XYLANDER AND HIS WORK AS A SYNYHESIS OF EARLY SCIENTIFIC EFFORTS - ITS RELEVANCE FOR THE TIME
Elda BORIÇI
Abstract
Xylander was the first German to publish a valuable manual on the Albanian language. His originality does not lie in a new theory he invented, but in the philological method which he applied with great seriousness and dedication. Thanks to his foresight, supported by his knowledge of history and a deep understanding of the linguistic richness of Albanian, Ksilander reached insightful conclusions, many of which still retain their value today. It was in his favor that, at that time, the debate on the foundations of modern linguistics had already begun. It was generally accepted that the Indo-Germanic (Indo-European) languages derived from a common branch. From this, he raised the essential question of how Albanian relates to these languages and what position it holds among them. Naturally, he drew his arguments from the vocabulary, just like his predecessors.
Particular attention should be given to his observation that many words from neighboring languages entered Albanian only in later periods. In this context, he presents several examples of borrowings from Latin: civitas → qytet (city), cicer → qiqër (chickpea), gens-tis → gjind (people), vicinus → fqinj (neighbor), etc. If one also excludes borrowings from Modern Greek, Slavic, and Turkish, what remains is the inherited vocabulary, which, according to him, is “partly close in root” to that of European languages and has been preserved “partly without essential changes.” Contrary to the dominant views of his time, Ksilander proved that Albanian did not become a European language through borrowings from neighboring tongues, but that “its base lies in the most ancient early languages,” and that “this base itself is originally Indo-Germanic”.
In his efforts, Xylander goes even further — he raises the problem of finding the true position of the Albanian language within the aforementioned group (the Indo-European languages). By explaining and shedding light on the grammatical structure of Albanian, he delves deeper, becoming a forerunner in studying the postposed article of Albanian and other Balkan languages. He identified a particular internal connection among the Balkan languages. For the first time, the idea of a common Balkan linguistic substratum was formulated. From a linguistic perspective, Xylander was the first to argue — though in a limited way — the Indo-European origin of Albanian. He stated clearly that Albanian is an Indo-European language and reached this conclusion after comparing its lexicon with that of other languages.
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