Post by Teuta1975 on Jan 13, 2008 2:38:17 GMT -5
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.
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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.
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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.
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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 romîne. 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!
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 Albanoí 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), arbëríshte (Greece). The earlier data are rehearsed, with references, in H. Bari's Lingvistike studije (Sarajevo, 1954; abbr. LS), and Hmje në historín e gjuhës shqipe 7 (Prishtinë, 1955; abbr. Hymje; = trans. Istorija arbanakog jesika 30 [Sarajevo, 1959]).
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. 203—210) and in his discussion of common Latin inheritances (pp. 326-336).
Although he deals with other views (pp. 336-338), 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.
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.
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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 Shkinikë 'Bulgaria' < Sclavinica; the etymon recurs clearly in the Greek enclavee as keríte 'in the other [Greek] language'. But these could well have had a Latin etymon in the first place. Labërija 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 Durrës 'Durazzo' < Dra < Dyrrachium (but note */dú-/ 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 dúraku- (after *o > a) > *dúrra(An) > *dúrrëc(ë) > Dúrës; this enlarges on and sharpens the account referred to above in Çabej's treatment of these names.
Perhaps it is naïve 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. ujë '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.
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.
PS: some linguistic proves that Albanian is a continuation of Illyrian and such is the same language evolved. No "link" or inter-language, or forgotten and returned back memory "collective lost of memory game" etc.
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 romîne. 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!
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 Albanoí 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), arbëríshte (Greece). The earlier data are rehearsed, with references, in H. Bari's Lingvistike studije (Sarajevo, 1954; abbr. LS), and Hmje në historín e gjuhës shqipe 7 (Prishtinë, 1955; abbr. Hymje; = trans. Istorija arbanakog jesika 30 [Sarajevo, 1959]).
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. 203—210) and in his discussion of common Latin inheritances (pp. 326-336).
Although he deals with other views (pp. 336-338), 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.
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 Shkinikë 'Bulgaria' < Sclavinica; the etymon recurs clearly in the Greek enclavee as keríte 'in the other [Greek] language'. But these could well have had a Latin etymon in the first place. Labërija 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 Durrës 'Durazzo' < Dra < Dyrrachium (but note */dú-/ 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 dúraku- (after *o > a) > *dúrra(An) > *dúrrëc(ë) > Dúrës; this enlarges on and sharpens the account referred to above in Çabej's treatment of these names.
Perhaps it is naïve 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. ujë '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.
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.
PS: some linguistic proves that Albanian is a continuation of Illyrian and such is the same language evolved. No "link" or inter-language, or forgotten and returned back memory "collective lost of memory game" etc.