Graeco-Albanian is a theoretical division within the broader linguistic family known as Paleo-Balkanic. This division was theorized by linguists Brian D. Joseph and Adam Hyllested, it includes the "Illyric" languages, encompassing Albanian and Messapic, as well as the Graeco-Phrygian languages, which consist of Greek and Phrygian. Among these, the only languages to have survived are Albanian and Modern Greek.^[1]

Graeco-Albanian isoglosses

Innovative creations of agricultural terms shared only between Albanian and Greek, such as *h₂(e)lbʰ-it- 'barley' and *spor-eh₂- 'seed', were formed from non-agricultural Proto-Indo-European roots through semantic changes to adapt them for agriculture. Since they are limited only to Albanian and Greek, they can be traced back with certainty only to their last common Indo-European ancestor, and not projected back into Proto-Indo-European.^[2]

The deictic element *ḱjā- in Pre-Proto-Albanian *ḱjā-dīti > Albanian sot ("today") has the same source as *kjā- in Proto-Greek *kjā-wētes (cf. Mycenean Greek za-we-te, Attic Greek τῆτες, and Ionic Greek σῆτες "this year"). These words are built combining the deictic element and a form of the word for "day" in Albanian (Pre-Proto-Albanian *dīti-) and for "year" in Greek (Proto-Greek *wētes-). The deictic element resulted from a reanalysis of the word for "today" *kjāmer-, which contains the restricted word for "day" *āmer- (cf. Greek ἡμέρα, Doric Greek ἁμέρα, and Armenian awr). In Pre-Proto-Albanian only later the word āmer- was replaced by *dīti-, when the latter became the usual word for day in this language.^[3]

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