Reviews for A Concise Historical Grammar of the Albanian Language: Reconstruction of Proto-Albanian

The average rating for A Concise Historical Grammar of the Albanian Language: Reconstruction of Proto-Albanian based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-10-07 00:00:00 Ethan Golden Vladimir Orel spent the last two decades of his life working on Albanian historical linguistics, first in his native Russia and then in Israel and North America. His work in the West produced two large works that Orel intended to be used side-by-side: this Concise Historical Grammar, published in 2000, and the Albanian Etymological Dictionary that came out two years before, both from Brill. Orel was interested in Albanian as part of historical-comparative Indo-European linguistics, so his concern in this book is tracing Proto-Albanian (the form of the language in the medieval era, before the modern dialects) from Proto-Indo-European. Because the book is only concerned with that ancient form of Albanian, the reader will not find here any discussion of the rich regional differences in grammar that have arisen in the centuries since. Orel does list Tosk and Geg forms for any word and the reader can at least appreciate how the Albanian language falls into those two major varieties. The book is mainly phonology and morphology. Orel admits that he didn't feel capable of tackling syntax. Of the two pillars of grammar that it does reconstruct, the treatment of phonology is more ample. At the end, the book includes some attempts to locate Albanian among the Indo-European language family by setting out how much vocabulary overlaps with Baltic, Slavic, or Greek or Germanic; this seems rather irrelevant to a book titled "Historical Grammar", but Orel must have felt there was no else to stick it. There's little really objectionable about this book. Most of its reconstructions are completely mainstream and found in other sources of the time. However, as something of an outsider to this particular branch of historical linguistics, I get the impression that the study of Albanian really made a huge leap in the first years of the new millennium as e.g. Vienna became a major center. For anyone with some grounding in Indo-European linguistics who wants to see how Albanian came about, I would recommend instead Joachim Matzinger's textbook (ISBN 3897541173) that uses Leke Matrënga's 16th-century catechism as a thorough and very accessible introduction to historical Albanian linguistics in general. It has a more ample bibliography and a slightly more-up-to date view of Proto-Indo-European than Orel's downright Brugmannian one.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-06-28 00:00:00 Peter-yves Thynne While the "Serbo-Croatian language" seemed solid to outsiders during the long decades of Yugoslavia's existence, inside the country there was very little consensus at all between Serbs and Croats about language issues. With the fall of Yugoslavia there were not only drastic pushes for distinct Serbian and Croatian languages, but vocal advocates for independent Bosnian and Montenegrin standard languages appeared as well. These developments of the 1990s and very early millennium are the subject of Robert D. Greenberg's Language and Identity in the Balkans, which was published in 2004. To enjoy this book, one doesn't need a proficient command of "Serbo-Croatian" or the languages that appeared in its wake, as all quotations are given in English translation with the original below in a footnote, but you will need at least some knowledge of the language(s) and Slavic historical linguistics. Greenberg's book is very neatly broken down. First, we get an overview of 19th-century relations between Serbs and Croats aiming for a standard language in the age of nationalism. Then, he talks about the attempts in postwar Yugoslavia to either maintain a compromise Serbo-Croatian language or do away with it and assert a full-on Croatian standard. The bulk of the book consists of separate chapters for the debates over new Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian standard languages since 1990. Drawing on scholarly publications and the popular press, Greenberg describes the polemics of language advocates and the competing publications which aim to present new rules for word usage and orthography. Major personalities and their ties to state authorities (or lack thereof) are identified. There was hardly a page here where I didn't think that the former Yugoslavia is a real mess, and Greenberg deserves credit for untangling all these arguments and presenting them in a way accessible to outsiders. The great downside of the book is that no second edition has appeared to take into account more recent developments. Greenberg was writing as rump Yugoslavia was transforming into the country officially called "Serbia and Montenegro", but shortly after that Montenegro declared its independence, which brought new pressures in language policy (a new 2009 orthography, for instance). The reader will also wonder how further Croatian has gone in drawing on the Cakavian or Kajkavian lexicon to further distinguish standard Croatian from Serbian.