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The Indo-European Vowels in Albanian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Stuart E. Mann
Stuart E. Mann*
Affiliation:
University of London
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Extract

Albanian appears as an orderly and consistent derivative of the Indo-European system in spite of Latin and other penetrations, which have an interest of their own. The linguistic picture is more difficult to reconstruct than that of Slavonic or Baltic, owing to the large amount of borrowing from Latin, Greek, Venetian, Slavonic, and other sources, the remarkable absence of the usual terms of kinship and farming in this language of a hill-dwelling shepherd people, and the fact that, as in Armenian, phonological breakdown has given rise to greater ambiguity of interpretation.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 26 , Issue 3-Part1: July-September , September 1950, pp. 379 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © 1950 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 When I was asked by the School of Slavonic Studies two years ago to form a class in Albanian, the lack of up-to-date textbooks on Albanian linguistics became an acute problem. The present article is summarized from my lecture notes. The abundant material now available causes a more consistent IE pattern to emerge than seemed to appear in the time of Gustav Meyer.

2 To students of the University of London who have expressed to me their keenness to form a linguistic society I have recommended this principle as a way in which we in this country might improve upon continental neogrammarian practice.

3 Boisacq, Dict. étym. de la langue grecque 521 (Heidelberg, 1938).

4 I use the symbol α to denote either IE α or IE ə, especially when it alternates with ä.

5 See my Short Albanian grammar 28 (London, 1932).

6 The Indo-European semivowels in Albanian, Lg. 17.12–23 (1941).

7 See my Short Albanian grammar 72.

8 But a striking series—biroj ‘bore’: Lat. forō, -āre: OHG borōn (< *bhṛāiō?)—deserves notice. Cf. also brimē ‘boring, hole’, Lat. forāmen.