Re: Albanian: length of time in the Balkans

Willem wrote:
"No Balkan language is autochthonous in any absolute sense. "

Willem,
You mixed again here ethnic and political reasons with the
linguistic facts playing also with different timeframes. Doing this
you completely ignore the linguistic situation around 0 - 500 AC in
Balkans:

So only to be clear here and to remain outside your 'confusions':
if we take as reference the Greek-Roman Antiquity (500BC - 500 AC)
for sure that the Proto-Albanians was authochtonous in "any absolute
sense" (only to use your words) in Balkan.

See Eric Hamp : "The Position of Albanian":

"The richest account of this subject now is Rosetti Istoria II, which
commendably treats the Balkans as a historic unit. For Albanian-
Rumanian the phonological correspondences are set out (pp. 103-106),
as well as the lexical (pp. 106-121); many of these are too well
known to need exemplification here — in the gross, they are obviously
true, and largely well understood. They point solidly to (1) a local
native language, and (2) a special dialect of Latin. "

And I want to add here that the Substratum of the Proto-Romanians,
this "special dialect of Latin", is the same or very closer with the
Proto-Albanian.

Also based on the timeframes of the phonetical transformations
(see my message related to this) this "contact ended" around 600 AC
and is older that the Romans arrival in Balkans (see Alb a <-> Rom o
(PAlb a:) and Lat a: > Alb a))

These are linguistic facts so you cannot ignore them by making
some general assertions regarding "the pastoral life" and making this
kind of general assertion like "No Balkan language is
autochthonous"...

Best Regards,
Marius Alexandru