The secondary nominal word-formation patterns of Old Albanian

The goal of this project is a synchronic and diachronic investigation of the secondary nominal word-formation patterns (nouns and adjectives) of Old Albanian within the framework of modern syn- chronic and diachronic linguistics. The investigation will be primarily based on the oldest Albanian document written in the Old Gheg variety, the so-called Missal of Gjon Buzuku, published in 1555. In addition to the secondary nominal word- formation patterns documented in this highly important document, the secondary nominal word-formation patterns of four other Old Albanian (i.e. Old Gheg) authors will be included: Pjetr Budi, Dottrina christiana 1618, Rituale Romanum 1621, Speculum confessionis 1621, Pjetr Bardhi, Dictionarium Latino-Epiroticum 1635, Pjetr Bogdani, Cuneus prophetarum 1685, and the anonymous Kuvendi i Arbnit 1706. Additionally, two representative Old Tosk documents (Lek Matrnga, Dottrina cristiana 1592, Jul Variboba, Gjella e Shn Mris Virgjr 1762) will be incorporated. As is well known, the lexicon is the most dynamic part of speech, showing continuous change through the loss of lexical entries and creation of new entries by semantically and morphologically well-defined word-formation rules. A detailed investigation of the Old Albanian secondary nominal word-formation rules will thus allow a close look at the dynamics of nominal derivation in the history of Albanian nominal word-formation as a whole. The following points in particular will be investigated: 1) The semantics of each secondary nominal word-formation pattern will be examined in detail, the analysis will be based on different semantic functions. Special attention will be paid to the boundaries between word classes. 2) The morphological rules of derivation for each secondary nominal word-formation pattern will be outlined. The Old Albanian plural formations will be examined here, too. 3) The productivity of the secondary nominal word-formation patterns will be fully described. 4) The diachrony of the affixes used in secondary nominal derivation will be investigated on the basis of modern diachronic linguistics. The Turkish loanwords will be investigated here, too. 5) Additional information will be given to the presumptive Latin counterparts of the Old Al- banian attestations and the literature published so far will be fully cited. 6) A comprehensive dictionary of all documented attestations of secondary nouns of the selected corpus will be worked out. As a descriptive model for the presentation of the Old Albanian secondary nominal word-formation patterns a slightly modified variant of the presentation elaborated by Motsch 2004 for Modern High German word-formation patterns will be adopted. A detailed semantic, morphological, and diachronic analysis and description of Old Albanian secondary nominal word-formation patterns as well as a comprehensive lexicon of all documented attestations of secondary nouns in the major Old Albanian texts will be carried out for the first time in Albanological research.

The aim of the project was the investigation and presentation of the secondary nominal word-formation and the word-formation patterns of the Old Albanian language. Secondary word-formation or secondary word-formation patterns can simply be defined as word-formation on a synchronous transparent level, i.e. understandable and analyzable for the speakers, which allows them to build new lexemes according to the morphological and semantic rules of these patterns. Transparency goes hand in hand with the activity (i.e. productivity) of these patterns and distinguishes the derivatives of the secondary word-formation from the primary word-formation whose derivation is synchronously no longer transparent for the speakers because its derivatives are lexicalized. Therefore, the lexemes of the primary word-formation are accessible only in the context of etymological studies.As the subject of this investigation the Old Albanian language was chosen. Old Albanian, dating from the 16th to the 18th century AD, is the older language stage of today's modern Albanian language. The Old Albanian language has been handed down in several theological works and dictionaries. The primary basis of this project is the oldest document of the Old Albanian literature, the pastoral manual of the catholic priest Gjon Buzuku from 1555. The nominal word-formation patterns found in this voluminous document are analyzed, classified and compared with the data of the other Old Albanian documents.This investigation was conducted on a philological basis, on a strictly synchronous semantic approach. The nominal word-formation patterns of Buzuku will be presented with respect to their semantics, morphology, and activity (i.e. productivity) by comparing them with the word-formation patterns found in the other Old Albanian documents. It also turned out to be inevitable to investigate more thoroughly than planned the diachronic background of the Old Albanian affixes (mostly suffixes) used in nominal word-formation since existing positions are very often wrong, but mainly outdated regarding their methodology. Based on this strictly philological approach several new explanations for the diachronic background of affixes and word-formation patterns could be given. As a result, some affixes are no longer considered as Indo-European heritage of Albanian, but as loans from the intensive language contact of Albanian with other languages of Southeast Europe. A highly innovative explanation involves furthermore the Old Albanian nominal compounds which are no longer regarded as an inherited but reshaped word-formation category but as a newly built category that has come into being in the prehistory of Albanian from its language contact.The need to examine the secondary nominal word-formation of Old Albanian arises from the fact that so far secondary nominal word-formation has almost exclusively been studied on the basis of the modern Albanian language. A thorough, philologically based study of the secondary nominal word-formation of the Old Albanian language was a research gap so far, that was not filled by a little, very defective monograph, published 1998 in Prishtina. With the present investigation, which will be published in book form in 2016, a continuous look at the secondary nominal word-formation of the Albanian language is now possible. Nominal word-formation patterns can now be tracked from their first attestation in the 16th century up to the present day. With regard to the basis of this investigation, the pastoral manual of Buzuku, all derivatives of the given nominal word-formation patterns were recorded in full in form of a corpus based dictionary.The inclusion of derivatives of the nominal word-formation patterns of the other Old Albanian documents makes this investigation an indispensable basic research of Old Albanian lexicography. The project results are of interest not only for the field of albanological studies which have ignored the Old Albanian documents for so long, but are also important to issues of secondary nominal word-formation in the context of Balkan linguistics as well as syn- and diachronic linguistics. With the results presented here, it is now possible to adequately include Old Albanian.