Archaic Features of the Verbal System in De Rada's Language, Similarities with Old Albanian Language

Abstract

In order to describe the archaic features in De Rada's work, we have examined the original edition of the poem "Canti Di Milosao, Figlio del Despota di Scutari", published in Naples in 1836. From the analysis of the material taken into consideration, both through comparison with the forms of the Albanian literary language, and with those of today's dialect language in Albania, we simultaneously notice similarities and differences with today's literary language and dialects in all verb forms as in the simple ones, even in the compound verb form. From our comparisons, it results that the greatest similarities are with the Tosk dialect, where the greatest density is occupied by similarities with that of Cham dialect. In the poem we find some constructions and verb forms of old Albanian that survive in Arbëresh discourses and in some conservative speech as grammatical variants. The archaic features of De Rada's language belong to an old era that reaches up to the beginning of the 19th century. It helps us understand the evolution of some of the phonetic-morphological changes that have developed in the later periods of Albanian until the formation of today's speech in both dialects of Albanian and in today's literary language.