Re: Against the theory of 'Albanian Loans in Romanian'

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alexandru_mg3"
<alexandru_mg3@...> wrote:

>
> Hello M. Iacomi,
> Your said that :
> 1. " Since /*s/ > /sh/ happened for sure at some historical
> moment in Albanian and since all Latin loanwords in Albanian

exhibit

> this feature, the most likely assumption is of course that the

change

> took place afterwards."
>
> This is only one possibility. And it isn't 'the most likely' in
> this situation (viewing the moment of the slavic loans)
> The other one is that /*s/ > /sh/ was ALREADY active on all the
> period of Latin loans, and that 'strunga','sterp','brusture'

etc...

> are older than this moment
> (but I will come back tomorrow with my detail justification on
> this point).

I wish you guys would separate /st/ from /s/ in general.

There is another side to the issue. At what point did the ancestor
of Romanian start to distinguish /st/ and /St/? If the ancestor of
Romanian did not distinguish them, then whether the donor language
has /st/ or /St/ is irrelevant to the outcome. It may also be
relevant to note that the distinction might have occurred at
different times in different positions. English can accept
final /St/ (but it gets interpreted as containing a past participle
ending), initial /St/ sounds foreign and will be naturalised as /st/
(compare <Schweppes> /sweps/). Intervocalic /St/ is acceptable in
English.

Richard.