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Albanian: Brief chapter outline
Dalina Kallulli
Universität Wien
A separate branch of the Indo-European language family, Albanian contains two major
dialects, Gheg and Tosk, which in turn display differences concerning both their respective
phonetic and morpho-syntactic properties. Two distinguishing features are rhotacism (Gheg n
for Tosk r) and the existence of a true infinitive in Gheg (comparable in syntactic function
and distribution to Germanic and Romance) different not only in form but also in function
from the Tosk one. Interestingly, both of these properties set Gheg apart from the Balkan
Sprachbund, in spite of the fact that most studies recognize Albanian as a central member of
it (Tomić 2004, 2006 and references therein).
1. Phonetics and phonology
A. Phoneme inventory
Albanian has 7 vowels and 29 consonants. One peculiarity is the central vowel ë, which is
dropped at the end of the word, but can occur in stressed syllables word-internally. Another
one is the existence of the two distinct phonemes /r/ and /r:/.
B. Stress
“In general, stress is assigned to the final vowel of the stem.” (Bevington 1974: 24).
C. Syllable structure
e.g. ndërroi, mbërriti
2. Morphology
A. Morphological type
Albanian is of synthetic-analytical morphological type (Demiraj 1986).
B. Word structure
Adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections are non-inflectable. Nouns, pronouns,
articles, adjectives and verbs are inflectable.
C. Gender, number, case and (in)definiteness inside nominal constituents
Albanian nouns are inflected for gender (masculine, feminine and neuter) and number
(singular and plural). Traditional grammars recognize four declensions and five
morphologically distinguishable cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative).
However, genitive is formed by using pre-posed pro-clitic agreement morphemes (so-called
articles) with the dative form (these also accompany one class of adjectives), and the original
ablative is felt to be archaic and is being supplanted by dative. There is a lot of syncretism. In
addition, vocative case is still existent, albeit in a rather restricted (and, unlike the other cases,
analytic) form. The definite article for the nominative case (definite) singular declension has
the form –u when the noun stem ends in k/g and –i in all other cases. The corresponding
feminine gender has the form –a. Gender is not predictable from phonetic form. As in other
Balkan languages, the definite article is a suffix on the noun. The indefinite article on the
other hand, is pre-nominal, pro-clitic and non-declinable.
Adjectives, including ordinal numerals, agree with the head noun in gender, number, case
(and partially also definiteness). So do also other noun modifiers such as possessive noun
phrases. Adjectives fall into two classes: those with and those without the pre-posed
agreement marker (e.g. i/e mirë ‘good’ vs. besnik ‘loyal’), which also accompanies genitives.
The indefinite article has the same form as the cardinal numeral one, namely një.
D. Mood, tense, aspect and voice (including non-finite verb forms)
Albanian has two conjugational paradigms, active and non-active, corresponding roughly to
the unergative/transitive and unaccusative (broadly conceived, i.e., including passive,
reflexive and deponent verbs), respectively. The non-active paradigm is built by employing
three distinct linguistic means with a well-defined distribution: (i) auxiliary selection if the
clause contains perfect tense; (ii) an inflectional affix if the clause contains Tense (Present or
Imperfect) but not Admirative; and (iii) a reflexive clitic elsewhere.
Albanian has a complex system of moods (indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative,
optative and admirative) and tenses (8 for the indicative mood, 3 simple – present, imperfect
and aorist – and 5 complex – present perfect, past perfect, plueperfect, future, and future
perfect).
3. Syntax and semantics
A. Word order type
Albanian is a free word order language, but the ordering of the functional categories (e.g.
mood, negation, aspect, object agreement/clitics, voice, tense) is fixed. Albanian is a socalled pro-drop language (i.e. subjects may, and depending on discourse conditions must, be
dropped).
B. Order inside the nominal phrase
Adjectives and genitives in Albanian generally (i.e., in the unmarked case) follow the noun
they modify, e.g. vajz-a e bukur ‘the beautiful girl’. They may however precede it if they are
(contrastively) focused. In this case they bear the suffixal definite article: e bukur-a vajzë ‘the
beautiful girl’. On the other hand, quantificational elements, including cardinal numerals,
precede the noun they quantify over (e.g. shumë fëmijë ‘many children’). The order inside a
complex nominal is: demonstrative--noun--adjective (e.g. kjo ndërtes-ë/a e lartë ‘this (the)
tall building’).
C. Order inside the verbal phrase
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