Italo-Albanian: Balkan Inheritance and Romance Influence

Abstract

This chapter deals with contact-induced change in Italo-Albanian and its effects on the Balkan inheritance of this minority language. The introduction is dedicated to the general characteristics of Albanian and its varieties from a historical, dialectological and geographic perspective, followed by a section on the historical and present situation of the Italo-Albanians. While Section 3 discusses the role of Balkanisms in Standard Albanian, Section 4 gives a general overview of the fate of these Sprachbund criteria in Italo-Albanian. In Section 5, contact-induced changes in the verb systems in single Italo-Albanian dialects are investigated, with special regard to the changes in the future tense, in the analytical perfect and verbal aspect, followed by a discussion of the innovative causative construction and other periphrases. Finally, changes in the domains of mood and voice in the Italo-Albanian dialects are described, most of them of recent date and, in part, not accepted by conservative speakers. All contact-induced developments in the minority language, as well as those parts of its grammar that have resisted foreign influence, are contrasted with their Standard-Albanian counterparts. As will be shown, many traditional Balkan features have been weakened or lost, whereas others have even expanded, but always in the direction of Romance models, to which Italo-Albanian functionally has adapted or which it has calqued.