Vowel Quantities in the Albanian Dialect of Drenica (Kosovo). Shortening, Lengthening, Cutting

Abstract

The Gegue dialect of Albanian developed a phonematic contrast between short and long vowels, causing it to stand out from other Balkanic languages. As an illustration, in this paper the dialect of the Drenica/Kosovo is analysed with regard to the quantity of vowels. As can be shown, long vowels emerged as the consequence of both contraction, for instance, of diphthongs, and the so-called compensative lengthening (by the loss of -ë) enabling the emergence of minimal pairs. In many cases, short and long vowels cannot be distinguished with certainty: On the one hand, short vowels are scarcely lengthened; on the other hand long vowels can be shortened under certain, rather special conditions. These processes took place without being triggered by other, neighbouring languages.