Stylistics and Terminology: Father Gjeçovi”s Influence on the Albanian Language Used in “Kanun”

Abstract

It is of special importance to differentiate between the original Albanian language used orally by the Albanian highlanders reciting by heart the articles of the Codex “Kanun” and the Albanian language used by the staff who recorded the highlanders’ reciting, as well as the language used by the editors, who edited the book before it was forwarded for printing. Our study pays special attention to the abilities and capabilities of the recorder of “Kanun”, who was a renowned intellectual. He possessed all round knowledge of jurisprudence in general and the traditional law “Kanun” in particular because he was not only ordained a catholic priest but he was a law graduated as well. At the same time father Gjeçovi was a well known ethnographer, historian and archeologist. Our study aims at analyzing the material (stuff) recorded by father Gjeçovi focusing on some “artificial” out of place elements cropping up in such a material. Such elements are due to the double functioning of him as the recorder of the oral traditional law “Kanun”, but also as an editor of the recorded material. These recorded material of the traditional law is studied by us not simply as something frozen in that moment of time when Gjeçovi recorded them, but also as they evolved up to nowadays trying to shed light upon their “roots” in the framework of the linguistic usage.