviews the question generally. The two areas of Illyrian and Thracian were divided by the Morava-Vardar river line. While asserting what I take to be his considered conclusion that Albanian is a Thracian dialect, Rosetti mentions Georgiev (p. 53) and Bari (p. 54), citing V. V. Ivanov and Hamp to the effect that Albanian is neither satm nor centum typologically (see more on this below in relation to Illyrian), and mentioning Russu and Cimochowski as defending a satm character for Illyrian (see below also), while C. de Simone (IF 1960:65.33) doubts the latter. A good list, of the proposed lexical equations with Illyrian and Thracian, follows (pp. 56-62). A proper consideration of this list would easily generate a good-sized essay, for there are problems on all sides, and Rosetti is essentially reporting the state of scholarship as he sees it.
While opinion may differ on the above matters, none of the positions differs essentially from positions long held by one or another worker in the field. When we turn to the recent work of Georgiev, a new ingredient is added. In his La toponymie ancienne de la péninsule balkanique et la thčse méditerranéenne (Sofia, 1961; = Linguistique balkanique 3.1), he sets up seven regions, which number among them the three groups Daco-Mysian, Thracian, and Phrygian. (Roughly, the first two match the "Thracian" of many others.) The first of these groups is evidenced by toponyms in -deva/-dava/-dova (the variants are explained by chronology) < *dhw, is the ancestor of Albanian, and illustrates its relation by the sound changes in the above form. Georgiev posits a whole set of phonological changes for this language, which match known developments in Albanian phonology: *é, o, , , , , au, ei (> e), eu (> e), (> a), (> ri), (> s, ž), (h) (> z, , d), tt (> s), s (> ). This is discussed in his Toponymie 7-8, as well as in Issledovanija po sravitel'no-istoriceskomu jasykosnaniju 145 (Moscow, 195 . I am not sure that I understand what is posited for *ei and *tt in the light of what I understand for Albanian. This prelanguage would have arisen in Dacia and spread to Dardania and Eastern Macedonia, and thence down the Axios (Vardar). Georgiev mentions chronologies, but I do not know how he arrives at them.
Georgiev's Thracian is defined (p. 9) by para 'river', bria 'town', diza 'fortress'; as is customary in such matters, there are etymologies for all these. The Thracian area occupied the region bounded by the Black Sea, the Propontis, the Aegean, and the Timachus, Strymon, and Danube rivers. If Georgiev's phonological rules were to turn out to be correct, we are still faced with a formidable lexical job, in view of the sparsity of manageable items: Darda- appears as both Daco-Mysian and Thracian. The following, which we could try to fit into the Albanian schema, are declared Thracian (Issledovanija 119-121): -bistas (Boure-bista) 'pistoV', b(o')ur- (to burrė?), zeiz-, zis- (i-zi?), mal- (mal?), and the gloss skiįr 'Kardendistel' (sh-qer?).
Again, Illyrian (pp. 32-34) occupies Illyria, Dalmatia, and southern Pannonia. Here we find Delm- (delmė 'mouton'; the ordinary form is dele, and we may wonder where other such forms are found), Ulc- (ulk, ujk 'loup'). Daco-Mysian supposedly penetrated Illyria and Dalmatia by the first millennium B.C. Also, Venetic and Keltic came in from the northwest, thus giving the analyst a wide range of possible alternatives. This would allegedly explicate the two traditional conceptions of "Illyrian": Hirt, Krahe, Bari, Pokorny, Popovi (centum), versus Kretschmer, Jokl, Ribezzo, Pisani, Mayer (satm, with an ingredient of centum).
In Issledovanija (pp. 133-137) Georgiev goes on to elaborate his Daco-Mysian/Albanian/Thracian relationship; there are two theories, which he elaborates but which we can pass over here. In the "Mysian" of Asia Minor, the solitary well-known inscription yields patrizi = Greek patraVi; this would show Albanian ri < *. An inscription in Bulgaria comes up with dierns, which is derived from *kwersna = ern; here, supposedly, the labiovelar is palatalized and spirantized, as in Albanian. Thus Albanian and the relevant elements of Rumanian come from Daco-Mysian; Athrus > Jantra and Utus > Vit in northern Bulgaria show that that region was never Thracian, but rather Daco-Mysian.
The concrete evidence for the above claims is wholly beyond my control.
V. Pisani is well known to be against simple "Stammbaum" connections, yet he has from time to time pointed out apparent parallels in Albanian and Illyrian. In Paideia (1958:12.271) he draws an isogloss for "Macedonia-Tracia" with the words for 'name': Alb. emen, Slavic im, Baltic emnes/emmens, Keltic ainmN, etc. Doric would also show Illyrian relics in EnumakratidaV, EnumantiadaV (both Laconian); and to these Pisani adds Laconian diza 'capra' = Albanian dhi. In Paideia (12.29 he adduces Laconian grifasqai = grafein, with "Illyrian" * > ri and Hellenized phi; and deisa 'sterco', first attested in deisozos in Leonidas of Tarentum, which he equates with Albanian dhjes 'defecate'. In his review of Volume I of A. Mayor's Die Sprache der alten Illyrier (Paideia 1958: 13.319-320) Pisani lists various Illyrian glosses, most of which show no hopeful connection with Albanian, but do show considerable philological difficulty: pelioV, pelia 'vecchio, -a' might conceivably be put in relation with plak 'old man'; we could guess at tritw 'testa' alongside trū 'brain'; medoV 'hydromel' does not occur in Albanian (see below); perhaps the most interesting is dibriV 'qalassa' ("senza etnico"), which has been suggested in connection with Albanian déet, but which Pisani thinks probably Phrygian.
Deev thinks that Albanian is from Thracian, not from Illyrian. R. Gusmani (Paideia 1957:12.164-165) remarks: "Ora qui il D. non ha tenuto calcolo del fatto che ogni lingua č la confluenza di diverse e molteplici tradizioni linguistiche, non di un filone unico, comegli implicitamente pensa." Thus, Albanian would possibly be from an ancient Balkan kóine linguistica, but this evades the central quesiton of how the "mixture" came about.
Jokl's Illyrian-Albanian correspondences (Albaner §3a) are probably the best known. Certain of these require comment: Strabo (7.314) eloV Lougeon : lėgatė 'swamp'. This could be *lug-, but there is also *lag- 'wet', which might of course also represent *loug-.
Ludrum : Tosk lum 'muck', Geg lym, Tosk ler, but there are also Latin and Greek cognates.
Aquae Balizae : baltė 'mud'. But Krahe (IF 1962:67.151-15 thinks Balissae is from Bal-is(i)a : *Bal-sa in Balsenz < *Bal-s-antia (: *Ap-s-antia > Absentia) : Lith. balą 'swamp' : OCS blato, Alb. baltė. Therefore, for Krahe Balissae/Balizae is "Alteuropaisch" (see below).
Metu-barbis ~ -barris is ambiguous.
Malo/untum, etc., involve root etymologies and are dubious.
Place names in -V-ste/a/o : kopshtė 'orchard', vresht 'vineyard' : (Illyrier §4) Lith. -ysta 'membership'. But even this seemingly solid item has been challenged by J. Hubschmid ("Substratprobleme," Vox Romanica 1960:19): "Letzten Endes sind sie aber vorindogermanischen Ursprungs. Sie drücken die Zugehörigkeit aus, haben ferner kollektive oder frequentative Bedeutung" (p. 177). Hubschmid claims the suffix occurs from Basque and Western Romania to Asia Minor, against Georgiev's Pelasgic -s(s)- (pp. 298-299).
Schulze's -is- in names is now Krahe's "Alteuropäisch."
That Alb. -ķnj is a plural-collective is clear, but what about the meaning of Delminium?
Jokl's fragile Thracian correspondences need a thorough overhauling in the light of recent work, on more than one count.
While we must exercise due caution in the use of supposedly Illyrian forms (see below), Cimochowski (BUShT 1958:2.41-46) has some important discussion to contribute to the lasting debate on the reflexes of Indo-European "gutturals" in Illyrian. He points (pp. 41-42) to evidence for both satm and centum character for Illyrian (-Messapic). Doubtless, he says, some proposed etymologies have been wrong: Volturex, Regontius, Regius, Rega, Genthius; yet many good examples of palatals > velars remain. Likewise, Barzidihi could be < *Barzes < *Bard-jo-s (cf. Alb. mjekrrosh 'bearded'); yet there remain many presumably original palatals written s, z, s, z, q in classical sources. Also, in his view Aquilis, Aquincum indubitably show labiovelars. Cimochowski further argues (pp. 42-44) that all satm languages show some erratics with velar reflex for original palatal, which many scholars have tried to explain away as loans of ancient date. Jokl (Eberts Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte 1.89-94, 6.38-45, 13.29) tried to show that this occurred in the presence of r and n. Against this, Cimochowski adduces Gentius, Genusus, Epicadus, Magaplinus (the last supposedly belonging with Skt. mahant-, Alb. i madh 'big'), Bersumno beside Berginium and Bargulum, Barzidihi beside Bargilius and Bargulis. Cimochowski thus believes that Illyrian (-Messapic) shows velars where uncontested satm languages do, and that therefore these reflexes fail to make Illyrian a centum dialect. I agree provisionally with Cimochowski's conclusion here, but on other grounds. True, the facts speak against a centum status for Illyrian; but Cimochowski has too simple a formula for the centum-satm dichotomy. In all of his examples, the following environment always involves a resonant, while the other cognates adduced are sometimes weak or dubious or susceptible of other explanations: Vescleves, Can-davia (for which *- is gratuitously reconstructed, but which points only to *- at most), Acra-banis, Bargulis/Bargilius, Skerdis, ''AggroV. This environment matches exactly that posited by me for the merger of palatals and velars in Albanian (KZ 1960:76.275-280), and on no account depends on erratic matches in the satm languages as conventionally understood.
A special feature of Illyrian claimed by Cimochowski is its separate reflex of the labiovelars (pp. 44-46). Before front vowels, as Pedersen and Jokl showed, Albanian distinguishes the labiovelars. Jokl correctly saw that Illyrian distinguished them, too, but tried wrongly to prove that Thracian did also. Jokl's argument rested on Akuenision (which is simply Latin Aquensium), Kouimedaba/Koumoudeba (of uncertain first element), Gouolhta (of uncertain segmentation), Zououath(r) (unclear even for the Thracian values of the letters), and Koadama (whose analysis rested circularly on the first two). Thus, according to Cimochowski, the evidence for Thracian labiovelars crumbles away. The distinct reflexes of labiovelars in Albanian and Illyrian form, then, a capital proof of the Illyrian ancestry of Albanian.
But, in the face of all this, I feel we must bear in mind that the positive Illyrian labiovelar evidence is sparse and conjectural in the extreme. Moreover, as a retention it would be, strictly speaking, only weakly diagnostic.
Cimochowski also claims that Albanian shares with Messapic au > a and with Illyrian IE * > (then * > Albanian o); the last would be seen in Spalatum : Spolhtion in Italy. But O. Haas (Messapische Studien 173-174 [Heidelberg, 1962]) states that au > a occurs in Vulgar Latin adaptations (Ascoli : Ausculum; Basta : Bausta), and not in Messapic itself, which had au > ao > o.
On the loss of C's before *s in Illyrian and Albanian, see Hamp (IF 1961:66.51-52).
Furthermore, Krahe's "Alteuropäisch" has added a new ingredient. For example, in his "Baltico-Illyrica" (Festschrift für Max Vasmer 245-252 [Berlin, 1956]), we see various equations that for Jokl might have been marks of kinship between Illyrian-Albanian and Baltic. With such sparse evidence, too, there is a self-defeating aspect to this scholarship; consider Krahe's equations in BzN (1956:7.1- ; Nette, Netze would match Skt. nad, nadyh, while na would match nadį-; so far so good. But then *ned- would also appear in Neta (Norway), Greek Neda, Nedwn. Which language do we have now, and how do we know when we meet a new language on this level, much less who its kin are? More recently (BzN 14.1-19 and 113-124 [1963]) Krahe has screened "Die Gewässernamen im alten Illyrien" and sorted them into "Alteuropäisch," Baltic-Adriatic, Northwest (Germanic) connections, and a newly defined "Illyrian." In the last category we find only Ar-daxanoV, Artatus, DizhroV, Drnus, Drilwn (are these related?), Genusus, Kat-arbathV, Clausala, Pizwn.
Clearly, one must be very circumspect before assigning any form definitely to Illyrian.
9. We will deal separately with the Messapic problem, partly because I have dealt with it before (Studies Presented to Joshua Whatmough 73-89 [The Hague, 1957]) and wish here to revise my statement of the problem, partly because we should not too lightly lump Illyrian and Messapic together. On this latter point, see now Haas eagerly awaited Messapische Studien: On his page 11, Haas states that he intends to discuss elsewhere his views on the insufficiently grounded assumption of Messapic and Illyrian unity; here he simply illustrates the flimsiness of some grounds that depend on quite arbitrary segmentations of words. On his page 12 he says that the Illyrian thesis for Messapic belongs to the past, and hopefully soon to oblivion. This is not to exclude a fresh proof, when Illyrian may in the future become better specified; it is only that no such demonstration has been made up to now. On his page 13 he states that it is possible that Illyrian names may be clarified on the basis of our knowledge of Messapic; but the reverse is methodologically unsound.
After the recent painstaking philological work on the texts by O. Parlangčli (Studi messapici [Milano, 196 ), Haas (op. cit.), and de Simone (largely in IF), no forms should be used without being freshly checked.[This article had already been sent to press when I received, thanks to the courtesy of the authors, the marvelously meticulous joint work of C. de Simone (Die messapischen Inschrifien) and J. Untermann (Die messapischen Personennamen [Wiesbaden, 1964]), continuing Krahe's Die Sprache der Illyrier. Likewise, I had not seen de Simone's article on the Messapic diphthongs (IF 1964:69.20-37), nor Parlangčli's review of Haas (Kratylos 1963:8.179-186).]
Apparently without having seen my above-mentioned article (abbr. A&M), (Ēabej has dealt with some Messapic words in his "Unele probleme ale istoriei limbii albaneze" (Studii i cercetri lingvistice 1959: 10.527-560, esp. 555), and some of our treatments overlap.
Although the question of Phrygian takes us beyond the scope of this paper, those interested should now consult further (ad A&M 76) the recent papers of Haas in Die Sprache and Linguistique balkanique.
Taking up specific points in A&M: (§3.1) Ēabej (p. 555) has likewise remarked this. (§3.3) Ēabej adduces balias, balakriaihi, bįlakros, Pliny's balisca vitis, and Apulian dialect bįlaku, all beside Albanian balosh (term for horses and cattle with a white forehead). On the other hand, de Simone (IF 1962:67.36-52) lucidly reads baleyias as baleas (= Illyr. Diteius, Poteius, Ateia, etc., in form); connects Bales (< *balas) with balįsh; and says that Messapic balasiiri[hi] is not to be equated with Bįlakros. But the connection of these forms directly with balįsh is inexact, for this -l- comes from *-lC- and not from *VlV or *-l-.
(§3.4) Haas (Mess. Stud. 144) posits for bijė *bhl, but that cannot be, for it would give *byjė. If bolles and bili(v)a really reflect *bhl(i)-, as Haas assumes (pp. 28, 41, 131, 142-144), then we must abandon the Albanian equation. On bir, Pisani (IF 1959:64.170 n. 1), after E. Risch, has flia primary to the secondary flius and *putlo- remodeled to puer after gener, socer; here might be a parallel to bolster *bi- > bir. (§3.5) If the suggestion of delme 'sheep' to the name of Dalmatia is sound, then my suggestion falls away. (§3.10) If Alb. mėz really joins Basque mando 'mule', as Bari (Hymje 57) has it, then these go with the -st- suffix above. Bari also includes here (h)ardhķ 'grapevine' : Basque ardao 'wine' and bisht 'tail' : Basque buztan. (§3.13) I hope to refine the account of mjegullė on another occasion.
(§3.14) Ēabej also adduces ndė 'in', but not the others. (§3.16) Pertinent to the comparative aspect of the discussion of atavetes and sivjet now is Mycenaean za-we-te (opposed to pe-ru-si-nwa PY Ma 225) = kjawetes 'this year' according to Palmer and Killen (Nestor 240 [March, 1963]), and 85-u-te, which would not be *sjawetes, as Palmer wants, according to Killen (Nestor 25 . In Mycenaean *kj and *tj would perhaps give the same result in this instance. (§3.19) Krahe (IF 1959:64.24 sees here the Messapic suffix -ido, also seen in alzanaidihi (gen.). This could then be compared to the Albanian plural and diminutive -z-. (§3.24) Ēabej, too, adduces this equation. (§4.3) Ēabej wonders whether veinan is not to be equated with Lith. vķenas. Note that Haas (Mess. Stud. 37 and 221) continues the unacceptable reconstruction of Albanian vetė as *se-ti- by suggesting a comparison with Messapic vetai 'ihr selbst'.
In passing, it is worth observing that Haas (p. 95) makes an identification and Messapic reconstruction that is suggestive of a new line of thought. He translates aran as 'illam' (contrast A&M §3.1) and compares Umbrian oro-; this may or may not be so. Here (and again on p. 177) he translates ennan also as 'illam', reconstructing *enm and comparing Greek enh 'jenen Tag', OCS on, Latin enim. If so, this same reconstructed shape would also accommodate Albanian njė 'one', and the sense is not too far off.
Also (Haas, 46 ff.), graiva, graibia (-f-) (a feast in Tarentum), derivative of an old u-stem, allegedly seen in B.1.43. grahis damatria *grs = grauV (Haas, op. cit. 142 on > i), suggests Albanian gr plural of grua 'woman'. On this last word, see Hamp (KZ 1960:76.276).
(§4.6) I am glad to see that Haas agrees (pp. 184-185) with me (save for a few details on which I am unclear) on the developments of the "gutturals." The separate reflexes shown for the labiovelars (pp. 185-187) and the dentals derived from palatals (p. 18 are highly suggestive of Albanian, but the supporting examples are as yet insufficiently certain. On this matter, see also the discussion of Cimochowskis ideas above. Haas' discussion of the labiovelars in Ling. Posn. (1953:4.78-80) seemed to me inconclusive by comparison with his later work. Further, Bari (LS 9-14) discusses the satm question; all his examples for Illyrian centum features (p. 11) are dubious, as is his treatment of kr. On palatal-before-resonant in Albanian, see Hamp (KZ 1960:76.275-280); and cf. the above observations on the Illyrian question. Popovic (pp. 21-22) essentially follows Bari for Illyrian and satm-centum. The matter of supposed palatalization of labiovelars in Thracian goes beyond our discussion. S. Josifovi "Nova miljenja o indoevropskim jezikim supstratima na Balkanu," Godinjak Filozofskog Fakulteta u Novom Sadu 1959:4.97-115) comments on Budimir's works of 1950 and 1956 on "Pelasti," and on Pavlovi's of 1957 and 1958 on the Mediterranean substratum in the Balkans. Most of this need not concern us here, but Budimir allegedly (p. 99) separates kohė from as < *kwso-, which he relates to esati, esno, kosa, xainw, xew, xoanon. "Thus Albanian preserved the explosive character of the palatal gutturals for a long time, which is not the case with the other satm dialects, and besides it distinguished velars and labiovelars in contradistinction to satm languages." It may be so, but I do not see how this statement follows naturally from the context.
(§4.7) On haivayias (p. 89), see de Simone, IF 1960:65.31-34. The ghost word ana now falls, away; see L. Ognenova, Studia in honorem D. Deev 333-341 (Sofia, 195 K(uri)e bohqh ''Anna, and E. Ēabej (BShkSh 1957:2.122-126, conveniently reported by M. Lambertz, Südostforschungen 1959:18.402-403) anaohqh 'I(h)s(ou) K(u)r(ie).
In addition to the forms I have discussed, Ēabej (p. 555) has also proposed the following equations: Meduma (place name) = Albanian i-mje(t)mė 'middle' (which, however, it should be pointed out, is simply a productive derivative in -me of the particle mjet); tabaras, tabarra 'priest, -ess (?)' = Albanian preverb (fossilized) tė- plus the root bar- 'carry'; ma = Albanian mos 'modal negative'; (ma)kos 'ne quis (?)', (ai min)kos 'si quis (?)' = Albanian kush 'who?'. Most of these Messapic forms are as yet of highly uncertain interpretation; consult Haas for more detail, Ēabej also suggests Calabrese dialect menna minna = Albanian ménd 'suck, nurse'.
For Salentine Greek, G. Rohlfs (Die Sprache 1959:5.173-175) has proposed a Messapic etymon *squčros for the word sero, and puts this in relation with Albanian hirrė "Käsewasser."
W. P. Schmid (IF 1960:65.26-30) reads Messapic genitive + no and equates this with Letto-Lithuanian nuo; since Lettish shows gen. sg. and dat. pl. here, Schmid posits original ablative syntax, which Messapic would have lost.
10. We come now to the proposed relations between Albanian and other Indo-European groups. The material will be quickly passed in review.
M. Durante ("Etrusco e lingue balcaniche," Annali... Napoli 1961:3.59-77) has some hazardous implications tied to a few observations on Albanian which do not convince me.
It is convenient here to reproduce Georgiev's subgrouping of Indo-European (Issledovanija 282-283):
North: Baltic-Slavic-Germanic, perhaps Tocharian
West: Italic-Keltic, Venetic, Illyrian
Central: Greek, Daco-Mysian (including Albanian), Indo-Iranian, Phrygian-Armenian, Thracian, Pelasgic
South: Hittite-Luwian, Etruscan
Apart from the many debatable points that fall outside the scope of this paper, since Albanian belongs to the largest group, there is little to say about crucial problems. If one thing is clear to me, it is that no special relations have as yet been proposed for Italic, Keltic, or Anatolian. But in this field perhaps anything can happen.
11. By way of orienting ourselves, summarizing open issues, and correcting some unevennesses in past scholarship, we will now consider matters dealt with in Porzig's Gliederung.
First, some corrections, dorė 'hand' (p. 187), -ceir, etc. are taken back to *her- 'greifen', i.e., *her-s-; of course, in the light of Hittite the preform is something like *hsr (fem. in Albanian < old neut pl. ?). The apparent reconstructions for Albanian are sg. dorė < *h(s)r, pl. duar < *h(s)res (C-stem). An alternative, preserving the gender considerations along with formal shape, is dorė fem. < (by form-class analogy) *neuter < *h(s)r-An (in Jokl's symbols) = *h(s)r-om, thematized from *hsr; duar < *dor < *gera < *gh(s)ra.
zjarr (p. 163) 'fire' is derived from an n-suffix form, and is equated with Skt. ghį m. 'Glut, Hitze'; but as I have demonstrated in a recent oral presentation, this is not a separate lexeme, but rather an old n-plural with suffix in suppletive relation to the sg. zjarm.
mjal-tė (p. 203) is an interesting case where careful dialect study pays off. In a few villages of Greece that show the contrast, and in reflexes in some enclaves of Italy, we find that we have mjįltė 'honey', in contrast to bįtė 'mud'. Thus the first is not an original *lt cluster, but has lost a vowel by syncope; on the other hand, the l (not orthographic ll) must come from an old cluster, and *ll is the only plausible one. The etymon is, then, the Latin word, and not Indo-European. Thus, Albanian here goes with Balto-Slavic, Tocharian, and Aryan, after all. Culturally, this gains in interest when we recall that Jokl (Linguistisch-kulturhistorische Untersuchungen aus dem Bereiche des Albanischen 289-296 [Berlin, 1923]) has traced bletė 'bee' to Latin *melltum.
For 'hit' < 'split' (pp. 204-205) alongside Lat. feri, ON berja(sk), Lith. bar(i)ł, Lett. bau, OCS borj, it is likely that we should posit Alb. bie < *b(h)erj, homophonous with bie 'carry' < *b(h)er.
Now to some more general matters. The fate of the syllabic resonants (pp. 66-6 is a vexed problem. It is difficult merely to establish the facts. Unfortunately, S. E. Mann's article on the subject (Lg. 1941:17.23) is correct or cogent only where the same solution has been proposed many years before him. The question must be entirely rediscussed, but we would do well to start from Jokl (Die Sprache 1963:9.120-122).
For the voiced aspirates (pp. 68-72), Albanian fits in with Baltic, Slavic, Macedonian, Illyrian, and Keltic; but this is not diagnostic.
On the matter of gutturals (pp. 72-76), I have already stated my position in A&M (see above); see also Jokl, Die Sprache 1963:9.123-127. On the kl (p. 75) of so-called Grenzdialekte, see Hamp, KZ 1960:76.275-280 and above.
On dental-plus-dental (pp. 76-7 , Indic tt and Iranian st point to *tst (which we see in Hittite); see also A. Meillet, Dialectes indoeuropéens 60. Greek st and Balto-Slavic st point to *tst, according to Meillet, op. cit. 61. Italic, Keltic, and Germanic, however, share ss (which could conceivably come from a mediate *ts). Porzig refers (p. 77) to "die Lücke unserer Kenntnis beim Armenischen und Albanischen." Meillet (p. 57), however, has st for Albanian, Illyrian, Thracian, and Phrygian. The truth is that Albanian shows a present-day s (pasė 'had [participle]', besė 'faith, loyalty'); see Hamp, KZ 1961:77.252-253. This must go back to a groove affricate, perhaps *ts.
Albanian preserves many interesting old suppletions in the verb-stem system, among them 'sit', 'stand', 'lie' (these latter are poorly distinguished in the Balkans), and 'see'; here the situation is unlike Balto-Slavic, Germanic, and Latin (Porzig, 91-92).
Porzig makes a number of Greek equations (pp. 177-179) which require comment: Hom. odmh Att. osmh : amė 'odor' is too ambiguous to be certain. kapnoV : kem < *kepnos would be of unclear relationship. koiloV : thellė (not thelė). What is special about the *-n of ufainw : venj 'weave'? marh : marr 'take' is dubious. Why should alfi : elb 'barley' be < *'white'? dhmoV : dhjamė 'fat' is not a correct match in vocalism. xenfoV : huaj 'stranger' (not huai). dorpon : darkė 'supper' also involves drekė 'noon meal' (in ablaut), and I think this is to be equated with the otherwise unexplained Breton dibri ~ dribi 'eat', which I deal with elsewhere. The (Greek-Armenian-)Albanian āndėrrė 'dream' is an archaism, and thus nondiagnostic, as are many other items above.
Porzig (p. 179) notes that when some other subgroup is involved in an equation, Greek or Balto-Slavic always is. zā 'voice' (p. 180) matches Balto-Slavic and Armenian, djathė 'cheese' (dithė is a ghost, IF 1962:67.144), with Indic and Balto-Slavic matches, is a good comparison, yet a survival; but the others on pages 180-181 are trivial. (h)yll 'star' cannot be used in evidence, since it is still unclarified. mjekrė 'beard' has a perfectly regular k, and thus means nothing (see KZ 1960:76.275-280).
For Porzig (p. 181) Albanian is Eastern Indo-European and goes with Greek, and especially with Balto-Slavic. In Western Indo-European it is supposed to be connected with Illyrian only.
12. Meillet (pp. 109-113) summarizes the distributions of -ye- presents: Greek and Indo-Iranian have -ye/o-; Balto-Slavic and Armenian havefor "state" and -ye/o- for derived verbs; Germanic and his Italo-Keltic have -yo/, almost leveled out for both verb types. In the avant-propos to the reprinted edition (p. 14), Meillet adds Albanian to the last set.
He states erroneously (p. 17) that *prwo- is limited to Indo-Iranian and Slavic; Albanian has i-parė 'first'. Another set in agreement (Skt. dįhati, Lith. degł, OCS eg, Alb. djeg 'burn') is probably too routine to be important.
To Meillet's "northwest" vocabulary (which includes Balto-Slavic) we could add grurė 'wheat' (p. 1 , shat 'hoe'(p. 21), and mos (modal negative; p. 23). There is not much positive evidence here; these are, in the main, retentions.
Perhaps of considerable importance are the following two traits. Baltic and Slavic lack perfect reduplication, the archaic state of affairs (Meillet 104-107); Albanian agrees. Balto-Slavic also shows an old indicative aorist, but an active participle from the perfect; Germanic, Keltic, and Italic have pooled the old aorist and perfect. Here Albanian seems to agree on a slender base with Balto-Slavic. In obscure ways we may see agreement in mora 'took' : marrė, lashė 'left' : lėnė, erdha 'came' : ardhurė, hėngerė 'ate' : ngrėnė.
Albanian is particularly rich in * preterits, and this belongs to a lengthy discussion too long for this paper of the role of the long ablaut grade in Albanian, a discussion that Jokl (IF 1916:37.90-122) only opened and failed to see in its far-reaching main issues. Such a discussion would find a new base in the studies of Kuryowicz.
13. F. B. J. Kuiper (Annali... Napoli 1960:2.159-164) has shown that OP qtiy 'says' is a root present q- in suppletion with qah-. I think we must abandon the old equation with Latin cnseo (on other grounds, too) and place Albanian thom, thotė (3 sg.), aor. tha, alongside these. What has never been adequately brought out is the fact that if thom 'I say' is *k(n)smi (which it could be), thotė cannot be *k(n)st..., which should give *thoshtė. Since *kn(s)t... would give *thānd (or perhaps *thān), we must posit *kti for the 3 sg.
14. A very important item has recently appeared, which relieves us to a large extent of the task of exposition that would otherwise be called for to bring together the very scattered earlier literature; that is the posthumous long article of Jokl, "Die Verwandtschaftsverhaltnisse des Albanischen zu den ubrigen indogermanischen Sprachen" (Die Sprache 1963:9.113-156), which was located only a few years ago among Jokl's Nachlass, now housed in the Vienna National Library, in the original draft in Gabelsberger shorthand. This article sets forth the distinctive phonological developments of Albanian from Indo-European from the point of view of what is shared with other groups (pp. 116-129); the similar morphological characteristics (pp. 129-14 ; and the lexical correspondences (pp. 148-156). There is not space here to criticize Jokl's points in detail, and I intend to consider the more interesting points on another occasion. Moreover, some have been implicitly dealt with in the foregoing discussion; finally, since Jokl's article is about forty years old, there should be no wonder that even in so neglected a field as Albanian many items now simply fall away, overtaken by more recent scholarship, some of which is reflected in the preceding pages.
Fundamentally, Jokl's presentation suffers from two technical defects by current standards: an atomistic approach to the data, and a failure to distinguish conservative features from innovations. I shall deal with Jokl's results as concisely as is consistent with clarity.
15. Jokl summarizes his phonological results (p. 129) by stating that they fit well with a North European affiliation, specifically with Balto-Slavic. Jokl's considered opinion that Albanian goes most closely with Balto-Slavic, if often on the basis of far-from-obvious evidence, is well known from various of his publications; on this, see the relevant sections of Porzig's Gliederung. I have also expressed in print my agreement with Jokl on this to the extent that a clear-cut opinion can be held at this stage of our knowledge. However, the phonological evidence now in question scarcely manages to support this, no matter how correct the view may be. The Albanian merger of *o and *a, of * with earlier *, the phonetic drift of *[] to o, the treatment of *, and of *ouo, and the change of *s to [], are all too isolated structurally (as presented) and too nonunique as events to associate Albanian clearly with any one group of dialects; they merely make certain trivial exclusions likely. The "helle Färbung" associated with *- > ri does not really match Balto-Slavic and Keltic either in allophonic distribution or in phonetic detail without a great many more supporting considerations. Perhaps we may ultimately be able to sharpen these claims; at present I see no clinching phonological link, in the form of a structured shared innovation, with any other Indo-European group.
16. The conclusions presented (pp. 147-14 for the morphology make similar claims. We will inspect here only the correspondences that include Balto-Slavic; that is not to say that on a complete reexamination of the problem we might not find further fundamental shared features involving other groups more intimately. One immediate disadvantage is noted in the nature of the features identified: they are almost all derivational morphs and processes of some sort; thus, they belong to a less structured, more open-ended, part of the grammar.
The development of the type foroV (shared with Greek, too) was of old formation, and is not diagnostic. Long-grade nouns (also shared with Germanic) and preterits (more broadly shared) seem ultimately important to me, but cannot be assessed on this brief survey basis. Participles in -mo- (shared with Armenian) and in -eno- (also Aryan and Germanic) belong to an old layer of adjectival derivation. Nouns in -imo-, if related to similar feminines (e.g., in Keltic), are also difficult to assign a precise innovational status to. Collectives in -no- (also claimed for Latin and Germanic) are of ambiguous standing. Verbal nouns in -lė are claimed also for Armenian, but surely Tocharian and Hittite further complicate this picture.
The spread of -m to the neuter of interrogatives, if true, and the formation of the accusative of 1 sg. and 2 sg. personal pronouns, are features that are most difficult to evaluate at such reconstructive distance. The use of active plus reflexive for a passive is not quite parallel in Balto-Slavic and Albanian (where it is restricted by tense); but, if pertinent, that and the syntax of the 'teens of the numerals and perhaps the combination of interrogative and demonstrative pronouns seem good candidates for diffusional origin.
This leaves as possible uniquely shared items: diminutives in l + -o, -to in ethnica, alternation of -ti and -t (a weak possibility), verbal nouns in -g- and -es + , and secondary adjectives in -usto. Considering that many of these call for searching discussion, and might not stand up very well in all cases, it is scarcely an impressive list. Moreover, our views of Indo-European have altered greatly since Jokl was writing, and only a full reexamination ab initio could take proper account of this.
Clearly, the whole question remains completely open. But perhaps we have been able to clear a little ground.
17. For convenience, and by way of summary of the main fields covered, a selective Bibliography is appended.
shpata Moderator
Posts: 726
(8/2/03 3:31 am) Reply
well well
they still dont know the position if it. what a suprise.
but i enjoyed readig it.
especially this part...........
Quote:He showed clearly that most Albanian territory was at least exposed to Slavs in the Middle Ages; only the central region is thin on Slavic toponyms, perhaps pointing to early concentration there by the Albanians. In my opinion, the chronology of the Slavs and Albanians in Albania is uncertain in the extreme. Bari (Hymje 77) considers the loss of intervocalic voiced C in Albanian as post-Slavic, after Jokl (IF 1926:44.37 ff.). This would explain Shkinikė 'Bulgaria' < Sclavinica; the etymon recurs clearly in the Greek enclavee as kerķte 'in the other [Greek] language'. But these could well have had a Latin etymon in the first place. Labėrija in the south has Tosk -r-from intervocalic -w- and the Slavic metathesized la-, but we could posit either order for the occurrence of these. Skok has Durrės 'Durazzo' < Dra < Dyrrachium (but note */dś-/ is required!). Yet pre-Serbian must have accented Dra on the second syllable. Moreover, to make matters more vexed, Cimochowski (Ling. Posn. 1960:8.133-145) posits Durracion [dur:akhion], taken into Illyrian as dśraku- (after *o > a) > *dśrra(An) > *dśrrėc(ė) > Dśrės; this enlarges on and sharpens the account referred to above in Ēabej's treatment of these names.
remember a while back you posted a meaningless article about slavic topinyms in albania? and just probived a list of names. very meaningless, the place names where from all over.
as i asked before, a research should be done showing the % of slavic place names in every district. its in th district where few slavic place names lie that the answers lie. its there where you want to do archeological research, study the albanian topinyms as they are the earliest ones.
if albs are from caucacus you would find your answer there, as thats the place where they first settled or orginnised. if they are illyrians, thracians, dacians or mixed combinations some answers will appear.
thats why i asked that question back than. dont wory tirane i think you still dont understand.
and ofcourse the best part.........
Quote:On the question of the erstwhile spread of the Albanian speech area, I. Popovic (Istorija srpskohrvatskogjezika 23 [NoviSad, 1955]) points out clear evidence of earlier remains in Crna Gora. But no argument can be raised on this, however well it may fit in with our general picture of the percolation south and west of the Albanians, for a similar argument could then be constructed for the older spread of the Tosk area to the south.
ha look at that. montenegro, early alb remains. hmmm. tribal system almost exact copy of alb one. hmmm.
similar surnames. hmmm.
dont look polish at all. hmmmm.
the best of the serbs have alb mix. sukers.
Tirane Moderator
Posts: 794
(8/3/03 7:35 am) Reply
Re: well well
weak as always! Simple poor and without arguments.
Regarding the article I brought you, meaningless it is you, who cant speak a word in slavic. Those toponymes are clearly slavic, and it was stupid from you to come and ask me the districts and % of slavic toponyms, as if I was in your disposition to work where ever the Fatherland feels it neccessary!!!!
And actually, Vlore, Zagorie, Cerkovice, Voskopoje etc etc are not in central Albania!
According to other russian scholars there are about 2000 slavic toponyms in Albania, not only 300 hundred.
Early Alb remains in Montenegro?
Yes, it might be the invasions during the time of weak monte kingdoms, or even it might be when montes hired albos for various purposes
Tirane Moderator
Posts: 795
(8/3/03 7:39 am) Reply
Re: well well
central albania has been clearly target of slavic settlement since they came into Balkan, so thin toponymy in central albania doesnt say that much. There might be various reason why central albania might have been saved from slavic toponymy, and that doesnt have to be the absense of slavs in there.
shpata Moderator
Posts: 758
(8/3/03 9:38 pm) Reply
re
yes so weak that you felt the need to reply twice!
Quote:Regarding the article I brought you, meaningless it is you, who cant speak a word in slavic. Those toponyms are clearly slavic, and it was stupid from you to come and ask me the districts and % of slavic toponyms, as if I was in your disposition to work where ever the Fatherland feels it necessary!!!!
And actually, Vlore, Zagorie, Cerkovice, Voskopoje etc etc are not in central Albania!
who said vlore, zagori, voskopoje, mbrezhan, carcove, etc. are located in central albania??? seriously you must be the dumbest member in here. i know very well south albania was slavinised ones, read my first response it has nothing to do with south albania. but you tirane are afraid of truth and will do anything to change what we are discussing, and turn this into "shpata thinks he is pure illyrian topic".
my idea is not stupid. you are afraid of the truth. a map showing the concentration of slavic toponyms by percentage will reveal the area that was least touched by slavs(if youre searching for illyrian, dacian, thracian) or least held by slavs(of youre looking for caucasian origin).
Quote:Early Alb remains in Montenegro?
Yes, it might be the invasions during the time of weak monte kingdoms, or even it might be when montes hired albos for various purposes
sure!
and central-north(from mirdite to kruje area) albania. again its the key to find the alb origins. wether the absence of slavic toponyms is because few slavs made it there or because thats the first area caucacus albs(or arab or whatever serbs are hopping for) settled. the answer will only be revealed by studying that area.
ps. you are having some serious troubles visualizing(spacial skills). something females have trouble with.
if you dont understand such things dont try to appear professional in it, this is not about how beautiful you present yourself(again something females worry about), this is about the answer to alb question.
Words of a linguist
Xhevat LLOSHI, Prof. Doctor of Linguistics
ALBANIAN
The Albanians of today call themselves shqiptarė, their country Shqipėri,and their language shqipe. These terms came into use at the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th century. Foreigners call them albanesi (It.), Albaner (Germ.), Albanians (Engl.), Alvanos (Gr.), Arbanasi (old Serb.), the country Albania, Albanie, Albanien, Alvania, and Albanija, and the language albanese, Albanisch, Albanian, alvaniki, and arbanashkirespectively. All these words are derived from the name Albanoi of an Illyrian tribe and their center Albanopolis, noted by the astronomer of Alexandria, Ptolemy, in the 2nd century. Alban could be a plural of alb-/arb-, denoting the inhabitants of the plains (ĒABEJ 1976). The name passed over the boundaries of the Illyrian tribe in Central Albania, and was generalized for all the Albanians.
They called themselves arbėnesh/arbėresh, the country Arbėni/Arbėri, and the language arbėneshe/arbėreshe. In the foreign languages, the Middle Ages denominations of these names survived, but for the Albanians they were substituted by shqiptarė, Shqipėri and shqipe. The primary root is the adverb shqip, meaning "clearly, intelligibly". There is a very close semantic parallel to this in the German noun Deutsche the Germans and the German language (LLOSHI 1984).
Shqip spread out from the North to the South, and Shqipni/Shqipėri is probably a collective noun, following the common pattern of Arbėni/Arbėri. The change happened after the Ottoman conquest, because of the conflict in the whole line of the political, social, economic, religious, and cultural spheres with a totally alien world of the Oriental type. A new and more generalized ethnic and linguistic consciousness of all these people responded to this, distinguished against the foreigners as a community of men (shqiptarė) clearly understanding each-other, that is understanding each-other shqip. This adverb predominates in everyday use, the noun shqipe and the collocation gjuha shqipe are a recent written coinage. There is nothing scientific in explaining Shqipėri as "the country of the eagle" and shqiptarė as "the sons of the eagle".
2
The Albanian language is spoken by more than seven million people, of whom about three and a half million live within the frontiers of the Republic of Albania, more than two million live in Kosova, Macedonia and Montenegro, and the rest in other countries - principally in Greece, Turkey, Italy, Germany, the USA, and Switzerland. These figures are relative because of the strong flow of emigration from Albania and Kosova in the last decades of the twentieth century. Historically, however, some distinctions must be made:
a. The Albanian area - includes all the territories of Albania and the adjacent zones in Kosova, Macedonia, Montenegro, and North-West Greece, where the Albanian language has been uninterruptedly spoken from the ancient times. The dialectal division of this language is applied over this area, and this is the historical territory, in which the evolution of this language as an entity through its different periods took place.
b. The Diaspora - includes the Albanians that emigrated up to the end of the Middle Albanian period (no later than the beginning of the 18th century). As a result, they don't call themselves the modern name shqiptarė. The Italian-Albanians, whose mass emigration goes back to the 15th century, call themselves arbėreshė, and mostly live in southern Italy (Calabria and Sicily). The Greek-Albanians, whose emigration goes back to the 14th century, call themselves arbėreshė, but are called arvanites by the Greeks. They are settled on Ionian coast line, in Peloponnesos, around Athens and on various Greek islands. They must be distinguished from the Ēam (Tscham), who belong to the Albanian area, although arvanitika - the idiom of Arvanites - is closer to ēamėrishte as a South Tosk dialect. Some small enclaves of the Albanian diaspora are in the former Yugoslavia, in Bulgaria, and in the Ukraine. The Albanian idiom of diaspora represents an historical dialect, evolving in a bilingual situation and without direct connection with the Albanian area. Only in the second half of the 20th century the written variants of diaspora were oriented to Standard Albanian.
c. The Colonies - include the Albanians who settled in foreign countries beginning from the 18th century, already speaking New Albanian. The largest colonies were created in Turkey, Romania, the United States, and Egypt. Their idiom is influenced by bilingualism.
d. The Emigrants include those speaking contemporary Albanian and also those educated in Standard Albanian. Massive emigrations of Albanians occurred beginning before the World War I due to the political conflicts, and further occurred especially in the last decade of the 20th century due to the cleansing policy and the oppression of the Albanians in former Yugoslavia, and to the fall of communism in Albania.
3.Character of the language.
The Albanian language belongs to the Indo-European family of languages; it forms an independent branch of its own within this family. The identification of the Albanian as Indo-European was not established until relatively late by F. BOPP (1854). The details of the main correspondences of Albanian with Indo-European languages were elaborated by G. MEYER in the 1880s and 1890s. Through his work it has been accepted that Albanian, because of some earlier phonetical changes, like the reflection in a of the short I.E. o, pertains to the Northern European group of languages and is distinct from Greek and from Italic languages in the reflecting of the palatal tectals. There have been evidence of ancient
lexical correspondences between Albanian and the Balto-Slavonic languages, as well as Greek, Armenian etc., and particularly between Albanian and Romanian. Further linguistic refinement were presented by H. PEDERSEN and N. JOKL. PEDERSEN (1900) acknowledged that the three ancient tectal series were differently reflected in Albanian, and on this basis Albanian is included to the group of satem languages, but with some particular developments of its own. It may be considered pertaining to a transitional zone of the central Indo-European area, like the Balto-Slavonic languages and Armenian. Relevant Indo-European features of Albanian are the preservation of the poly-valence of its declension and conjugation endings, apophonic and suppletive verbal forms and stems.
The Indo-European character of the Albanian is to be observed in all its subsystems (DEMIRAJ 1986, 1988). Inherited elements in its vocabulary have been preserved, e.g. all its numerals (with the exception of qind - hundred and mijė -thousand from Latin) are of Indo-European heritage. In the compound numerals of the type tridhjetė, pesėdhjetė (thirty, fifty) Albanian has preserved the Indo-European model (njėzet twenty and dyzet forty belong to the specific vigesimal system). The personal and demonstrative pronouns are generally of Indo-European origin. Ancient changes have been rendered evident, such as in the pre-historic evolution of o > a in natė (night); a > o in motėr (sister, the ancient meaning: mother), and the long e > o in tetė (eight).
There are traces of the ancient inherited opposition of long vs. short vowels, etc. In the course of its evolution, the Indo-European heritage of the Albanian has undergone a continuous evolution, and this language has also developed several new traits, some of which are not encountered elsewhere. In historical times other changes were produced in Albanian inherited elements: the transformation of the ancient three-gender system into a two-gender one, and newly created verbal endings continue to be polysemic.
Among the general innovations, that have taken place in Albanian, the following ones could be mentioned: - morphonologic alternations e/ie ~ i (hedh - hidhni I throw - you throw), metaphony (dash desh ram rams, dal - del I go out - he goes out), apophony (e/ie ~ o : mbledh - mblodha I gather - I gathered; a ~ o : marr - mora I take - I took), diphthongization of o (ftoi - ftua quince - the quince), palatalization of the stem final consonants in the plural of numerous nouns (breg - brigje shore- shores, zog - zogj bird birds); - creation of a particular plural stem opposed to that of the regular (prind prindėr parent parents); - creation of a double (indefinite - definite) declension; - the prepositive derivational and inflexional particles with adjectives, numerals and ordinal numbers, kinship nouns, and genitive forms; - agglutinated possessive pronouns for 1st and 2nd persons; - re-organization of the non-active conjugation and the coining of the analytic non-finite forms of the verbs (me punue, pa punuar to work, without working); - in the syntax: the bound determinatives are placed after the noun, whereas the unbound determinatives are regularly placed before the noun. As a consequence of its gradual evolution, Albanian has been transformed from a formerly synthetic to a synthetic-analytical language.
After K. SANDFELD's Linguistique balkanique (1930), Albanian is considered an important member of the Balkan Sprachbund. As the main balkanisms, the Balkan features, of Albanian that could be listed are: - the postposition of the definite article, a manifestation of the ancient tendency of this language to place all the bound determinatives after the noun; - uniformity of the genitive and dative cases; - redoubling of the direct and direct objects through the unstressed forms of the personal pronouns; - disappearance of the infinitive, substituted by subjunctive forms or analytical forms; - the future tense formed by means of the auxiliary dua (I will) in the form of a particle do + subjunctive. Thus, Albanian is to be characterized as a Balkan Indo-European language. In the Balkan area Albanian has been exposed to external influences. Despite the powerful pressures on the part of Greek, Latin, Slavonic and Turkish, the Albanian language has preserved its essential features. As summarized by prof. SH. DEMIRAJ (1988), "Albanian can be characterized as an Indo-European language which has followed a course of evolution of its own even in those cases, when it manifests concordances with some of other Indo-European languages".
4. Origin.
Among Albanian language scholars there is practically no dispute over the thesis that Albanian is related to Illyrian: Albanian is a direct descendant of a south-west group of Illyrian dialects. However, there have been other hypotheses proposed, among which the following merit to be mentioned.
a. The Pelasgian hypothesis. Albanian is the continuation of the language of an ancient people called Pelasgians, a hypothesis rather diffused in the 19th century. J.G. von HAHN (1854) formulated in a strict manner the hypothesis that the Albanians are direct descendants of the Illyrians, Macedonians, and Epirotes, and that in the remotest times they formed a united race together with the Latins and the Hellenes called Pelasgians, with their language, the Pelasgian. A. SCHLEICHER gave full authority to this theory of Pelasgian origin with his family tree of languages.
Today this is considered a groundless idea.
b. The Thracian (Dacian) hypothesis. Albanian is the continuation of the Thracian language. This thesis, implying an Albanian-Rumanian symbiosis, is supported by students of Rumanian: H. HIRT, K. PAUL, G. WEIGAND, H. BARIC, I. POPOVIC, and I. I. RUSSU. Only scant remains of Thracian exist, but HIRT saw Albanians as descendants of the Thracians. This means that in the early Middle Ages the Albanians moved westward from the central part of the Balkans, but there are no historical records of such a massive migration. To BARIC Albanian is an Illyricized Thracian dialect.
c. The Illyrian-Thracian hypothesis. Albanian is derived from a mixture of Illyrian and Thracian. N. JOKL supported the idea of an intermediate position between Illyrian and Thracian. However, Thracian is not better known than Illyrian, and it is difficult to distinguish their specific elements, or to trace a dividing line between Illyrian and Thracian. For JOKL the Albanians are probably the descendants of the Illyrian tribe of Dardanians, living in the interior of the Balkan peninsula, who migrated westward some time in the late Roman period.
d. The Daco-Moesian hypothesis is sustained by the Bulgarian academician V. GEORGIEV. e. The independent hypothesis. H. KRAHE affirms that Albanian presents an independent Indo-European language. The vast work of Prof. E. ĒABEJ on Albanian etymology (1976), an unrivaled synthesis of everything known in this field, refers to remote periods of Albanian as an Indo-European language, without considering the Illyrian language. Following a strict method, the Albanian etymologies would go back to Illyrian forms, which in turn would be traced back to Indo-European roots, like the Italian etymologies going back to Latin forms. E. HAMP (1972) states: "Albanian shows no obvious close affinity to any other Indo-European language; it is plainly the sole modern survivor of its own subgroup". The whole question of origin is closely connected to the question of the area where the Albanian was formed, and of the place where its transformation ocurred. It is not by chance that the Illyrian origin of Albanian was suggested on a historical base by H.E. THUNMANN in 1774. Archeological finds of our days substantiate the theory of the autochthony of the Albanians, and the supporters of the Illyrian origin theory comprise many historians. The continuity of the same material culture on the same territory is a proven fact, but the linguistic argumentation is not very substantial. The Illyrian language is only known from certain words reported by ancient writers, from a few rare inscriptions and, to a gretaer extent, from surviving names of persons and places. Despite remarkable studies by H. KRAHE, A. RIBEZZO, A. MAYER, and others, the question of the place that the Illyrian occupies in the Indo-European family is still debatable. Most German, Austrian and Italian historians and linguists, such as: G. MEYER, F. MIKLOSISCH, H. PEDERSEN, P. KRETSCHMER, V. PISANI, W. CIMOCHOWSKI, and others have supported the Illyrian kinship of the Albanian. Albanian linguists in general - E. ĒABEJ, S. RIZA, M. CAMAJ, SH. DEMIRAJ, M. DOMI, A. KOSTALLARI - advocate the Albanians autochthony and the Illyrian filiation of the Albanian language. Albanian was formed through the gradual evolution of a group of south-western Illyrian dialects during the period between the final stage of the intensive influence of Latin upon Illyrian and the arrival of the Slavs. This rather long and complicated process occurred in the first centuries A.D. The linguistic arguments put forward by the opposers of the Illyrian origin of Albanian cannot resist criticism. SH. DEMIRAJ (1988): "The Albanian language was formed precisely in the regions of the eastern Adriatic and Ionian seas inhabited in ancient times mostly by Illyrian tribes".5.Periodization.Different schemes for the periodization of the Albanian language have been proposed, based on various linguistic and historical criteria: H. PEDERSEN, E. ĒABEJ, S. RIZA, A.V. DESNITSKAJA, B. BOKSHI, XH. LLOSHI, SH. DEMIRAJ. The problem becomes very complex with regard to various hypotheses on the origin of this language. If we take a stance for an independent origin, then the proto-Albanian would have a period of archaic Albanian, which would serve as the first ring of a periodization. Otherwise, the proto-Albanian would have to be identified with Illyrian, Illyrian-Thracian, etc. In these circumstances, the most acceptable solution would be a periodization beginning with the first centuries of the New Era.
Old Albanian - up to 8th-9th centuries.
This period includes the late history of its kin language and the transformation to proper Albanian. The two major dialects of this language were delineated, and the rhotacism ended up. With the reappearance of the national name of the Albanians in the tenth century, the identity of their Arbėresh - Albanian language - is firmly consolidated. It is very unlikely that any written documents in the Albanian language exist from this period.
2. Middle Albanian - up to 17th century. The denomination of Arbėreshe gradually spread all over the Albanian area. The language now is no longer in contact with Old Greek and Latin, but rather with some other languages, and with different historical stages of these languages in evolution. From that time on the Albanian has a relationship to Italian, Middle Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Turkish. In coincidence with the shaking of the Byzantine Empire in the 12th century, the Arbėresh feudal class rose as a political force and principalities of Arbėri were created. Under these new circumstances, where the common man and the ruling class were the same native people, the historical demand to write the Albanian language arose, and Albanian becomes a written language. The dialectal differences of that time are smaller than in the later period. After the Ottoman conquest, there was an influx of borrowed Oriental words, but in the new circumstances the Albanian already reacted with the participation of the developed culture. The stress for the elaboration of the native language became more acute now, when it was called for as a means to defend the national culture. 3. New Albanian from the 18thcentury topresent. Beginning with the 18th century the language is known by Albanians under the new name shqip. From this time on, the cultivation and the establishment of the literary language emerges as the central problem, and the general evolution depends on it. Even the question of the loan words becomes more and more an aspect of culture orientation. Two important stages can be pointed out: the Renaissance phase (approximately 1820-1920), and the Modern phase (after 1920), also known as the contemporary Albanian language. In the three last decades of the 20th century Standard Albanian is a practical reality, a basic means of expressing the national culture for all Albanians, within and outside the political frontiers of the Albanian state. 6.Dialects. Albanian is spoken in a number of geographical varieties, divided into two major dialectal groups: I. The Northern dialect or Gheg - gegėrishte, north of the Shkumbini River.
II. The Southern dialect or Tosk - toskėrishte, south of the Shkumbini River. Between them is a transitional dialectal group on the both sides of Shkumbini River. The regional names Gegė and Toskė gained currency in the second half of the 18th century, after the consolidation of the national name shqiptarė for all the inhabitants of various regions. The Gheg dialect is divided in two sub-dialects: the Northern Gheg and the Southern Gheg, approximately on the both sides of Mati River. With a further sub-division, theNorthern Gheg is divided in the north-western group, also including the Albanian spoken in Montenegro, and the north-eastern group, also including the Albanian spoken in Kosova.
The Southern Gheg is divided in the Central Gheg group, also including the greatest part of the Albanian spoken in Macedonia, and the Middle Albania group, including Tirana. The Tosk dialect is divided in two sub-dialects: the Northern Tosk and the Southern Tosk, approximately on both sides of Vjosa River. With a further sub-division, the Southern Tosk is divided into the Labėrishte group and Ēamėrishte, including the region of north-western Greece, not to be confused with arvanites or Greek-Albanians.(GJINARI, 1989).
The dialectal differences between Gheg and Tosk are minimal. The most striking one's are: - nasal vowels in Gheg, missing in Tosk ( bā - bėj I do); - long vowels in Gheg with phonological values, missing in Tosk; - ė (schwa) very frequent in Tosk and also stressed at times, missing in spoken Gheg and to which the nasal ā (hān - hėnė moon) corresponds in the same position; - ue diphthong or long u in Gheg, to which ua in Tosk corresponds (all from uo>o diphthongization, due, du - dua I want, grue, gru - grua woman); - the initial vo- in Gheg in a very small number of cases, to which va- in Tosk corresponds (voj - vaj oil); - the intervocalic -n- in Gheg, to which Tosk corresponds with rhotacism -r- (ranw - rėrė sand, venė - verė wine); - terminal voiced consonants in Gheg are heard devoiced in Tosk (kalb - kalp make rotten, i madh - i math big); - the consonant clusters mb, nd, ng, ngj in Tosk are heard as distinct sounds, while reduced to m, n, nj in Gheg ( mbush - mush fill, vend - ven place, ngas - nas tease, ngjesh - njesh press); - intervocalic nj in
Tosk is reduced in j in Gheg ( rrėnjė - rrāj root); - imperfect tense forms ending in -sha, -she in Gheg have Tosk correspondences -nja, -nje ( punojsha - punonja I worked ); - Turkish loan-words in Gheg are paroxytonic, in Tosk oxytonic (įg - agį, kįfe kafé coffee); - difference in the definite forms of the nouns in ue/ua: (Gheg thue - thoni, Tosk thua- thoni finger-nail); -
Gheg preserves the endings of verbs with consonantal stem, Tosk omits the endings (Gheg un hapi Tosk unė hap I open); - Tosk preserves the endings of the participles, Gheg omits the endings (hapur - hap opened, larė - la washed); - presence of the reflexive pronoun i vet his own in Gheg, missing in Tosk; - presence of an infinitive form in Gheg ( me shkue to go), absence in Tosk, replaced by a circumlocution (pėr tė shkuar); - presence in Gheg of a future tense with the present of the auxiliary "to have" plus the infinitive of the verb ( kam me shkue I will go), missing in Tosk; - deverbative adjectives in Gheg, absent in Tosk, expressing possibility with the suffix -shem, different from passive participial adjectives (i punueshem cultivable - i punuem cultivated). In general, Tosk has been more innovative in the previous period, while Gheg is today more reductive. Gheg and Tosk are mutually intelligible, and in a small country with recent great demographic movements, the old regional divisions are becoming more and more conventional. The historical dialects spoken in Italian and Greek enclaves reflect the Tosk origin.
7.Structure.
The structure of Albanian, particularly the grammatical categories and the syntax are much like those of other European languages. Phonetics. Standard Albanian has 7 simple vowels (a, e, ė, i, o, u, y) and 29 consonants. They are represented by Latin letters singly, in combinations with h ( dh, sh, th, xh, zh) and j (gj, nj), doubled (rr,ll), and with diacritics (ē for tsch and ė for schwa). The consonants are divided into the voiced (b, v, d, z, x, xh, zh, dh, gj, g), unvoiced ( p, f, t, s, c, ē, sh, th, q, k, h), and sonants ( m, n, nj, r, rr, l, ll). The accent is fixed and, with rare exceptions (i madh - tė mėdhenj big), it does not change place: A typical Albanian word is a paroxytonic disyllabic with trochaic rhythm. Even monosyllabic words in their different and numerous grammatical forms result as bisyllabic words, e.g. mal mountain is transformed as a definite noun to mali, and during the declension to singular mali, malit, malin, in plural male, malet, malesh. The same happens with verbs, e.g. pi drink during the conjugation results in pimė, pini, pinė, pija, pije, pinte, piva, piu, pirė etc.The Phonetics of Albanian was published in 1984 (Fonetika). In 1996 DEMIRAJ published the historical phonology (Fonologjia historike e shqipes). Morphology. The grammar of Standard Albanian distinguishes 10 parts of speech. Nouns show overt gender, number, and five cases. In the definite form the masculine nouns add the suffix-article -i ( det,-i sea, the sea), or -u ( krah,-u arm, the arm); the feminine nouns add -a ( liri,-a freedom, the freedom). Neuter forms are becoming obsolete, and are distinguished by the addition of the neuter singular article -t(ė), -it ( ujė-t water, the water, tė ecur,-it walking, the walking), the masculine article -ibeing its substitute ( ujė, uji).
The declension of neuter nouns is otherwise identical with that of masculine nouns. Noun plurals are notable for the irregularity of a large number of them. A group of masculine nouns results identical with the feminine plurals and agrees with adjectives in feminine forms, a sign of the weakening of the gender in plural (male tė larta high mountains, a masculine plural, like shtėpi tė larta a feminine plural). All the three genders have -t in the definite plural. The system of cases is well preserved. Of the five cases, the nominative and accusative, singular and plural indefinite are alike; so are the genitive and dative, singular and plural (nominative burrė man, accusative burrė; genitive burri, dative burri).
The ablative singular is identical to the dative singular (burri); the ablative plural also may end in -sh(burrash), and like the singular, functions almost like an adjective ( mur guri stone wall, sėmundje grash women's disease). The suffixed article furnishes Albanian with a distinct set of endings, that gives to the Albanian noun a distinct paradigm for the definite form. Another characteristic is the connecting particle, linking a noun with a following genitive and sharing a number of features with the postpositive definite article (shtėpia e babait father's house, shtėpisė sė babait to the father's house).
Adjectives are of two distinct types:
a) Adjectives preceeded by the connecting particle (i ėmbėl m. sweet, e ėmbėl f. sweet). The presence of the adjectives with a proclitic particle is not found in any other European language. They are invariable, except when forming feminine and plural, and are derived fron nouns, adverbs, participles (i mirė, i djeshėm, i shkruar good, yesterday's, written);
b) Simple words, without particle, derived from nouns, other adjectives, and verbs, also including compound adjectives (trim, emėror, bukurosh, kėrkues, zemėrmadh brave, nominal, pretty, exigent, great-hearted). The adjectives after the nouns are uninflected, only the particle changes in agreement with the preceeding noun. Adjectives are placed before the nouns for emotive or stylistic emphasis; in this case they take over the inflection of the noun, the latter being uninflected. The greatest part of the adjectives can be substantivized. Verbs have roughly the number and variety of forms found in Italian or French, and are quite irregular in forming their stems.
The verb system includes many archaic traits, such as the retention of distinct active and middle personal endings (as in Greek), and the change of a stem vowel e in the present to o (from *e) in the past tense, a feature shared with the Baltic languages: mbledh - mblodha I gather, I gathered (HAMP, 1972).
There are six moods and also non-conjugated forms. The moods are: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, optative, admirative, andimperative. The non-conjugated forms are: participle, gerund (duke + participle), and infinitive. Gheg infinitive me + participle is present in various collocations of Standard Albanian (domethėnė that is; meqenėse since, as; duke qenė se in view of the fact that); the Tosk form pėr tė + participle corresponds to it.
The admirative mood is pecular to Albanian. The present form is a compound past participle + kam ( punokam What a wonder, I am able to work! /I am at work!). There is only a passive participle, the active form is traced in adjectives and nomina agentis (kėrkues researching /researcher). The indicative mood is rich with tenses; aorist is distinguished from imperfect and compound perfect tenses. There is also a number of analytical forms: pa bėrė, me tė bėrė, njė tė bėrė, sė bėri). Albanian grammar includes as pronouns 7 groups: personal, reflexive, demonstrative, possessive, interrogative, relative, and indefinite. The personal pronouns are not obligatory in building a sentence, as they are in German, English or French, and in the spoken language they are often omitted. They have weak (shortened) forms in the dative and accusative, very alike to French. These proclitic forms become enclitic when joined to the imperative: jepia = ia jep give it to him. The 3rd person of personal pronouns ai, ajo he, she, plural ata, ato they, also serve as demonstratives, the correlative forms of them being respectively ky, kjo this, plural kėta, kėto these. In the cases where English and German use the 3rd person neuter forms (it and das), the Albanian language uses the feminine forms: ajo, kjo.
The possessive adjectives follow the noun they qualify, but 1st and 2nd person with kinship names also are placed before the noun ( im bir - biri im my son, vs. libri im my book). They are declined like the adjectives, i.e. agree with the antecendent noun in person and number. The forms of the possessive adjectives are of extreme complexity, denoting at the same time the owner and the possessed. Very characteristic for the Albanian prepositions is their use with the nominative (nga, te), and with some adverbs ( pėr, deri).
10Syntax.
The structure of the Albanian sentence does not differ very much from the other European languages, and the written language is strongly influenced by them. The word order is relatively free, but the subject is not obligatory. Passive constructions are characteristic for the written language. The bound determinatives are placed after the noun, whereas the self-sufficient determinatives are placed before the nouns (ky djalė, disa djem this boy, some boys). When a definite noun or one taken as already known is the direct object of the sentence, a pronoun in accusative that repeats this information must be inserted in the verb phrase. Some aspects of the structure of the Albanian language are mentioned in other parts of this paper. The academic grammar of the Albanian was published in 1976, and the second revised edition 1995 (Gramatika e gjuhės shqipe); the syntax was was published in 1976 and 1983 ( Sintaksa).
8.Vocabulary.
The core of the Albanian vocabulary, i.e. the part that constitutes its specific nature, is the stock of the words which Albanian inherited from its "parent" language of Indo-European character (see: Origin). It is understood that there are some words of pre-Indo-European origin, but their separation is extremely difficult. This inherited stock has continuously been enriched by derived, compound and agglutinated words in the course of the evolution of Albanian itself, as well as by newly coined words. An important part of the Albanian vocabulary is the collocations and the idioms, especially in the spoken language. A group of no more than fifty verbs and nouns have a very large set of phraseological collocations. Together with the common Indo-European words (afėr not far, at father, bar to bear, bėj do, i butė soft, ēel open, diell sun, dimėr winter, djeg burn, dhėndėr son-in-law, gjarpėr snake, ha eat, jam be, kam have, marr take, mirė well, natė night, pesė five, them say, i vogėl small) from its kin language, Albanian has inherited some ancient borrowings from Old Greek and Latin. According to A. THUMB (1926) there are more than 20 Old Greek elements of Dorian origin in Albanian, and the list since has been enlarged. The number of Latin loanwords in Albanian is relatively great. It is a consequence of the long Roman dominance - the long political and military administration, the presence of military camps (castra), veterans and colonists, and the roads built through the hinterland - but the Albanian language escaped the romanization. The oldest layer of the Latin elements penetrated into the "parent" language before the New Era. Some word-building affixes have also penetrated through the Latin borrowings (ĒABEJ 1974). Latin loanwords in Albanian attest to the similarities in development of the Latin spoken in the Balkans and of Rumanian. A rather interesting and complicated problem is that of the ancient Albanian-Rumanian lexical correspondences, dating from a pre-Slavonic period. According to prof. ĒABEJ (1975) they can be explained by their long neighbourhood with each other. SH. DEMIRAJ (1988) thinks that words of this ancient layer may have partially been a common Indo-European stock of the kin language for the Albanian and the substratum for Rumanian, that they may have partially penetrated from the one language to the other, and that some others may have been inherited from a more ancient Balkan language.
The presence of a large nomadic population of Aromanians (Wallachs) in south-east Albania is a factor not to be excluded. During the Middle Ages, coinciding with the period of the Middle Albanian, the Roman influence continued on the coastal belt mostly from Venetian dialect at the beginning, meanwhile the Greek loanwords penetrated into Albanian mostly through the spoken idiom chiefly into the Southern Albanian dialect. Yet two new factors emerged because of the Slavonic invasion and the Ottoman conquest. The introduction of Slavjanisms into Albanian should have started after the cessation of rhotacism in the Southern Albanian dialect. The Slavonic loanwords are of various chronological and geographical stratification. Slavonic borrowings of the Southern and Middle Albanian dialects are of Bulgarian origin, whereas those of the Northern Albanian dialect are of Serbian provenance. The influence of Russian was felt upon the written language after the World War II, particularly through loan-translations. The first Turkish loanwords date since the end of the 14th century, but the greatest part of them penetrated into Albanian after the 17th century. Orientalisms were adopted with the Oriental way of life, and their substitution was the main target of purist tendencies connected with the Renaissance movement (second half of the 19th century).
The status of Orientalisms in Modern Albanian is very complex and rich with stylistic possibilities. During the last two centuries the Albanian vocabulary has been intensively enriched through countless neologisms and borrowings. Two opposed trends have been marked out. The first has been the purification of many Turkish, Greek, Slavonic, and Romance loan-words.In contrast, Romance loan-words (modern Italian and French), and in recent times English ones too, have inundated the written language, necessitated by the demands of technology, science, culture, art, political and social life, and strongly favoured by television and media. International words are present in Albanian in the same measure as in other European languages. The most comprehensive Albanian dictionary is Fjalor i gjuhės sė sotme shqipe,published by the Academy of Sciences in 1980.
9.The written language.
The first attempts to write the Albanian language are to be found in 12th-13th centuries. It is understandable that the first documents may have been trade, economic, administrative, and religious writings, compiled by low-rank clerics. A Dominican friar, Guillelmus Adae, known as Father Brocardus, noted in a pamphlet he published in 1332 that "the Albanians have a language quite other than the Latins, but they use the Latin letters in all their books". In a manuscript of decrees an orders, compiled in 1462 by Pal Engjėlli, Archbishop of Durrės and collaborator of George Kastrioti-Skanderbeg, we find the first written sentence, a baptismal formula, in Albanian. The first book in the Albanian language, as far as it is documented, was published in 1555 by Gjon Buzuku under the title Meshari (Missal). The first published dictionary is a 17thcentury bilingual Latin-Albanian dictionary published in 1635 by Frang Bardhi. The same century saw the publication of a number of other works on didactic religious themes. Writings were scanty in the 18th century, but increased considerably in the 19th century with the advent of the National Awakening. The first New Testament in Albanian was published in 1827. The introduction of Albanian in public worship was considered as a step towards the national cultural identity. The literary production continued through the 19th century in the Italian enclaves.
The written Albanian of the 19th century was not a simple continuation of the earlier tradition. A number of problems pertaining to this arose repeatedly and conditions for solving them were very unfavourable until 1912, the year of the independence from the Ottoman rule. The linguistic problem was a crucial one in the programmes of the National Revival. But the time was not ripe for claims to a unique standard language, particularly in a country in which there were no centres of printing or publication, and no schools and newspapers until the end of the 19th century. Three principal stages can be outlined in the process of the crystallization of the written literary Albanian. 1. The National Renaissance from the first decades of the 19th century till the first decades of the 20th century. The Renaissance was a definite cultural orientation, making the national unity its main factor. In Albanian culture in general, this period coincides with the prevalence of romanticism. On the basis of the two main dialects of Albanian, two literary varieties arose; and within these there was a variety of linguistic usage. The authors were mutually acquainted with them, without any tendence of rivalry notable. The first author to consistently acknowledge this division was K. Kristoforidhi, who published his Bible translations simultaneously in two variants. The crowning of this period was the 1908 Congress of Manastir, laying the basis for the standard adoption of the Roman alphabet, the alphabet which is still in current use in Albania a welcome basis after a long period of the confusing presence of a number of alphabets, randomly used according to the cultural and political orientations of the aprticular authors. 2. The Independence period of the end of the World War I till the end of World War II. This period opens with a very important event: a Literary Committee convened in 1916-1917 in Shkodėr. A number of decisions were made on Albanian orthography. The Committee's main orthographic principle was phonetic, i.e. a word's grapheme should conform to its pronunciation. Two sets of different orthographies for the two main literary variants were sanctioned, bringing them as close as possible. The South Gheg idiom of Elbasan, with some improvements, was suggested as a basis for the future gradual convergence of the two variants in a unified literary Albanian. From this moment on, the orthography and the literary language became synonymous for the general Albanian public. The Shkodra Committee decisions marked the new stage of Modern Albanian: thecontemporary Albanian.However, the problem now was placed in new circumstances. After the Independence internal socio-political factors gained more and more importance. In the cultural orientation realism replaced romanticism. It was realized that the choice of the standard version is not based solely on linguistic or aesthetic criteria, but also on political, social and cultural ones. Still imbued with the ideals of the Renaissance period, in Lushnja Congress in 1920 Albanians adopted the guidelines set up in Shkodra. By a decree in 1923 the Elbasan version was proclaimed "the official Albanian language". This sub-variant had some influence until the end of World War II, but it did not succeed in becoming the basis of a standard language. As the result of the objective development, the two main literary variants continued their convergence, but at the same time consolidated themselves as separate entities. At the end of the period, when necessity for a sole standard variant was pressing, the rivalry between the two main variants became evident. Parallel to the old idea of their convergence, the option of preserving the situation or even enlarging the differences between
the two main variants emerged. It was an endeavour to transform the two variants into two different culture orientations, based on geographic, ethnographic, dialectal, religious and other differences, even calling in question the national unity. A concentration of all of this was the slogan: the bidialectal Albanian language corresponds to the two-headed eagle in Albanian flag. The present-day controversy is rooted in this debate, but the dispute on the national Albanian language was interrupted by the Second World War.
3. The Standard Albanian. The establishment of the dictatorship in Albania after the War had an impact on every aspect of life of this nation, linguistic problems not excluded. Among them, two sides of the language question merit attention. First, the all-embracing urge of the party-state to standardize the life after an ideological pattern resulted in the goal, followed by the regime, to unify the Albanian language. Second, there was an inner objective development of the language itself, corresponding to the evolution of the modern times. It would be flippant to ignore the demands of a centralized state in our times, and of a culture against a background of mass media, mass demographic movements, mass telecommunications, mass propaganda, etc. After a long, complicated historical process, the time appeared ripe for one of the forms of "cultivated Albanian" to become the standard language. Some principal events marked the road of this process. Two conferences in 1952 focused on the question of "the national literary language". In the report presented to the second conference (September 1952), Dh. S. Shuteriqi advocated that the literary Tosk has been predominant over literary Gheg. Shuteriqi's report met with opposition. Professors A. Xhuvani and E. Ēabej insisted on an evolutionary process of several generations, awaiting for a steady rapprochement of the two dialects in writing. However, an end was already put to the long and complicated debate, which was to be revived forty years later. The National Conference on Orthography in 1953 recommended the furthering of the process of orthographic unification, implying that literary Albanian should be based on the Tosk modified orthographic variant. The Tosk variety - more unified and intensively enriched - predominated in official and semi-official publications. In 1956 an orthography treated in detail the problems of unification, and made a step forward in the standardization of the two literary variants still in use at the time. The two-variant solutions diminished a great deal. Yet the literary Gheg - more diversiform, because the Gheg dialect in itself has more marked subvarieties - was restricted to belletristic, theatre, films, humour and songs. The de facto general public usage had already established that the new standard language would be based on many features (especially in phonetics) common to most Tosk varieties, but not excluding a few features from Gheg. The vocabulary and the idioms were seen as a common part of the Albanian language, regardless of the dialectal forms of their provenance. The most effective step towards standardization was taken in 1967 with the publication of a set of orthographic rules: Rregullat e drejtshkrimit tė shqipes, aiming to represent a uniform national language. Three conferences, in 1952, 1957, 1965 were organized in Kosova, too. The Orthography published in 1964 was the most advanced codification of the Gheg variant, including new elements of convergence. A turning point was the Linguistic Conference of Prishtina in 1968, which adopted the literary language in use in Albania, abandoning the Gheg standard, and following the principle of "One nation - one language". The road was opened for the Congress of Orthography in 1972 in Tirana, with authoritative representatives from Albania, Kosova, Macedonia, Montenegro and Italy.
The Congress of Orthography adopted a Resolution. It is considered a turning point in the standardization of the Albanian language. Important academic publications completed the picture of a stabilized and elaborated national language: orthographic rules (1973) and an orthographic dictionary (1976), the grammar (1976), and the dictionary of the contemporary Albanian (1980). Two new journals for the cultivation of the language (Sprachpflege) were established: Gjuha jonė (1981 in Tirana), and Gjuha shqipe (1984 in Prishtina). A seminar on the problems of the literary language was held in Prishtina in 1980 (proceedings published in 1983). Another language conference "Albanian National Literary Language and Our Epoch" was organized in Tirana. This time a new goal was set: to go further in standardizing the spoken language, a fanciful target propagated by Prof. A. Kostallari. The use of the uniform standard variety became obligatory after 1972, and new literary texts were no longer printed in the Gheg variety. People in Kosova were consciously using the standard variety in official activities, in media, and in literary works to the utmost of their abilities. The threat by the Serbians to invent a different Albanian language to be called "shiftarski jezik" was an important factor for the Kosova Albanians to adopt the Standard Albanian, as a means of their national identification with the rest of all Albanians (LLOSHI, 1991). The effects of 1972 Congress were immediate througout all the Albanian-speaking world. Even books on Albanian grammar prepared by foreigners were based on the uniform literary standard, and the foreign radio stations broadcasting in Albanian accepted the standard form. The objective necessity predominated over all prejudices. Standard Albanian is now able to respond to all the needs and demands of social, economic, political, cultural, artistic and intellectual life. Regional varieties survive in everyday conversation and in fiction, and are used for stylistic effects, but this is not so different from the circumstances in other standard languages in Europe. In fact, the written language differs little from the current language. The written variety influences the spoken language, being a prestige variety.
10. The controversy.
The great changes in Eastern Europe in 1989 shook the rigid totalitarian regime in Albania; the first democratic elections were held in March 1991. From its beginning, the "democratic revolution" in Albania was accompanied by a strong linguistic component. Public activities, political manifestations and violent demonstrations fostered a widely aired desire to destroy the rigorously controlled and fossilized language of the orthodox Communism ideology. Some people hoped that the demolition of the ultra-centralist and authoritarian pattern of the old regime would be echoed in the field of the language and, more generally, in every aspect of the culture. A type of the Russian "Proletkult" wind began to blow. In this atmosphere the unified literary Albanian came under attack. There are some circumstances that represent major set-backs lying ahead for Standard Albanian. It is quite conceivable that illiteracy may well re-emerge in Albania. Nobody appears to be taking particular care that the correct language is used in public activities and various publications. Scabrous vocabulary receives civil rights even among children. The floodgates are opened to uncontrolled and largely unnecessary borrowings. Purism is frowned upon as a part of the former politics of isolationism.
An interesting expression of the newly-established pluralism in Albania is the revival of interest in writing the Gheg variant. In winter 1990, the publication of a short-lived journal began, with the determination "not to let literary Gheg die out as decreed by the Stalinist Albanian government". For that purpose a roundtable discussion took place in Shkodra on July 26, 1992, and a Declaration was published, but signed by a number of "Shkodra linguists" that is so exaggerated, that it makes it sound incredible. A number of journals, among them prestigious old titles Catholic-oriented titles, are published in Shkodra sub-variant. Gheg writers are free to use the variant they prefer. On 20th-21st November, 1992, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Orthography Congress, a conference was held in Tirana: "The National Literary Albanian Language and the Albanian World Today". The majority of the participants, including Albanians from Kosova and the diaspora, supported the national standard, but there were also negative reactions to it. The proceedings were not published, the results being considered not satisfactory by the newly appointed leaders of the Institute of Linguistics and Literature. A year later another consultation dedicated to the Albanian language was convened on the initiative of the Institute (October 1993), aiming to prepare the path for "a new strategy" in Albanian linguistics. This time the reaction in press was hot and highly politicized on both sides. Finally, after a summer seminar on Albanian language and literature, organized in 1995 in Tirana by Prishtina University in collaboration with the Albanian Academy of Sciences, when the highest state authorities declared that the Standard language was not a concoction of the former regime, the waters were placated. It was acknowledged that Standard Albanian is an irreplaceable means of national unity, that it has been a product of a long cultural development, and that the most realistic solution is to let it further develop and attain perfection. On the other hand, nothing must obtrude the free use of the Northern variant (as well as of the more limited sub-variants) in literature, in artistic manifestations, or in journalism andoratory. Within five years the language discussion in Albania was transformed into a naked political debate, and a very aggressive one at that. The most prominent detractor of literary Albanian was A. PIPA (1989), with his book as the source of all topics under discussion. He attacked the Standard Albanian in all its aspects, considering it a phenomenon of domestic linguistic colonialism, a political stratagem devised to perpetuate the cultural hegemony of a minority part of the nation over the rest, and a colossal fraud. Even the historical process up to 1944 came under his criticism. The vast majority of the authors accept literary Albanian with the same qualifications it was characterized in the last 30 years. A number of contemporary writers have expressly defended the literary language ( I. Kadare, R. Qosja, D. Agolli, M. Isaku, etc).
Many Albanian linguists, accepting the necessity of a standard language, do not agree with the interpretations imposed by A. KOSTALLARI (1968, 1970 and 1972), but at the same time do not negate his contribution. They discard both Kostallari's efforts to demonstrate that it is a "unified literary koine sui generis", and Pipa's orientation as backwards: "The dialects should have been left to evolve in their natural way". They positively assert that the literary Albanian is an ordinary standard language and not a product of the convergence of two dialects; it is evidently based on Tosk phonology and morphology and, of course, in its structure englobes the common fundamental elements of Albanian language. Dialects never evolve to a literary standard or fuse into one common language by themselves. A standard language always involves a choice - it is an act of national cultural politics, reflecting the historical necessity to create a common national language, not in the meaning of everyday use, but foruse in social communication, for the public use, primarily in the written form, and even as required teaching in the schools.
Pipa's supporters are actually fighting not for a Gheg Standard, but for a narrow sub-variant based on Shkodra idiom. However, even the people that fully support the Standard Albanian are for a revision on more objective and non-partisan basis of the historical process. There are some issues under discussion: the theoretical interpretation, the suppression of the free discussion, the extreme politicization, the expressive insistence on normativeness, the banishment of the Northern variant in new literature, and the means for future improvements in orthography. It is at least hoped that the discussion will continue in a more rational and scientific way, and not off the rails. The rise of the Albanian to a national standard can be directly experienced as a living and dynamic reality, and hence it is of interest to the linguistic theory, too.
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HANDBUCH DER SÜDOSTEUROPA-LINGUISTIK Herausgegeben von Uwe Hinrichs unter Mitarbeit von Uwe Büttner 1999, Harrassowitz Verlag . Wiesbaden Slavistische Studienbücher, Neue Folge Herausgegeben von Helmut Jachnow und Klaus-Dieter Seemann Band 10 under the title: XHEVAT LLOSHI, Albanian pp. 277-299.
, he sees (p. 205) the Abanian-Rumanian elements as derived from Thracian, and thinks them inherited (as substratum) in Rumanian but loans into the Illyrian ancestor of Albanian. The richest account of this subject now is Rosetti Istoria II3, which commendably treats the Balkans as a historic unit. For Albanian-Rumanian the phonological correspondences are set out (pp. 103-106), as well as the lexical (pp. 106-121); many of these are too well known to need exemplification here in the gross, they are obviously true, and largely well understood. They point solidly to (1) a local native language, and (2) a special dialect of Latin. ![0]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/alien.gif)
), Haas (op. cit.), and de Simone (largely in IF), no forms should be used without being freshly checked.[This article had already been sent to press when I received, thanks to the courtesy of the authors, the marvelously meticulous joint work of C. de Simone (Die messapischen Inschrifien) and J. Untermann (Die messapischen Personennamen [Wiesbaden, 1964]), continuing Krahe's Die Sprache der Illyrier. Likewise, I had not seen de Simone's article on the Messapic diphthongs (IF 1964:69.20-37), nor Parlangčli's review of Haas (Kratylos 1963:8.179-186).] 
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