Re: [tied] Re: Daci

----- Original Message -----

From: mbikqyres

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 6:45 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Daci

> [Alvin:] The difference is that Slavic *morje stood for 'a body of water' and not for 'deep' (water). It is of no strange that *morje was developed inland, because you find bodies of water almost everywhere you go: lakes, rivers, pools etc. The deep water is only to be found in sea and deep lakes. If P. Albanians where not living beside the sea, they must have lived all around a big deep lake in order to remember and develop the
word 'deep water' <debët> into <det>.

 

[Piotr:] But the only thing regularly called *morje in Slavic is the sea, not just any body of water. The word is not applied to lakes, let alone rivers or pools.

 

My point is that first-hand experience is not always necessary in such cases. Exotic things can be culturally important even if you've never seen them yourselves. The Slavic languages have a common word for 'lion' (*lIvU), an animal rarely seen on the banks of the Pripyat. Even if the word is a loan from Germanic (*liw-o:n-, itself borrowed from Latin), it's common Slavic nevertheless, and must have diffused into the Slavic dialects long before their speakers actually saw the fabled beast.

 

In the case of the Proto-Albanians, it's quite possible that the 'sea' word was part of their Getic heritage, and that they never lost it during their inland wanderings. Trade contacts with the coastal provinces would have sufficed to remind them that the sea existed.

 

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> [Alvin:] Though most of sea-related terminology, as in any other field, might be of loanwords mostly Latin, there must also be some native proto-Albanian ones among those words: anije, lundër, bash, kiç, guackë, midhje, gaforre, ngjalë, karrem, grep, dallgë, valë, baticë-zbaticë, vorbull, rërë, stuhi, fllad.

 

[Piotr:] I am not an expert in Albanian etymology (what do <bash> and <kiç> mean, by the way?), and all I can say without a library search is that a few of these words _are_ Latin, e.g. <fllad> 'breeze' (Lat. fla:tus), <ngjalë> 'eel' (Lat. anguilla). The problem for anybody who is not intimately familiar with the Albanian sound changes is that Latin loans may not be recognisable at first glance. Initial vowels are often lost, medial voiced consonants may disappear, etc. A striking example is <rërë> 'sand' (in Tosk), which derives from Lat. are:na. It's easier to believe that it does if one knows that the word is <ranë> in Geg and that intervocalic *-n- has undergone rhotacism in Tosk.

 

<valë> 'wave' is probably native (with good IE cognates).

 

Piotr