Rindërtimi i morfologjisë së huazimeve sllave-shqiptare
Rebuilding the morphology of Slavic-Albanian borrowings

The case of al. venit(em) and mahnit(em)

Summary/Abstract: The shape of Albanian verbs borrowed from Slavic usually depends on the Sl. infinitive form (Sl. * ati → Alb. at ; Sl. * iti → Alb. it ). Thus, it is surprising that the element it is also visible in some Alb. verbs whose Sl. source does not feature an infinitive in * iti. In this study, it is argued that some such verbs (e.g. venit(em) ‘wane’, mahnit(em) ‘astound’) could have been borrowed from a Sl. dialect where the respective source verbs had an infinitive in * nyti (*vę(d)nyti ‘wane’, *maxnyti ‘swing’; cf. e.g. Slovenian vę́niti, máhniti) rather than * nǫti, as in most Slavic languages (*vę(d)nǫti, *maxnǫti‘swing’; cf. e.g. Serbian vènuti, máhnuti); cf. the study by Andersen (1999). The Sl. vowel *y regularly appears as i in Alb. borrowings, so that a Sl. infinitive in * nyti can be expected to yield an Alb. verbal type in ¬ nit¬ . Through a mechanism of proportional analogy, the it type could then also spread to some other verbs borrowed from Sl. (e.g. pjetit ‘braid’, bodit ‘stab’). Interestingly, at present, no Sl. dialects of the * nyti type are known from the area bordering Albanian. Thus, the hypothesis has interesting implications for Sl. dialect geography, as it would suggest that dialects of the * nyti type used to be present further south in comparison with their present range.

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