A sketch grammar of Northeast Geg Albanian from southern Kosovo
Adrian Kuqi
University of Zuerich
Northeast Geg is a variety of the Albanian language mainly spoken in Northeast Albania and Kosovo. Albanian is an isolate within the Indo-European language family. Spoken Geg is especially under-researched, also because of its almost absence in Standard Albanian, which is based on the southern Tosk dialect. The Geg dialect has infinitives consisting of the particle 'me' and a participle, where Tosk uses subjunctive constructions, a future tense built with the auxiliary 'to have' and the infinitive, where Tosk uses the auxiliary 'to want' and a subjunctive construction, and different uses of certain tenses like the imperfect (also with different forms than in Tosk). This sketch grammar describes the variety of the two cities Suhareka and Zaqishti in southern Kosovo based upon the data collection of twelve native speakers of said region, including monologic narrations as well as elicitations. These data also served for the publication of a trilingual online dictionary called Geglex in Albanian - German - English of about 2800 entries. This grammar contains information about phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, three transcribed sample texts, as well as further noun and verb paradigms.
ISBN 9783969391709. Languages of the World/Materials 517. 110pp. 2023.
