A Few Remarks about the Albanian Articles System: Stages of Post Positioning in Albanian

The article case forms generally owe their origin to the case forms of the demonstrative pronoun a-i/a-y – ajo or ata. In the course of time, however, such case forms have undergone various phonetic and analogical changes, which are discreetly described in the Albanian language version. Suffice it to cite here the already mentioned accusative singular form of the postpositive article -në, which has most probably evolved from the merger of the ancient accusative case ending -n with the accusative form of demonstrative pronoun a-të, tan < ton. The creation of the stressed or unstressed pronominal form opposition in Albanian and some other Balkan and non-Balkan languages is an obvious innovation as compared to the ancient Indo-European type. The aim of this paper has the author presents the former hypotheses on the source of the postpositioning of the article in Balkan languages and the critical or view of the results achieved by Albanian, Rumanian, Slavonic, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbovroat and English or German languages. Based on the examination of the actual use of the definite article as well as on the analysis of the documented relics in these languages the author (B.Bokshi). Received: 20 March 2024 / Accepted: 17 April 2025 / Published: 08 May 2025