Hi!
Why not deriving from PIE *sei-N- 'to be damp, to drip' like Alb.
gjizë 'curd' is supposed to come from ?
You have actually rebuilt gji as *sein-.
Alvin
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <a96_aeu@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 2:31 PM
> Subject: [tied] alb. gji (breast)
>
>
> > Does anybody know if there is any relation between
Albanian 'gji' (bosom, breast) and Latin 'die' (suckle) ?
>
> Latin what? There is no such thing as Latin *die 'suckle'. Perhaps
you mean Norwegian die 'suck'. Anyway, there is no connection.
>
> The origin of <gji> is a nice problem because the solution is
rather unexpected. You can use it as an illustration of how
etymological analysis works. The def. form <gjiri> and the pl.
<gjinj> show that the word once ended in *-n- (rhotacised between
vowels in Tosk), and the initial <gj-> makes us expect pre-Albanian
*s- unless the word is a recent loan with palatalised /g/ (but no
source suggests itself readily). The vowel <i> may continue (most
likely) pre-Albanian *i, *i: or *ei. The prototype might therefore
be of the form *sin-, *si:n- or *sein-. Additionally, it may be
significant that the word also means 'gulf' in Albanian.
>
> This should immediately ring a bell. Lat. sinus has exactly the
right form and meaning. Apart from 'bent surface, curve, fold' it
means BOTH 'bosom, lap' AND 'bay, gulf'. Since these are derived,
rather than inherited, meanings in Latin (e.g. 'bosom' from 'the
hanging fold of a toga'), and the word has no obvious connections
outside Latin (as far as I know), it seems obvious that the Albanian
word is a loan rather than a cognate. There is one difficulty with
this. <gji> must be older than the loans in which Lat. s- gives Alb.
sh- before a vowel, and it forces us to assume that the initial
voicing of old *s- in pre-Albanian (> Mod. Alb. gj-) took place
_during_ Latin-Albanian contacts, not _before_ them. Any ideas how
to test this hypothesis?
>
> Piotr