PJESORJA DHE PASKAJORJA NË TË FOLMEN E SHKODRËS
The Participle And Infinitive In Scutari Subdialect

Summary/Abstract: As is well-known, Albanian varieties lack a morphological infinitive. Thus where English or Romance languages employ an infinitive, standard Albanian has recourse to të followed by the finite verb. Gheg varieties employ the preposition mE followed by a form of the verb which also occurs as a participle, giving rise to the so-called paskajore. In the present article we account for this construct starting with a morphological analysis of the participial forms found in the Shkodra (Scutari) variety. One of these forms, for instance E mlumE ‘covered-fsg’, appears only as an adjectival passive. Morphologically, it consists of a verbal root ml- followed by a thematic vowel u- and by a perfective suffix m-; the agreement properties of this adjectival participle are overtly marked both by a suffix -E and by a preposed article, E again. The invariable participial form which appears in the paskajore reduces to the verbal stem, for instance mlu, consisting of the verb root ml- followed by the thematic vowel -u. In the final section of the article we briefly consider the embedding of the invariable participle under the aspetctual auxiliary. In Gheg varieties auxiliary selection is similar to that found in English or in Romance languages like Spanish; thus kam ‘I have’ appears in the active with all verbal classes while jam ‘I am’ forms the middle-passive. In other words, Gheg like standard Albanian does not make the distinction between unaccusative and transitive actives found in Romance languages such as French or Italian. We propose that the insertion of jam corresponds to the case in which the EPP argument (subject) of the auxiliary is identified with the internal argument of a participle which has in principle an external argument as well; in fact the external argument (agent) of the participle does receive an interpretation at least in the passive reading.

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