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Proto-Albanian language

Reconstructed ancestor of the Albanian languages

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LabBasic Grammar

Proto-Albanian is reconstructed by way of the comparative method between the Tosk and Gheg dialects and between Albanian and other Indo-European languages, as well as through contact linguistics studying early loanwords from and into Albanian and structural and phonological convergences with other languages. Loanwords into Albanian treated through its phonetic evolution can be traced back as early as the first contacts with Doric Greek (West Greek) since the 7th century BCE, but the most important of which are those from Latin (dated by De Vaan to the period 167 BCE to 400 CE) and from Slavic (dated from 600 CE onward). The evidence from loanwords allows linguists to construct in great detail the shape of native words at the points of major influxes of loans from well-attested languages.

In historical linguistics Proto-Albanian is broken up into different stages which are usually delimited by the onset of contact with different well-attested languages. Pre-Proto-Albanian is the early stage of the precursor of Albanian during the first millennium BCE, marked by contacts with Ancient Greek, but not yet by contacts with Latin. Proto-Albanian proper is dated to the period of contacts with Latin, starting from the 2nd century BCE after the Roman conquest of the Western Balkans, but the major Latin influence occurred since the first years of the common era when the Western Balkans were eventually incorporated into the Roman Empire. Common Albanian or its two dialects, Proto-Gheg and Proto-Tosk, experienced the earliest contacts with South Slavic languages since the Slavic migrations to the Balkans in the 6th–7th centuries CE. The rise of Tosk from Proto-Albanian was prompted before Slavic contacts circa 600 CE, as evidenced by the fact that Latin and ancient Greek loanwords are treated like native words with regard to taxonomical differences between Gheg and Tosk, but the same is not true of Slavic loans.

History

Albanoid and other Paleo-Balkan languages had their formative core in the Balkans after the Indo-European migrations in the region about 3000 to 2500 BCE. They replaced the pre-Indo-European languages, which left traces of the Mediterranean-Balkan substratum. Shortly after they had diverged from one another, Pre-Albanian, Pre-Greek, and Pre-Armenian underwent a longer period of contact, as shown by common correspondences that are irregular for other IE languages. Furthermore, intense Greek–Albanian contacts have continued thereafter.

The precursor of Albanian can be considered a completely formed independent IE language since at least the first millennium BCE, with the beginning of the early Proto-Albanian phase. The precursor of Albanian is often thought to have been an Illyrian language for obvious geographic and historical reasons as well as for some linguistic evidence, or otherwise an unmentioned Balkan Indo-European language that was closely related to Illyrian and Messapic. Messapic, which is grouped in the same IE branch of Albanian, developed in southeast Italy after crossing the Adriatic Sea at least since the Early Iron Age, being attested in about six hundred inscriptions from Iron Age Apulia. Paul Kretschmer had grouped Albanian into an "Illyrian" group together with Messapic and considered them satem.

In classical antiquity Proto-Albanian was spoken in the central-western part of the Balkan Peninsula, to the north and west of the Ancient Greeks, as shown by early Doric Greek (West Greek) and Ancient Macedonian loanwords that were treated with characteristic Albanian features, by classical place names exclusively observing Albanian accent and phonetic rules, as well as by several Proto-Albanian items preserved in ancient glossaries.

Contacts with Ancient Greek

Proto-Albanian speech came into contact in its earlier stage with Ancient Greek since the 7th century BCE, when the Greek colonies were founded on the Adriatic coast of Albania. In that period early loanwords were borrowed from Doric Greek (West Greek), either directly from the colonists or indirectly through trade communication in the hinterland. During the 5th–4th centuries BCE Proto-Albanian directly loaned words from Ancient Macedonian, at a time when this language gained prominence in the region and was not yet replaced by Koine Greek. Several Proto-Albanian terms have been preserved in the lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria and other ancient glossaries. Some of the Proto-Albanian glosses in Hesychius are considered to have been loaned to the Doric Greek as early as the 7th century BCE.

Evidence of a significant level of early linguistic contact between Albanian and Greek is provided by ancient common structural innovations and phonologic convergence such as:

Those innovations are limited only to the Albanian and Greek languages and are not shared with other languages of the Balkan sprachbund. Since they precede the Balkan sprachbund era, those innovations date to a prehistoric phase of the Albanian language, spoken at that time in the same area as Greek and within a social frame of bilingualism among early Albanians having to be able to speak some form of Greek.

Contacts with Latin, Romance, and Middle Greek

Proto-Albanian is believed to have come into contact with Latin since the Illyro–Roman wars in the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BCE, when the Roman Republic defeated the Illyrians and began to establish its rule in the Western Balkans, gradually consolidating its dominion during the last two centuries BCE. However, most of the Latin influence in Proto-Albanian occurred since the beginning of the common era, when the Western Balkans were eventually incorporated into the Roman Empire after the Great Illyrian Revolt of 6–9 CE (Bellum Batonianum).

Vladimir I. Georgiev proposed that the name of the city Niš in the region of Dardania evolved according to Albanian phonetic laws (from Naissos to Nish). He argued that ancient Dardania was inhabited by Albanians, making it the territory where the historical Albanian–Romanian language contact occurred. Specifically, Georgiev believed that between the 4th and 6th centuries AD, both proto-Albanian and proto-Romanian developed within the same geographic area—the central–northern Balkan region between the modern cities of Niš, Štip, Skopje, and Sofia. Similar theories of a proto-Albanian location in antiquity in Dardania-Moesia was also supported by a number of linguists including Norbert Jokl, Gustav Weigand, Petrovic, Nicolaas van Wijk, Willem Vermeer and Henrik Barić.

According to Walter Breu, the earliest Latin influence in Albanian came from the coastal areas of the Western Balkans when they were Romanized, and does not concern possible contacts with Romanian whose similarities with Albanian had been strongly overestimated in the past. Many Latin-based words in Albanian have the character of indirect Latinisms, as they go back to originally Latin borrowings via Ancient and Medieval Greek. The name Albanian came from the Albanoi, an Illyrian tribe located in north-central Albania and their city Albanopolis, which was located somewhere between the Mat and Shkumbin rivers. The Albanoi might have been mentioned first as Abroi, which may have been a constituent northern tribe of the larger group of the Taulantii; modern scholars place them near the Mat and Drin rivers. According to Eric P. Hamp, Albanian maintained links with both coastal western and central inland Balkan Latin formations. An Albanopolis is also mentioned in Scupi. A similar sounding Albanos is mentioned on a funeral inscription from the 2nd/3rd century CE in ancient Stobi, near Gradsko.

Mat river in North-Central Albania, mentioned in the 4th or 5th century CE, is considered one of the oldest recorded Albanian toponyms. Ancient toponyms such as Lissus, Drivastum, Candavia, Drinus, Barbanna, Mathis, Isamnus, and Ardaxanos reached their current forms as Lezhe, Drisht, Kunavja, Drin, Bunë, Mat, Ishëm, and Erzen respectively, through Albanian sound changes, indicating Albanian, or even an Albanian-related language, has been in the area since antiquity. The mountain range Sharr, which extends into southern Kosovo, northwestern North Macedonia and northeastern Albania, also presupposes the sound development characteristics for Albanian from its ancient name Scardus.

The Latin loanwords in Proto-Albanian are said to have been borrowed through the entire period of spoken Latin in the Western Balkans (c. 167 BCE – 400 CE), reflecting different chronological layers and penetrating, without any restrictions, into virtually all semantic fields. Even the basic Christian terms are of Latin origin, and since they entered Proto-Albanian before the Gheg–Tosk dialectal diversification, the Proto-Albanian speakers were christianized under the Latin sphere of influence, specifically in the 4th century CE.

Historical linguistic considerations indicate that the Roman province of Moesia Superior, and more specifically the ancient region of Dardania and adjacent zones, constitute the best candidate for the area where Proto-Albanian received its major Latin influence, and where intensive contacts between Proto-Albanian and Proto-Romance occurred, eventually producing the shared innovations between Tosk Albanian and (Proto-)Romanian. Those innovations ultimately prompted the rise of Tosk from Proto-Albanian, a diversification that began not later than the 6th–7th centuries CE (i.e. before the period of contacts with Slavic). Gheg Albanian was already separated from the Albanian–(Proto-)Romanian contact zone at an earlier period. Toponymy provides evidence that Albanian was already spoken since late antiquity in northern and central Albania, but not yet in southern Albania (south of the Shkumbin river). Those considerations indicate that unlike Gheg, the Tosk dialect could not yet have already occupied its historical geographic distribution in late antiquity. On the other hand, the multi-layered Albanian dialects in western North Macedonia provide evidence that the area was inhabited by Albanian-speakers since antiquity. The historical geographic spread of the Albanian dialects as it appeared in medieval times is considered to have been shaped by the settlement of Slavic farmers from the 6th–7th centuries CE.

During the centuries of the Great Migration Period in the Roman Empire after the 3rd century CE, the Imperial structures progressively weakened and eventually collapsed. Proto-Albanian and Proto-Romanian speakers remained in close contact for a substantial time frame as mountain pastoralists. The fact that the Albanian language reflects a clear pastoralist stage does not allow conclusions about the Proto-Albanian speakers' way of life during classical antiquity, as only the speech of the mountain pastoralists managed to survive the Great Migrations. It has been suggested that the Latin influence on Albanian resulted from an urbanized way of life, which was followed by a flight from towns similar to what occurred to the Eastern-Romance speakers. Nevertheless, the extensive influence of the Albanian language on the pastoral vocabulary and its influence, albeit lower, on the crop cultivation vocabulary, in Eastern Romance languages, indicate that Proto-Albanian speakers were already leading a pastoral lifestyle at the time when Latin speakers assumed the same way of life, borrowing from (Proto-)Albanian a number of technical terms.

The post-Roman contact zone between Albanian and Common Romanian is considered to have been located in Dardania and adjacent areas. From this contact the Tosk Albanian dialect is considered to have received the first impetus of developments that were shared with Eastern Romance and that did not affect the Gheg Albanian dialect as it had already separated in earlier times. After a period of common innovations, but before the rise of the rhotacism n > r (which preceded contacts with Slavic from c. 600 CE), speakers of Eastern Romance varieties that were not yet affected by this fundamental sound change separated from the Tosk Albanian–Common Romanian contact zone. In a period that followed the rise of those innovations, Tosk Albanian is considered to have moved – driven by the offensive of the Slavs – to Albania south of the Shkumbin river in its historically documented location.

At the time of the South Slavic incursion and the threat of ethnic turbulence in the Albanian-inhabited regions, the Christianization of the Albanians had already been completed and it had apparently developed for Albanians as a further identity-forming feature alongside the ethnic-linguistic unity. Church administration, which was controlled by a thick network of Roman bishoprics, collapsed with the arrival of the Slavs. Between the early 7th century and the late 9th century the interior areas of the Balkans were deprived of church administration, and Christianity might have survived only as a popular tradition on a reduced degree. The reorganization of the Church as a cult institution in the region took a considerable amount of time, as the Balkans were brought back into the Christian orbit only after the recovery of the Byzantine Empire and through the activity of Byzantine missionaries.

The earliest ascertained church vocabulary of Middle Greek origin in Albanian dates to the 8th–9th centuries, at the time of the Byzantine Iconoclasm, which was started by the Byzantine Emperor Leo III the Isaurian. In 726 Leo III established de jure the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople over the Balkans, as the Church and the State established an institution. The Eastern Church expanded its influence in the area along with the social and political developments. Between the 7th and 12th centuries a powerful network of cult institutions were revived completely covering the ecclesiastical administration of the entire present-day Albanian-speaking compact area. In particular an important role was played by the Theme of Dyrrhachium and the Archdiocese of Ohrid. The lack of Old Church Slavonic terms in Albanian Christian terminology shows that the missionary activities during the Christianization of the Slavs did not involve Albanian-speakers, indeed, the Christian belief among Albanians had survived through the centuries and already become an important cultural element in their ethnic identity.

Earliest contacts with South Slavic

When the Slavic-speaking farmers migrated to the Balkans and settled the plains from the 6th–7th centuries CE, they encountered Albanian-speaking Indo-Europeans and assimilated part of them, but the language of the Albanians who had taken refuge in the mountainous areas of present-day northern and central Albania, eastern Montenegro, western North Macedonia, and Kosovo, managed to survive the Great Migrations. Leading a pastoral lifestyle and although separated from Slavic-speakers, Albanian-speakers were not isolated, and contacts between Albanian and Slavic occurred thereafter. In particular, Tosk Albanian came into contact with Eastern South Slavic dialects, and Gheg Albanian with Western South Slavic dialects. Early long-standing contacts between Slavic-speakers and Albanian-speakers might have been common in mountain passages and agriculture or fishing areas, such as the valleys of the White and Black branches of the Drin and around the Shkodër and Ohrid lakes. Such contacts in these areas caused many changes in Slavic and Albanian local varieties.

As Albanian and South Slavic have been in contact since the early Middle Ages, loanwords in both belong to different chronological strata and reveal different periods of acquisition. The earliest phase of contacts is dated to the 6th–8th century CE, reflecting some of the more archaic phonetic features of Slavic as well as early Albanian phonology. The early Slavic loanwords into Albanian developed Slavic *s as and *y as within Albanian phonology of that era. Such toponyms include Bushtricë (Kukës), Dishnica (Përmet), Dragoshtunjë (Elbasan), Leshnjë (Leshnjë, Berat and other areas), Shelcan (Elbasan), Shishtavec (Kukës/Gora), Shuec (Devoll) and Shtëpëz (Gjirokastër), Shopël (Iballë), Veleshnjë (Skrapar) and others. Part of the toponyms of early Slavic origin were acquired in Albanian before undergoing the changes of the Slavic liquid metathesis (before c. end of the 8th century CE). They include Ardenicë (Lushnjë), Berzanë (Lezhë), Gërdec and Berzi (Tiranë) and a cluster of toponyms along the route Berat-Tepelenë-Përmet.

The evolution of the ancient toponym Lychnidus into Oh(ë)r(id) (city and lake), which is attested in this form from 879 CE, required an early long-standing period of Tosk Albanian–East South Slavic bilingualism, or at least contact, resulting from the Tosk Albanian rhotacism -n- into -r- and Eastern South Slavic l-vocalization ly- into o-. The name of the region Labëri resulted through the Slavic liquid metathesis: South Slavic *Labanьja < Late Common Slavic *Olbanьja 'Albania', and was reborrowed in that form into Albanian, in the period when rhotacism was still active in Tosk Albanian.

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