Albanian–Eastern Romance linguistic parallels

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)
Geographic distribution of speakers of the Albanian (top) and Eastern Romance (bottom) languages

The Albanian–Eastern Romance linguistic parallels are subject of

Eastern Romance languages (Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, Romanian and Istro-Romanian). It has also been studied to understand the history of Albanian and Eastern Romance speakers. The common phonological, morphological and syntactical features of the two language families have been studied for more than a century. Both are part of the Balkan sprachbund but there are certain elements shared only by Albanian and Eastern Romance languages that descended from Common Romanian. Aside from Latin, and from shared Greek, Slavic and Turkish elements, other characteristics and words are attributed to the Palaeo-Balkan linguistic base.[1] Similarities between Eastern Romance and Albanian are not limited to their common Balkan features and the assumed common lexical items: the two language families share calques and proverbs, and display analogous phonetic changes,[2] some of the latter especially shared between Tosk Albanian and Common Romanian.[3]

Despite the similarities,

genetically they are only distantly related Indo-European languages, as Albanian is the only surviving representative of the Albanoid branch that belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group, whence Eastern Romance languages are the only surviving representatives of the Balkan Vulgar Latin, belonging to the Italic
branch.

Overview

Albanian

Map of Southeastern Europe and southern Italy, depicting the modern borders and the places where Albanian is spoken
Albanian dialects in Southern Europe
Further information:
Proto-Albanian, Albanian dialects, and Origin of the Albanians

Forming a separate branch of the

Tosk, with the former spoken to the north of the river Shkumbin (Scampis) and the latter to the south of the river.[5] Two varieties of the Tosk dialect, Arvanitika in Greece and Arbëresh in southern Italy, preserved archaic elements of the language.[5] Gheg and Tosk which are primarily distinguished by phonological differences are mutually intelligible.[5][6] Albanian is the only surviving representative of the Albanoid branch of Indo-European, which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group.[7][8][9]

Tosk/Gheg differentiation leading to regular correspondences,[10] affect native words, Latin loans, and Classical Greek loans, but not Slavic loans, led researchers to the conclusion that the dialectal split preceded the

Slavic migration to the Balkans.[11][12] The Tosk/Gheg dialectal diversification was relatively old, dating back to the post-Roman first millennium.[13]

Eastern Romance

Further information: Common Romanian, Eastern Romance languages, Romanian dialects, Aromanian dialects, Vlachs, and Origin of the Romanians
Map of Southeastern Europe, depicting the modern borders and the places where Eastern Romance languages were recently spoken
The four Eastern Romance languages in the early 20th century

Lower Danube from 106 AD to 271) was included in the Romanians' homeland.[17][18] Other scholars say that Proto-Romanian descended from the Vulgar Latin spoken in the south-Danubian Roman provinces and the Romanians' ancestors started to settle in most regions of Romania only in the 12th century.[19][20]

Balkan linguistic area

Main article: Balkan sprachbund

Albanian and Eastern Romance, along with

Turkish is debated, although they share some characteristics with the other idioms.[21]
Albanian and Eastern Romance share most Balkan features, but they also have common features which do not characterize other Balkan languages.

The existence of an

genitive cases in nominal declension.[23]

Literature

Johann Erich Thunmann, who published Theodore Kavalliotis' Greek–Aromanian–Albanian dictionary in 1774, was the first scholar to notice that Albanian and Aromanian share a number of elements of their vocabulary.[24] Gustav Meyer listed most common lexical elements of the two languages in his Etymologisches Wörterbuch der albanesischen Sprache ("Etymological Dictionary of the Albanian Language") in 1891.[24] The Romanian philologist Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu who studied the pre-Latin elements of the Romanian language came to the conclusion (in 1901) that the origin of the shared vocabulary was most probably to be searched in the earliest phase of the two peoples' ethnogenesis. Thereafter, a number of Romanian linguists—Alexandru Philippide, Alexandru Rosetti, Grigore Brâncuș and others—studied the similarities of Albanian and Romanian, especially in connection with their research on the origin of the Romanians. The Albanian linguist Eqrem Çabej was the first to emphasize the similar phonological and morphological elements of the two languages. He also drew attention to the similarities between Albanian and Romanian proverbs and the parallel development of the formation of sentences.

Common features

Phonology

A common feature between

r).[25] Other features dated to the breakup of Romance languages that are shared between Albanian and Romanian include the merger of long /eː/ and short /i/, but not long /oː/ and short /u/ (most Romance languages either merged both or neither), and the replacement of /k/ in clusters /ks/ and /kt/ with a labial (p in Romanian, f in Albanian: see luctare > Albanian luftoj, Romanian lupta; Latin coxa > Albanian kofshë, Romanian coapsă). In the latter case, variation in Albanian outcomes has been explained as being the effect of loans entering Albanian at different times.[26]

Proto-Albanian
Vulgar Latin
Late Proto-AlbanianBalkan
Proto-Romance
a > ə[3]
Gheg Alb.Tosk Alb.Comm. Rom.
-n- > -r-[27]
Balk. Rom.

without -n- > -r-

The Tosk dialect of Albanian, spoken in Southern Albania, in particular is held to have experienced developments parallel to Common Romanian. These notably include the centralization of /a/ before nasals, rhotacism of intervocalic /n/ (regular in Tosk, limited to some varieties in Romanian : see lamina > lamura). It has been pointed out that /n/ rhotacism is present in other Romance languages such as Franco-Provençal, therefore this sound change is not necessarily a unique similarity between Albanian and Romanian.[28] But among Albanian and Eastern Romance languages, those common innovation are limited only to some of their language varieties.[27] Gheg Albanian apparently separated from the Proto-Albanian–Proto-Romanian contact zone before the rise of stressed ə < a.[3] Some Eastern Romance varieties that do not display the rhotacism r < n apparently separated from the Proto-Romanian–Tosk Albanian contact zone before the rise of this phonetic change, which occurred before the 7th century CE (i.e. before contacts with Slavic).[27][29] The interaction between Tosk and Romanian is held to have been the last stage of the crucial Albanian–Romanian period of convergence.[30] Some words of the shared Albanian–Romanian lexicon, such as vatrë/vatră (both pronounced /ˈvatrə/), in Romanian are clearly borrowed form the Tosk Albanian and not the Gheg Albanian form.[31]

Morphology

When comparing the morphological elements of the four core languages of the Balkan linguistic area, scholars have concluded that Albanian and Eastern Romance share most common features.[24] Albanian and Eastern Romance use postponed articles with proper names, while this feature is absent from Bulgarian and Macedonian.[24]

Lexicon

There are

several hundred words in Romanian that are cognate only with Albanian cognates (see Substrate in Romanian
), [32] though by lower estimates there are 70–90 possible substrate words with Albanian cognates,[33][34] however a number of them are regarded as loanwords from Albanian.

Proposed explanations

The Romanians' homeland (horizontal red lines in center) and their migrations (red arrows) in the 4th–7th centuries: a map presenting views of scholars who propose that the Romanians and their ancestors have continuously inhabited lands north of the Lower Danube (in present-day Romania)[a]
The Romanians' homeland and their medieval migrations (a map presenting views of scholars who propose that the Romanians' ethnogenesis started in the south-Danubian Roman provinces)

Slavic invasions.[32]

Noel Malcolm argues the Albanian–Eastern Romance contact area was in the Kosovo region and adjacent areas, within the ancient Illyrian region of Dardania, where both Albanian and Eastern Romance speakers appear during the medieval period.[19] Dutch linguist Michiel de Vaan, although he does not reach to any definite conclusions, suggests the same thing.[37][38]

Montenegrin highlands had a well-established

Vlach place-names are recorded there.[39][40][19][41] And Albanian place-names.[42][43]

Vlach-Romanian and Aromanian toponyms are present in the surrounding areas of Kosovo, such as Surdul in Southern Serbia
.
Katun means 'village' in the Albanian, Aromanian and Romanian
language.

Other scholars have differentiated different groups of Latin loans in Albanian representing different stages and historical scenarios. Albanian/Latin convergence began during the first century CE, with the dating of Latin loans used to differentiate between Early

Proto-Romance).[44] There has also been a distinction between later convergence with different Romance languages in Albanian. Romanian scholars Vatasescu and Mihaescu, using lexical analysis of the Albanian language, have concluded that Albanian was also heavily influenced by an extinct Romance language that was distinct from both Romanian and Dalmatian. Because the Latin words common to only Romanian and Albanian are significantly less than those that are common to only Albanian and Western Romance, Mihaescu argues that the Albanian language evolved in a region with much greater contact to Western Romance regions than to Romanian-speaking regions, and located this region in present-day Albania, Kosovo and western North Macedonia, spanning east to Bitola and Pristina.[45]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The map also depicts the "Jireček Line" (yellow), the Latin- and Greek-speaking territories (pink and blue areas, respectively), and the Albanians' supposed homeland (yellow areas).

References

  1. ISBN 978-9004290365
    .
  2. ^ Schramm 1997, pp. 312–313.
  3. ^ a b c Rusakov 2013, pp. 132, 138–143.
  4. ^ Demiraj & Esposito 2009, p. 22.
  5. ^ a b c Demiraj & Esposito 2009, p. 23.
  6. ^ Fortson 2004, p. 390.
  7. ISBN 9789027263179
    .
  8. ISSN 0563-5780
    .
  9. JSTOR jj.3508401.16
    .
  10. ^ Demiraj & Esposito 2009, p. 23: "In Tosk /a/ before a nasal has become a central vowel (shwa), and intervocalic /n/ has become /r/. These two sound changes have affected only the pre-Slav stratum of the Albanian lexicon, that is the native words and loanwords from Greek and Latin."
  11. ^ Fortson 2004, p. 392: "The dialectal split into Gheg and Tosk happened sometime after the region become Christianized in the fourth century AD; Christian Latin loanwords show Tosk rhotacism, such as Tosk murgu "monk" (Geg mungu) from Lat. monachus."
  12. ISBN 978-1-884964-98-5
    . The Greek and Latin loans have undergone most of the far-reaching phonological changes which have so altered the shape of inherited words while Slavic and Turkish words do not show those changes. Thus Albanian must have acquired much of its present form by the time Slavs entered into Balkans in the fifth and sixth centuries AD.
  13. ^ Hamp 1963, p. 98: "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 Jireček Line."
  14. ^ a b c d e Augerot 2009, p. 901.
  15. ^ Friedman 2009, pp. 224–225.
  16. ^ Petrucci 1999, p. 4.
  17. ISBN 978-606-647-435-1
    .
  18. ISBN 978-973-675-584-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  19. ^ a b c Malcolm, Noel (1998). "Origins: Serbs, Albanians and Vlachs". Kosovo, A Short History. London: Macmillan. pp. 22–40. Retrieved 5 February 2022. (pp. 39–40).
  20. ^ Schramm, 'Fruhe Schicksale
  21. ^ a b c Thomason 2001, p. 105.
  22. ^ Thomason 2001, p. 108.
  23. ^ a b c Thomason 2001, p. 109.
  24. ^ a b c d Schütz 2002, p. 26.
  25. ^ Brâncuș, Grigore (2012). "Atlasul dialectal al limbii albaneze. Elemente comune cu româna" [The Dialectal Atlas of the Albanian Language. Common Elements with Romanian]. Diacronia.ro. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
  26. JSTOR 44941881
    .
  27. ^ a b c Bednarczuk 2023, p. 43.
  28. ISBN 978-606-647-435-1
    .
  29. ^ Vermeer 2008, p. 606.
  30. JSTOR 40997529
    .
  31. ^ Vermeer 2008, p. 606: "As is well known, the rise of Tosk as a recognizable dialec-tal unit involves two innovations that have parallels in early Romanian: Romanian centralized its *a in nasal contexts and part of the dialects under-went the development of intervocalic -n- to -r-. Romanian also famously borrowed vatër 'hearth' with patently Tosk va- and proceeded to spread it to wherever Vlachs expanded subsequently. The shared Tosk-Romanian innovations obviously constitute the final stage of the crucial and well-publicized period of Albanian-Romanian convergence. Since these inno-vations are found either not at all or only marginally in the Slavic loans into Romanian and Albanian, it follows that the rise of Tosk preceded both the expansion of Romanian and the influx of Slavic Ioans."
  32. ^
    ISBN 978-0-472-08149-3
    .
  33. ^ Schramm 1997, p. 312.
  34. ^ Sala 2005, p. 79.
  35. OCLC 186020548
    .
  36. ^ Hamp, Eric P. (1977). "Strunga". Balkansko Ezikoznanie: Linguistique Balkanique. 20–22: 113–118.
  37. ^ Old Albanian
  38. ^ Introduction to Albanian
  39. ^ Sufflay, Srbi i Arbanasi, p. 75
  40. ^ Radusinovic, Stanovnistvo, p. 31
  41. ^ Sufflay, Serbs and Albanians
  42. ^ Jirecek, 'Albanien', p. 69
  43. ^ Sufflay, 'Povijest', p. 227
  44. ISBN 90-04-11647-8
    . We reconstruct it in two forms: Early Proto-Albanian—immediately before the beginning of linguistic contacts with speakers of Latin/Proto-Romance (1st century CE), and Late Proto-Albanian—following the contacts with Proto-Romance and ancient Slavic dialects still close to Proto-Slavic (6th–7th centuries CE).
  45. ISBN 978-0-8108-5846-6
    .

Bibliography

Further reading

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