Re: [tied] A truncated snake

On Fri, 07 Feb 2003 23:11:00 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

>The Albanian word is clearly a reflex of *sérpen- (as if from *serpenos, which however looks a little dubious as a PIE form). In addition to <gjarpër> and its transparent derivatives, there's also an old pl./coll. form, <shtërpinj> 'adders', which has developed differently because of its different stress pattern (*serpéni: > *sh(t)rpéni > shtërpínj, with epenthetic <ë>). I'd like to learn what our Romanian experts have to say about Rom. $arpe, but I think it's likely to be the same word as in Albanian, *sErpe < *sérpen which makes the most sense as a reanalysis of Lat. sérpens (oblique <serpénte-> would have undergone a completely different evolution in Romanian).

The old consonant/i-stems (Latin class III) often retain the
nominative form in Romanian. E.g. frate < frater (not fratrem which
would have given *fratre), oaspe < hospes (not hospitem, which would
have given something like *oaspete). Another example is indeed, as you
mentioned, nume < nomen, not nominem. The normal development of
*sérpens is *sieárpe > s,arpe.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...