Italo-Albanian (Arbëresh) and Albanian

Language and cultural contact and retransmission

Bibliographic Data

ID21820006
AuthorsJohn Bassett Trumper (Formerly Full Professor of Historical & General Linguistics , University of Calabria , Arcavacata CS , Italy), John Trumper (University of Calabria, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume78
Issue1
Pages117-147
Publication date2025-04-28
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage Typology and Universals (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1867-8319 • E-ISSN: 2196-7148
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/stuf-2025-2008
OpenAlexW4409921997
LanguageEN
References cited11

The study aims at showing the multiple and mediating relations of Albanian, as well as the Italo-Albanian Tosk variety, with other languages and cultures of the Balkans and Mediterranean studied in a typical contact-language situation. The contact analysed is lexical, sometimes semantic, and involves Middle Greek, Slav, Iranic sources (principally Persian), Arabic and Turkish elements, alongside the presence of some fairly rare Latin lexemes that appear as Albanian/Arbëresh allvan , kodër , kuvënt , mat , ndregullarënj , shesh , and which are not generally attested in the Romance languages. Limited lexical examples are used in a typical contact-linguistics situation, since most relations occur first within the Byzantine Empire, successively in an Osmanli dominated Turkish Empire. This short study attempts to show that not only Albanian but also Italo-Albanian (Arbëresh) have played, within what André Guillou (1989. L’Italie byzantine. Un modèle culturel de province , 629–639. Rome: Mélanges de l’école française de Rome, tome 101, n. 2: 636) called a “civilisation mixte” situation, a relevant role in both Balkan and Mediterranean language contact and are not mere “receivers”

Ancient history · Art · Language contact · Linguistics · Literature · History · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Philosophy

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