Proto-Albanian language

[6] 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.

[12][13] 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.

[19] 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.

But the major Latin influence in Proto-Albanian occurred since the first years 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).

[30] 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,[31] eventually producing the shared innovations between Tosk Albanian and (Proto-)Romanian.

[32][note 1] 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).

[26] 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.

[36] 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.

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.

[41] 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.

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.

[55] 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.

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.

[71] 3) "Late Proto-Albanian": includes the last two centuries of LPA for Orel, plus most of the unattested period of "Old Albanian", halting before Turkish influence begins.

[71] Demiraj, like Matasović and unlike Orel, observes the 5th/6th centuries as a boundary between stages, but instead places the "emergence of Albanian" from its parent after this point, rather than the 14th.

[72] In an Albanian chapter penned by Michiel de Vaan within Klein, Joseph and Fritz' 2018 Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics,[6] Demiraj's periods are adhered to.

[73][74][75] What is for Orel "Early Proto-Albanian" (EPA), dated definitively before the onset of Latin contact, is for De Vaan, "Pre-Proto-Albanian" (PPAlb); in German, this stage is called "Voruralbanisch" or "Frühuralbanisch".

On the other hand, whatever effect Ancient Greek loanwords had at their time of absorption is unclear, but diachronically the vowels always agree with regular internal Albanian developments.

[80] The traditional view presented by Orel[80] and Desnickaja[81] is that distinctive nasalization was lost by Tosk but retained by Gheg and that this is a taxonomical difference between the two.

The nasal sonorants *n̥ and *m̥ both rendered Early Proto-Albanian *a, which remains *a in modern Albanian (PIE *ǵʰh₂éns "goose" > EPA *gatā > Alb gatë "heron").

[96] Many Indo-Europeanists have classified Albanian as a satem language since it has dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ as the common reflex of the palatal series, while velar and labiovelar stops in most cases have merged.

[97] However, there is clear evidence that all three IE dorsal series remained distinct (at least before front vowels) in Proto-Albanian:[98][99][100] In the later phonological history of Albanian, the velars /k/ and /g/ were subject to further palatalizations.

[101] The (partial) retention of the Proto-IE three-way contrast for dorsal stops is an archaic feature that links Albanian with the wider Paleo-Balkanic group and is shared with Messapic[102] and Armenian.

Most Latin verbs belonging to the third declension(unstressed and short infinite -ere) were adapted into stems ending with PA *-ānj- > modern -oj- and, in rarer cases, with -ej-.

The asigmatic aorist conjugation is based on the athematic paradygm and has a mobile accent perhaps due to the augmentation, which consists in the prefix *e-.

The weak cases in PA were copied by analogy from the *a-stem nouns[104][page needed] and show the thematic vowel of the feminine, *-éh₂-.

e bardhë < PA *bardzā < *bʰórh₁ǵéh₂ The closest language to Albanian is Messapic, with which it forms a common branch titled Illyric in Hyllested & Joseph (2022).

[14][117] An example of secondary derivations from Palaeo-Balkan linguistic contacts is the Thracian word σπίνος spínos 'a kind of stone, which blazes when water touches it' (i.e. 'lime'), attested in Aristotle and Theophrastus, with cognate Greek τίτανος (Attic) and κίττανος (Doric) 'gypsum, chalk, lime', stemming PIE *k̑witn̥Hos 'white, whitish': although from the same PIE root, Albanian shpâ(ni) 'lime, tartar' and Greek σπίνος 'lime' derive from a secondary origin as they were probably borrowed from Thracian due to phonetic reasons.

Hyllested & Joseph (2022) review Orel's common items and argue that a substantial number don't have convincing etymologies or do not constitute isoglosses between Balto-Slavic and Albanian.

An example is Albanian murg (dark) and Lithuanian margas (colourful) which Orel considers to be isoglosses but both are equally related to Proto-Germanic *murkaz, ancient Greek ἀμορβός amorbos and Proto-Slavic *mergъ.