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Eric Hamp is beyond any doubt one of the most renowned Indo-Europanist. Albanian falls among his major interest for he has authored dozens of articles relating certain facets of Albanian phonology and morphology. Either way, Eric Hamp’s main advantage is that he intertwined his keen knowledge with direct contacts with Albanian-speakers of rare dialects (like that of arbëresh on Southern Italy). In his early writings, Hamp opted strongly for Illyrian origin of Albanian emphasizing some common elements. Truth be told, in the ensuing years he became more and more suspicious concerning Illyrian and viewed it as a “slippery entity”. His recent idea has Albanian as a sole survivor of a language which once was spoken from the Carpathian mountains all the way to Albania. Then again, professor Hamp is too circumspect to ascribe the antecedent of Albanian whether as Dacian or Illyrian as long as both of them are fairly obscure languages. I did have the good fortune to hear an impressive lecture of Hamp during a conference held in Tirana on December 2008. Despite his age, Hamp with his unparalleled wit analyzed in a thorough insightful manner two ostensibly Latin words, which according to him, were borrowed by Illyrian. He stated that the specific development of these two words in Albanian (thikë, thupën respectively) makes it likely they were introduced by ancestors of Albanians on Latin. Moreover, in a couple of interviews on this occasion, Hamp clung on Illyrian thesis as the most likely one. Whereas in a more recent publication, professor Hamp averred a common trait shared by both Illyrian (and Messapic likewise), Albanian and Balto-Slavic which is the lengthening of syllable before obstruents, otherwise known as Winter’s law. Unfortunately, I am clueless on which particular examples Hamp substantiated his claim.Originally Posted by Scholarios Chiotis
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