The Language Economy Principle in Albanian Syntax

Abstract

The language economy principle and its appearance in communication, constantly had been present in Albanian and had been the focus of some previous works, where especially we aimed to show the economy principle in lexicon, above all its appearance in the category of abbrevitations, acronyms and shortenings, as a typical expression of the economy principle. But, as a principle, that affects and influences language, the principle of linguistic economy actually is present at all levels or language fields, somewhere more and somewhere less. The purpose of this paper is to see how this principle has affected the syntax. The economy principle is not a new phenomenon in this filed, if we consider elliptical sentences, that are a typical example of the economy principle in syntax. Based on the theory of Andre Martinet, the language economy principle aims at least effort, for a particular purpose. On the other hand, this principle should not prejudice the communication itself. From the syntactic view, a formal communication would be ideal, at least with two primary elements: subject and predicate. As we know, in the Albanian language we can find different clauses without subject or without predicate. We can find in Albanian language such incomplete sentences which can be considered a manifestation of principle of linguistic economy and as we shall see throughout this paper, this principle is often crucial for the creation of this incomplete units. The means of syntax in some cases suffer of shrinkage that is directly related to pure economy principle as a dominant factor, on their creation. But, the economy principle is not the only reason on the existence of the elliptical clause, but in some cases it is primary. At the end of this paper, we will aim to see the impact that this principle has in the syntax system and to the language itself. Keywords: language economy principle, syntax, elliptical clause.