Re: [tied] Illyrian revisited

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 30655
Date: 2004-02-04

04-02-04 14:48, Abdullah Konushevci wrote:

> No, there was something much interesting, regarding the Illyrian and
> the Albanian: the outcome of PIE diphthong /*au/ > /a/ (cf.
> Taulantia > Talantia; Ausankalie > Asankalis, Bausta > Basta.
> Furthermore, as Krahe claims, /au/ is a prefix and preverb too,

/au/ is a diphthong, full stop. Whether it carries a meaning, i.e.
constitutes a morpheme, depends on a given language. It has been
suggested that *au tended to be monophthongised to /a:/ in some (not
all) varieties of Messapic, but a single and regionally restricted
"change" of a rather trivial kind (it might represent no more than
orthographic vacillation) is of no diagnostic value. Krahe's
identification of some Central European toponyms as "Illyrian" is too
speculative to be worth discussing. It makes Illyrian look like the
Frankenstein monster, stitched up together from fragments of diverse
origin. We know no Illyrian verbs, let alone preverbs. A couple of
typical and widespread IE preverbs have tentatively been identified in
Messapic, but they don't include <au->.

> fact
> that I have prove, discussing the first part of demonstrative
> pronouns in Albanian: <ai> `he', <ajo> `she', <ata/ato> `they',
> accepted by Mr. Jens Elmegaard RASMUSSEN as only valid explanation.

What _fact_ did you prove? That *au- was an Illyrian prefix?? You
suggested, and Jens accepted the suggestion, that <a-> in Albanian
pronouns is the PIE deictic element *h2au-. No less, no more. It's a
reasonable idea (and not a new one, cf. Pokorny), but what does it mean
apart from the fact that Albanian pronouns are composed of IE elements
-- which nobody doubts anyway? Reflexes of *h2au- occur widely: in
Greek, Latin, Germanic and elsewhere.

Piotr