Dialectal varieties of the old Albanian diaspora: An attempt of a quantitative study
Authors:   Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Morozova Maria S. , Rusakov Alexander Yu. ,   Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Published: December 2024

In this study, we consider the dialectal varieties of the Albanian historical diaspora, represented in the Dialectological Atlas of the Albanian Language (DAAL) and in various dialect descriptions. The data sample includes 16 diaspora locations, which emerged after a series of Albanian migrations of the 14th–18th centuries, and 131 locations in the main area with their idioms. The study of varieties of the historical diaspora in comparison with the main area aims at identifying the internal and contact-related traits of their development in isolation from their source areas, as well as verifying some ideas about the history of the Albanian language and its dialects. In the first part of the study, the linguistic complexity of all varieties is measured using 28 binary phonetic and grammatical features from DAAL. As the study showed, the diaspora varieties are characterized by a low complexity and a significant number of simplifying innovations. The Tosk (Southern Albanian) diaspora varieties almost do not differ in this respect from the Tosk of the main area. Most probably a significant part of their simplifying innovations was acquired by them before
the beginning of migrations. The only Gheg (Northern Albanian) diaspora variety, the Arbnesh of Zadar, which is subject to an intensive contact with Croatian, demonstrates a strong simplification compared to the highly complex Gheg varieties of its source area in the south-east of Montenegro. Such differences can be explained by different types of contact situations: dominant bilingualism and a tendency to language decay in the case of Arbnesh and relatively balanced and stable bilingualism in its source area. In the second part of the study, we use the dialectometric method to determine and compare the levels of linguistic closeness of the studied idioms based on a list of 150 phonetic and grammatical features from DAAL. Their values are characterized as archaisms or innovations. Using R, the degree of linguistic closeness between varieties is determined by two types of distances, calculated on the basis of all values and only innovations. The results are visualized using hierarchical clustering (complete linkage, or the farthest neighbour method). The clustering based on all values shows that the diaspora varieties, as a rule, do not cluster immediately with the dialect subgroup of their source area, but with some higher unit in the Albanian dialectal classification. Apparently, a significant number of specific (mainly contact) innovations “blur” the connections of the diasporic varieties with their source areas, though the basic dialect relationships are preserved. The clustering made by innovations gives similar results, but also emphasizes the closeness between the diaspora varieties of Greece and Southern Italy, which is historically confirmed in data on the history of Albanian migrations from Greece to Italy.