Graeco-Albanian

Graeco-Albanian
Albano-Greek
(proposed)
Geographic distribution	Southern Europe
Linguistic classification	Indo-European Paleo-Balkan Graeco-Albanian
Proto-language	Proto-Graeco-Albanian
Subdivisions	Albanoid (Illyric) (Albanian-Messapic) Graeco-Phrygian

Balkanic Armenian Graeco-Albanian Graeco-Phrygian Greek Phrygian (extinct) Illyric Messapic (extinct) Albanian

The Palaeo-Balkanic Indo-European branch based on the chapters "Albanian" (Hyllested & Joseph 2022) and "Armenian" (Olsen & Thorsø 2022) in Olander (ed.) The Indo-European Language Family

Graeco-Albanian or Albano-Greek is a proposed Indo-European subfamily – in the broader linguistic family known as (Palaeo-)Balkanic Indo-European – of which the only surviving representatives are Albanian and Greek.^[1][2] This Indo-European subfamily encompasses the Albanoid (Illyric) subbranch (Albanian and Messapic), and the Graeco-Phrygian subbranch (Greek and Phrygian).^[1][2] Within the Palaeo-Balkan branch this IE subfamily is separated from Armenian.^[1][2]

Graeco-Albanian potential innovations

Innovative creations of agricultural terms shared only between Albanian and Greek, such as *h₂(e)lbʰ-it- 'barley' and *spor-eh₂- 'seed', were formed from non-agricultural Proto-Indo-European roots through semantic changes to adapt them for agriculture. Since they are limited only to Albanian and Greek, they could be traced back with certainty only to their last common Indo-European ancestor, and not projected back into Proto-Indo-European.^[3]

Criticism

According to linguist Lucien van Beek – the author of the chapter "Greek" in the same book The Indo-European Language Family by Thomas Olander (ed., 2022) – a number of potential Greek and Albanian common innovations adduced in the chapter "Albanian" by Hyllested and Joseph "can or must be dated later than Proto-Greek", concluding that he is "not convinced of a close genetic relation between Greek and Albanian".^[4]

References

Citations

1. Hyllested & Joseph 2022, p. 241.
2. Holst 2009, p. 65–66.
3. Kroonen et al. 2022, pp. 11, 26, 28
4. van Beek 2022, p. 196.

Bibliography

• Holst, Jan Henrik (2009). Armenische Studien (in German). Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 9783447061179.
• Joseph, Brian D. (2013). Spiro, Aristotel (ed.). "On Old and New Connections between Greek and Albanian: Some Grammatical Evidence". Albanohellenica (5). Albanian-Greek Philological Association: 9–22.
• Kroonen, Guus; Jakob, Anthony; Palmér, Axel I.; van Sluis, Paulus; Wigman, Andrew (12 October 2022). "Indo-European cereal terminology suggests a Northwest Pontic homeland for the core Indo-European languages". PLOS ONE. 17 (10): e0275744. Bibcode:2022PLoSO..1775744K. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0275744. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 9555676. PMID 36223379.
• Olander, Thomas, ed. (2022). The Indo-European Language Family: A Phylogenetic Perspective. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108758666. ISBN 978-1-108-49979-8. S2CID 161016819.
  • van Beek, Lucien. "Chapter 11: Greek". In Olander (2022).
  • Olsen, Birgit Anette; Thorsø, Rasmus. "Chapter 12: Armenian". In Olander (2022).
  • Hyllested, Adam; Joseph, Brian D. "Chapter 13: Albanian". In Olander (2022).