This book deals with the historical development of the Albanian language from prehistoric times to our days. The main focus of the book is the reconstruction of Proto-Albanian, the analysis of its relations to its ancestor, Indo-European, and its further change leading to Albanian in its present form.
The volume contains a detailed description of historical phonetics and morphology of Albanian. The reader will also find important data on the Albanian vocabulary in its historical development.
Together with the author's Albanian Etymological Dictionary, the present book makes a powerful research tool important for Albanologists, Balkanologists and historical linguists.
Vladimir Orel, Ph.D. (1980) in Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, is the Director of Linguistics of Zi Corporation, Calgary. He has published on historical linguistics including Hamito-Semitic Etymological Dictionary (co-authored, Brill, 1995), The Language of Phrygians (1997), Albanian Etymological Dictionary (Brill, 1998).
All those interested in historical linguistics, language typology and the ancient history of the Balkans, classical philologists and specialists in linguistic contacts and linguistic unions.