Agnia Desnickaja’s contribution to the study of transitional speeches in Albanian language

Abstract

The main object of Russian albanologist Agnia Desnickaja’s monograph “Albanian language and its dialects” is the study of Albanian language dialects, their contemporary division and classification and the relations with geographic and socio-historical range of development of Albanian language. Among other things, she draws an analytic review of dialectic characteristics in the speeches of transitional type, which form a streak of regions in the south stream of Shkumbin river (an indicator of boundary between gheg and tosk dialectic regions) known as the zone of transitional speeches. Distinctive characteristics, typical dialectic elements and their interlacement in these transitional speeches are analysed and classified by the author based on assessments of researches of Albanian dialectologists, such as J. Gjinari, Q. Haxhihasani, M. Çeliku, also persuasively reasoned by the author herself. Careful and profound research of these speeches done by Desnickaja helped not only to identify gheg and tosk characteristic features localized in these areas, but also to study the most complex occurrences related to their formation that reflect historic, cultural and social developments which are decisive for Albanian dialects themselves.