Dr. Mirushe Hoxha,
Department of Albanian Language and Literature, University “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” (UKIM), Skopje, R. of Macedonia
This paper aims to elucidate the coinciding morphosyntactic functions of the Albanian ‘pre-positive article’, viz. ‘nyje’ (NY), with the focus on the ‘nyje /e/’ (NYe), and the Persian ‘connective clitic /e/’, i.e. ‘ezafe /e/’ (EZe). In Alb. the NY covers nouns in the genitive case, adjectives, and possesive pronouns. Similarly, in Pers. the function of 'ezafe construction' encompasses nouns, adjectives, and possesive constructions. When EZe is added to the head noun, the next word takes the functions of the genitive as well. Ex.: Alb.: '[vajza e Meryemes]' vs. Pers. '[dokhtar-e Maryam]' ('the daughter of Mayram'); Alb. '[vajza e mirǝ]' vs. Pers. '[dokhtar-e khub]' ('the good girl'); Alb. '[e mi / e mia]' vs. Pers. '[mal-e man]'. Differently from New Pers. (NP) – yet, similarly as Old Pers. (OP) /Avestan (Av.) – the Alb. has preserved the case system. In contrast to the NP EZe - yet, in a similar way as OP ‘relative connector’ ī – the Alb. NY is not affixed to the noun. More precisely, the Alb. NY which is separated from the noun, adjective, or possessive pronoun coincides with the OP 'relative connector' ī, which covers ancient genitive, i.e. posession, subjecive and objective genitives, which is foreruner of NP 'ezafe', and which is also separated from the noun (head noun) and adjective (head adjective). This implies that the Alb. NY coincides with the OP ī and the NP EZe in one more aspect: the forms of Alb. NY are both i and e - besides tә and sә, depending on the gender, number, and case of the (head) noun. The functional coincidence of the Alb. NYe and the Pers. EZe can be considered as a case of a parallel development in-between these two languages.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Third International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.LLLD.IR), 31 January-1February 2019 , Iran-Ahwaz.