PËR GJENEZËN E PRONORËVE TË SHQIPES
On the Genesis of The Possessive Albanian Pronouns

Summary/Abstract: Albanian has followed a totally original course in the formation of possessive pronouns which presents scientific interest even beyond the limits of this language. In terms of their formation, these pronouns are not homogeneous. A small number of them are simple words, inherited from Indo-European. Such are the pronouns (e) mi, (e) tu, whereas the other pronouns are agglutinative. Agglutinative pronouns have been formed under certain syntactic circumstances, where the noun that marks the property, must always be used in its definite form (cf. biri im). The first element of the possessive pronoun in this syntagma expresses the relation to the noun and concords to it, same as the articulated adjective or the genitive noun; subsequently, the source of this element is in the definite article of the preceding noun. By this it is understood that the primeval possessive pronouns have been the ones that occur as secondary elements of the present pronouns, i.e., më, të, në, u etc., which formed the syntagmas *biri më, *biri të etc. The syntagma *biri më, where only the noun was stressed, followed three consecutive processes that led to the formation of new pronouns: the combination with the noun, the re-separation of the parts and the reformation of the syntagma. In the beginning, both parts that formed a syntagma were combined being pronounced as a single word (*birimë). After this agglutination, the new separation of the parts became *bir imë, the postpositional article of the noun being transferred to the pronoun. This new separation was made because the possessive pronoun contained only one reduced vowel on which the word accent could not stay. But, since the noun lost the postpositional article, the scheme through which this process had started was broken. That is why the noun became definite again in order to return to the early scheme from which it had evolved (definite noun + possessive pronoun), i.e., from *bir imë evolved *biri imë.[...] Albanian possessive pronouns have undergone many other changes of a phonetic, morphologic and syntactic character. These changes have started in the period before written Albanian, but they have also followed in the period of documented Albanian, something that is observed when comparing these pronouns in their current state to Buzuku’s work written in the 16th century.[...]

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