![]() | Antonio Sciarretta's Toponymy |
From the river Ras^a to the river Zrmanja and then to the Krka, the land was inhabited by Iapydes and Liburni, from the Krka to the river Neretva, it was called Dalmatia, and from the Neretva to the Drin, Illyria proper (Barbara or Romana).
Common remarks: the place-names have been put in the nominative case, an asterisk * means not attested, reconstructed form. The late place-names of probable Latin origin have not been included. The IE roots are in the form given by Pokorny's Indogermanische Wörterbuch. The links will be active when the single pages will be published, see the main page. For any comment, suggestion, email me.
Actually, toponymy suggests that there was at least one satem stratum, in Illyria proper and surprisingly in the inner part of southern Dalmatia (parts of today Hercegovina, Montenegro and Sandjak). However, this language cannot be the direct ancestor of Albanian for many reasons. It may tentatively be identified with a Mysian-like language. Continuity theory supporters would rather suggest that it should be identified with an early Slavic language, already present close to the historical Slavic domain.
In Liburnia, a Venetic stratum is easily recognizable for the typical presence of an f from PIE *bh, dh. As recognized by Georgiev and others, Venetic has nothing to do with "Illyrian".
In the rest of Liburnia, in Dalmatia, and in part of Illyria proper, a poorly characterized linguistic stratum may be reconstructed from some typical suffixes, like -etium from *-ent-, from the development of sonants like *n>un and generally for many points of contact with the opposite side of the Adriatic sea. especially Samnium and Apulia. This stratum has been called here Illyrian for what concerning Apulia. Possibly this group of languages coincides with the "Central Illyrian-Pannonian" of the classification (based on anthroponyms) of Katicic'.