Towards a typology of loanword integration in Arbëresh

Centuries of language contact with Italo-Romance varieties have strongly affected the Italo-Albanian dialects in many respects. The following study focuses on loan words (MAT loans), on the one hand, with regard to their integration into the Italo-Albanian sound system and, on the other hand, with regard to the morphological integration of verbs into the historically given system. As for the sound level, especially geminates and laterals are prone to deviations from simple phonetic integration, with the laterals being characterised by a considerable interdialectal and intradialectal variation. Moreover, the study shows that the results of the originally phonetic type of integration were dynamised over time when the donor language changed from the local dialect to Italian, thus resulting in a purely analogical way of integrating newer borrowings. Consequently, Italian loanwords, until recently, have continued to be integrated with (assumed) dialectal characteristics, which make it often difficult to assign the borrowings to a specific period. A similar phenomenon is observed with respect to the morphological integration of verbs in some dialects, where the dialectal merger of infinitive classes is transferred to Italian loan verbs. However, the integration of loan verbs follows different regional principles, whereby a group of dialects from southern Apulia via northern Basilicata to Campania is characterised by the preservation of the original integration mechanism based on the shortened infinitive with the ending class in -oɲ.