Re: [tied] green albanian

----- Original Message -----
From: "alex_lycos" <altamix@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 2:59 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] green albanian



> Your thoughts is that Latin "-inus" went as follows: "s"= mute, "n" became rothacised so, you have "iru" and from "iru" > "ër"

More or less. The ending of the nominative (/-us/) lost its /-s/ as elsewhere in East Romance and the remaining short vowel was eventually lost as usual in Albanian (inherited *-os has also been reduced to zero). The /-n-/ was regularly rhotacised in Tosk. For a parallel case, see urdhër (= Geg urdhën) 'order' <-- Lat. ordinem. As in this word, the unstressesed /i/ in <galbinum> was reduced to schwa (<ë>), but not before exerting its umlaut-like effect on the preceding vowel, cf. Lat. galli: 'cocks' --> Alb. (singularised) gjel 'cock'.

> a) can you show the "gjëlbër" is not in the same family with gëlbazë"?

Why should I? It's the suggested relationship that has to be demonstrated, not its lack. I don't have to prove that UFO abductions don't take place; it's the duty of those who believe in them to prove that they're real (not that they _can_ prove it ...). Can you show that there _is_ a connection between gjëlbër and gëlbazë? They merely _look_ similar, but they don't even have compellingly similar meanings. As far as I'm concerned, <galbeazã> and <gëlbazë> (there are also dialectal variants with /k-/) may be, respectively, a genuine substrate word in Romanian and an inherited one in Albanian.

Piotr