Albanian

From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 45418
Date: 2006-07-18

There's something I've always found very remarkable about Albanian: the fact that Indo-European *s in initial position before vowels evolved to the Albanian consonant <gj>, which I understand is a voiced palatal plosive.  To me, it is perhaps the most unlikely phonetic change I have ever heard of, yet it occurred (I actually sometimes wondered whether Albanian words with <gj-> truly originated from IE words with *s-).  Can anyone offer a reasonable hypothesis as to how a voiceless alveolar sibilant can evolve to a voiced palatal plosive?  It would be very reassuring and satisfying to me if someone had an explanation for this change which to me seems to defy the laws of nature!
 
Andrew