From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 21456
Date: 2003-05-02
----- Original Message -----
From: "alex_lycos" <altamix@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2003 6:16 PM
Subject: [tied] Proto-Albanian
> which is the period of time when one speaks about "Proto-Albanian"?
Technically speaking, Proto-Albanian is defined as the most recent common ancestor of the Geg and Tosk dialects (i.e., a language in which all the shared innovations of Geg and Tosk had already occurred). It's difficult to date it in absolute terms, since (pending the publication of the recently discovered Old Albanian text, which I hope will not turn out to be a forgery) the oldest example of written Albanian comes from the 15th century. In practice, I suppose the approximate identification of the Proto-Albanian period with the interval between the late Roman period and the beginning of the second millennium would be acceptable to most linguists. Proto-Albanian would thus overlap chronologically late Common Slavic, late Proto-Romance and the earlies forms of Romanian. Any intermadiate language between PIE and Proto-Albanian may be referred to as pre-Albanian.
Piotr