The words you quote belong to a distict
set. They contained so-called syllabic liquids (*r, *l), actually realised as a
very brief reduced vowel plus a liquid in Proto-Slavic (*Ir, *Ur, *Il, *Ul), but
changing into real syllabic consonants e.g. in Czech and Serbo-Croatian. They
did not undergo the metathesis rules as applied to *er, *el, *or and *ol (as in
*bolto, *dolto, *gordU), but developed in their own special way (e.g. *tUrgU
'market' > OCS trUgU which may look like metathesis but elsewhere we get Cz.
trh, S-Cr. trg, Pol. targ, Russ. torg. Romanian borrowed the word from
a dialect in which the rhotic was syllabic, [tr.g], and since Romanian has no
such sound, the perceptually closest approximation with an accmpanying central
vowel was employed instead, [1r] = <âr>.
As for Balaton, the name comes from
Blatno (Ozero) 'Muddy (Lake)' (from *boltIno _with_ metathesis, cf. German
Plattensee). However, Hungarian did not permit initial /bl-/ at the time the
name was borrowed (it is still a rare cluster, found only in recent loans), and
an epenthetic vowel was inserted to make the word pronounceable to the Magyars:
/blat-/ --> /balat-/, cf. /kral'/ 'king' (from *korljI, perhaps the single
most recent loanword in Slavic to have been affected by metathesis) --> Hung.
király. Also <szerda> 'Wednesday' represents a metathesis in Hungarian (to
"repair" the difficult pronunciation of Slavic /sre^da/ or /sr^e^da/) rather
than a direct representation of older *serda.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2002 4:51 PM
Subject: [tied] again the slavic methathesis
So far I understood from Piotr, the methathesis is a
phenomenom which happened in all slavic langauges , but in different period of
times for each slavic language. I am not sure if
I make a mistake here, but the south slavic methathesised the words somehow in
the VIII century.It was said, the romanians and
albanians got the slavic words from slavic bevore the words were methathesised
by south slavics.So the rom. and alb. "dalta,
balta" are the slavic words dlato, blato and the explanation fits.
I have a problem with this aspect:Rom. gârba= slavic grUbU, rom. vârSa= slavic vreSa, rom.
hârciog= slavic hroCegU, rom. bârlog= slavic brUlogU.
The problem is that the hungarians have these words
too. And they are without methathesis.So we have:In hungarian: görcs, görbe, vorsa, hörsök, borlog
The name of the lake Balaton is derived from Balta
and there is too , no methathesis, otherways we should have had
Blaton.When we speak about hungarian, we are
already almost in the X century and this doesnt fit anymore with the explanation
for dlato= dalta and blato= balta
Which should be then the
explanation?