The Role of Neighboring Languages in Dialectical Creation: the Case of Albanian
By Matthew Coulson
Albanian is a rather peculiar language with a rather interesting history. It is an Indo-European language with its own branch. Much of its history is oral, since written records for Albanian are relatively recent when contrasted to languages such as Greek and Hebrew. The first written records of Albanian are recorded in 1483 (Huld 1). Yet at that time, writing was by no means new; since, the written Albanian had too many grammatical items to be new. But, Albanian was not regularly written until the 18th century. Consequently, although written Albanian existed before the 18th century it serves little purpose in studying the history of Albanian.
My aim with this paper is to show that Albanian has been affected by the neighboring languages of Greek and Serbo-Croatian (Macedonian). More importantly than just showing that Albanian has been influenced I hope to show that a significant proportion of the dialectical differences are caused by the surrounding languages. These differences would be most predominate in the regions that are farthest from the Shkumbini River where the two dialects will mix the least. Consequently, I hope to show that the Gheg dialect is mainly influenced by the Serbo-Croatian to its North and East, whereas Tosk is predominately influenced by the Greek to the South and East.
Typically in dialectical studies one will look to see historically how the words have changed in pronunciation, which is noted first and later in spelling. The spelling changes are made to make the written representation more consistent with the oral (phonetic) representation. Traditionally in dialectical studies researchers study what differences occur and what the source of those differences are. My goal is to find the source of the differences, yet with very few old manuscripts tracing the changes becomes impossible.
Further, Albanian has been standardized making the task of isolating dialectical differences more difficult. As defined by Janet Byron, a standard language, or alternatively, dialect, or variety, is "a superposed variety of a language which serves as a national medium of discourse, primarily in education, administration, and science" (1). Albania politically has not always been democratic. When the communists took control of Albania, standardization was implemented and enforced as the only permissible form of communication. The government destroyed most of the literature written in non-standard Albanian. Also, if an Albanian desired to obtain positions in which they would be employed by the state, or to be in positions of respect it was required of them to both speak and write using the standard form of Albanian, which is based on the Tosk dialect. The Tosk dialect was chosen by Enver Hoxha who was the leader of the communist party when standardization was implemented.
Also, under communism many of the records that were written in non-standard Albanian were destroyed. Yet some of the dialectical differences still exist today. Most of these differences are shown in the common (non-educated) people which live in the country regions of Albania. The predominant dialects spoken within Albania are Gheg (Geg) and Tosk. Georges Drettas explained the border of Geg and Tosk this way:
"One can say, in resuming, that in the Republic of Albania, the Geg (dialect) is spoken north of the 41st parallel (41°N) and that the Tosk (dialect) is spoken south of this line, which is traditionally symbolized by the river Shkumbini."
To show the effects of Greek on the Tosk dialect and the Macedonian influence on the Geg dialect I will use standard comparative linguistic methods. I will show the words with the same Indo-European roots that are represented differently in Geg when contrasted with Tosk. To show this effect I will represent the Geg, Tosk, Macedonian, and Greek root next to each other so the differences can be seen by the readers. They will all be written using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), since I am faced with three different alphabets (Greek, Latin, and Cyrillic) to facilitate the readers recognition of my findings. I will also include the corresponding Indo-European root, and English gloss for each root. With these examples I will organize them according the type of sound change that pertains to them. Second, after organizing those that fit under only one type of sound change I will list those that have more than one sound change. Next, to these examples I will mention the sound changes that occur in each of those examples.
The Geg dialect is found in Macedonia within the Kosovo region while the Tosk dialect is found predominately in Greece and Italy (Drettas 167). Georges Drettas explains that the main types of differences one would look for in a dialectal study of Albanian by saying:
Some of these differences are phonological, while others are either morphological, or lexigraphical. I will show with the following data sufficient evidence to show that a significant proportion of these phonological differences are caused by the influences of Greek and Macedonian.
In many cases the dialectical differences are shown only by an /ë/ in Tosk becoming
an /â/ in Geg.
These examples show that there is a general pattern for the /á/ to become /ë/.
If we compare the Tosk forms to the Greek forms, we see a significant correlation between the
occurrence of an /ë/ in Greek to a corresponding /ë/ in Tosk. Meanwhile, in Geg
/á/ is correlating /á/ or /a/ is found in Macedonian except in the fourth and fifth
examples when there is not a Macedonian word with the same Indo-European root. Although
every example shows the vowel shifts in Geg being word initial the vowel that influences Geg is
not always in the word initial position. Also in the case of Tosk along with its corresponding
Greek the case is better established with example being both word initial and syllable final.
found several other examples where the same pattern occurred that out of length constraints of
this paper I won't expound upon. With all of the words that differ in an /ë/ in Tosk and
replaced by an /a/ in Geg either a Greek word (93% of the time) or a Macedonian word (76% of
the time) came from the same root. Therefore, the higher front Greek vowel helped raise and
frontalize the Tosk vowel whereas the lower back Macedonian vowel forced the Geg vowel
back and lower, and this was shown to be statistically significant in the formation of Geg and
Tosk.
This subsequent data show that there continued to do consistent changes in the vowels. The
Tosk examples show the highest correlation to the Greek when the vowels are looked upon. The
correlation between the Tosk and the Greek is 89% when the roots are compared, looking at the
vowels in corresponding roots under the same Indo-European root. With these example the
tendency for the Albanian to be fronalized and lifted up in Tosk continues to be shown. In Geg
the tendency still follows to be lowered and brought back due to the Macedonian. Therefore, a
general rule can be made with respect to Geg and Tosk.
Now, I would like to show the role that assimilation played on Tosk when compared to
Greek and Macedonian when compared to Geg.
The problem of finding references that show all four desired roots has shown up, although the Macedonian root is missing in two of the three cases the best observations can be made with the Greek. From looking at the data we see with Tosk that all but one example follows as CV pattern which is a simple articulatory pattern. The second example shows a CCV, yet, in this case it is still fairly simple since it is only a movement of the point of articulation because the other distinguishing features are very similar. With Geg we can see assimilation taking place as the /t/ becomes a /r/ making a liquid follow a vowel which was preceded by a liquid. Other examples we can see are that the Tosk forms are definitely assimilated from both Greek and Geg to simpler forms. This causes an alliteration from Tosk to Geg which given the first example is possible but with the second example very unlikely so the cause must be assimilation with the Macedonian roots that are similar in meaning but not form. By using the fact that Greek has done it with Tosk, one example of Macedonian will suffice to show that it does occur as well in the analogous relationship or Macedonian and Geg.
Next, I will show the role that Greek has played on the Tosk dialect with respect to the
increasing of sonorancy therein. Then, I will show the effect of Macedonian on the Geg dialect
in causing an increase in sonorancy.
According to Hock, items will increase in sonorancy. This is to be shown by looking at what types of sounds are found in the language. After doing this, we will want to see how they change in regards to sonorancy. As we compare the Tosk form to the Geg form in the first example we see that the Geg form is more sonorant than the Tosk form. Then, if the reader compares the Geg from to the Macedonian root you see that it gained its extra sonorancy from it's neighboring language by changing from a fricative like the Tosk form to a liquid. Now, something that makes this example interesting it that the Greek form is more sonorant than the Tosk form as well. This leads me to think that although Pokorny reconstructed it the way he did, the Tosk form is actually the Indo-European root.
The second example shows the Greek as the most sonorant and the Macedonian as the least. This shows a South to North tracing in the pattern of sonorancy and the dialects follow this same pattern. The final example shows an a similar pattern in the development of sonorancy from North to South where the Greek is the most sonorant and the Tosk follows its patterns of sonorancy.
The first four examples are cases of Rhotacism where the Greek form of the root has a r
contained therein. The Tosk always tended to follow the pattern of getting more rhotic
whenever the Greek was rhotic. This led me to develop a rule for the Tosk which is as follows:
Yet, as I developed this rule in Tosk dealing with Rhotacism I had a contradiction come up with the fifth example. In Pokorny he has the Tosk root listed as a Geg root on pg. 321, but this didn't seem to fit the rule that I had developed so I cross-referenced it to the work of Huld and on page 61 he lists the roots as I predicted they should be due to the rule of Rhotacism in Tosk. I do feel that further research should be done on this issue to ensure that it is in fact valid, and that there was an error in Pokorny's work.
In conclusion, my thesis can be summarized by saying that the surrounding languages of Greek and Macedonian have had a significant impact on both the etymological and phonological differences found in the Geg and the Tosk dialects. This has been proven by showing that the vowel shifts are influenced by Greek and Macedonian. Also, the effects of assimilation, and Rhotacism has occurred in these dialects due to the impact of these languages upon Albanian. Therefore, detection or actuation is possible with the dialects of Geg and Tosk in Albanian.
There is still much research to be done on the Albanian dialects and its language as a whole. In suggestion to future researchers, I would hope that they would try to study the morphosyntactical variations found in Albanian. Also, I would recommend that future researchers study the other dialects of Albanian of Arbersh, Falconaran, and Ukrainian. I think they should try to map the influences I have shown individually, such as where assimilation occurs with respect to the mixing grounds of Tosk and Geg by the Shkumbini River. This way, we can see which items have had the greatest effect on the Albanian language. I would also suggest the study of the influence that Turkish, and Latin had on the dialectical differences.
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