On 2006-04-12 15:47, george knysh wrote:
> *****GK: But the question was rather (in effect) why
> Ukr. should have substituted palatalised d' for
> affricate dz' in this context, since dzenk-/djak- is
> not an inherited Common Slavic word, assuming the
> regular correspondence universally applies in the
> latter cases. What is the argument against a direct
> borrowing from Gmc into Ukr.?*****
Quite simply, Ukrainian <dj> was the closest thing to Polish <dz'> in
"regular" lexical registers (Ukrainian affricates are still relatively
rare and used mostly in onomatopoeic or expressive words). People,
especially bilingual speakers, are often quite well aware of regular
correspondences between evidently related languages and make use of them
when importing loanwords. As for direct borrowing from Germanic into
Ukrainian -- some form of High German stills seems to be the only
possible source, and given the distribution of the word in Slavic
(everywhere in West Slavic, only Ukrainian in East Slavic) plus the
conventional pattern of substitutions between Polish and Ukrainian
(/dz'/ --> /d'/, /eN/ --> /ja/), Polish is a likely intermediary.
Piotr