From: Abdullah Konushevci
Message: 30230
Date: 2004-01-29
> 3. The incredible adventures of *smjekër) and
>
> PIE *s disappeared from in many positions already in the earliest
> history of Albanian. It was lost before nasals (*smek^ru- >
> probably always before and after liquids (the proposed developmentof
> initial *sr- > *str- > shtr- is based on doubtful evidence). Someof the
> examples discussed recently on this list suggest the compensatoryas in
> lengthening of vowels before *-rs- and *-sr- (simplified to -r-),
> *g^Hesr- > *3'e:r- > dorë 'hand' and *gWer(h3)snah2 > *3^e:rra >zorrë
> 'intestine'.evidence
>
> Contrary to what is sometimes claimed, I can't see any tangible
> for the phonologisation of the RUKI rule in Albanian.voiceless
>
> Before Late Proto-Albanian (i.e. in pre-Roman times) *s underwent
> voicing prevocalically in stressed syllables but remained
> elsewhere (unless already lost). After the main wave of BalkanLatin
> loans in Albanian but before the main wave of borrowings fromSlavic the
> fricatives *s and *z became retracted, yielding postalveolar *s^and
> *z^. While *s^ survives as Modern Albanian <sh>, *z^, which hador from
> meanwhile undergone a merger with the reflex of Proto-Albanian *j,
> developed further into palatal *G' and merged with *g' (from *gl
> *g palatalised before front vowels). The outcome of the merger isModern
> Albanian /g'/ (spelt <gj>):shtatë
>
> *serpm.no- > *ziärpan- > Geg gjarpën, Tosk gjarpër 'snake'
> *supno- > *zum(n)- > gjumë 'sleep'
> *solwo- 'healthy' > gjallë 'vigorous'
> but *septm. (with final stress preserved) + *-t-a: > *s&táta >
>several
> Alb. <sh> normally corresponds to Lat. /s/ in old borrowings (e.g.
> shigjetë 'arrow' <-- sagitta), but not to Slavic /s/, except in
> words that belong to the oldest layer of Slavic loans (e.g. shullëbizarre
> 'maidservant' <-- *sUlU 'messenger').
>
> Combinations of *s with other phonemes have produced some really
> results. Initial *sw- gives Mod.Alb. d-, as in *sworgH-eje- >dergjem
> 'lie ill' (middle voice) and *s(h2)wel-jo- (or the like) >diell 'sun'.
> The development is puzzling and the intermediate stages aredifficult to
> reconstruct. The syllables in which it took place were stressed inconjecture
> Proto-Albanian (though not necessarily in PIE), so we may
> that the first step was *sw- > *zw-. It seems that before afollowing *w
> the fricative *z failed to undergo retraction and was frontedinstead
> (by dissimilation?); the resulting *Dw- gave /d-/ upon the loss of*w in
> clusters. The fact that we don't find /D-/ in random variationwith /d-/
> in this lexical set is probably significant: *dw- and *dHw- arealso
> consistently reflected as /d-/ in Albanian. Of course *g^(H)w-didn't
> follow the same path because it became monophonemic *3'W- (> *3^ >z)
> already in Early Proto-Albanian.would
>
> I don't know what happened to *sw- in unstressed syllables. I
> expect *sw- > *Tw- > *T-, but I can't offer any examples.due to
>
> In <vjehërr> 'father-in-law' (PIE *swek^uros) the initial /v/ is
> old metathesis (*swek'ur- > *wesk(')ur-), not to a specialtreatment of
> *sw-, while <gjasht> 'six' derives from the PIE variant *sek^s(plus
> secondary *-t-a:), not from *swek^s.times,
>
> It seems that the combinations *k^s, *k(W)s and *sk(^) all yield
> Albanian <h> /x/:
>
> *sk(^)and-nah2 > Geg hânë, Tosk hënë 'moon'
> (cf. Skt. (s')candrá- 'shining; moon')
> *g^n.h3-sk(^)o: > njoh 'know'
> *keh1k^-sah2 > kohë 'time' (cf. Slavic *c^asU 'id.')
>
> Whether they fell together at the same time or not, they must have
> merged as something similar to or identical with *x by Roman
> since Lat. /sk/ --> Alb. shk and Lat. /ks/ --> Alb. fsh. However,Early
> Proto-Albanian loans from Doric Greek are old enough to have been************
> affected: Gk. kse:nos --> Alb. huaj 'stranger, foreigner'.
>
> Piotr