Identifiers and reflexives in Old Albanian

Abstract

Albanian possesses eight different lexemes built to a radical element vetë, with meanings ranging from ‘person’, ‘self’, ‘own’ to ‘only’ and ‘apart’. The aim of this paper is to clarify the distribution and meaning of these words in Old Albanian, in particular, in texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I also discuss the etymology of these various stems, though the ultimate origin of vet(ë) cannot be established.