Re: [tied] Re: slavic "dalto"

----- Original Message -----
From: "alex_lycos" <altamix@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 9:06 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: slavic "dalto"


> In other order one will ask: why the "lb" from slavic was mentained in Romanians in the loans from Slavic? If there should have been a form with "lb" then, why the Romanians and
Albanians do not have the "lb" in their words but just the simply form "dalta"?

Slavic did not simplify *-lb-; it simplified *-bt- [-pt-], which became -t- (or was replaced by -st- in some verb forms, e.g. *grebti 'bury' > OCS greti, Russ. gresti, SCr. grepsti (a hybrid form with analogically restored /p/). The regular development was *dolbto [dalpta] > *dolto [dalta] > ... (forms with metathesis or pleophony).

Another possible cognate is the Slavic word for 'woodpecker', *deNtel-, which may reflect dissimilated *deltel- < *delb-tel- 'chiseller'.

> You maybe will explain that *dolbto went *dolto and just in that time it happened Albanians and Romanians caught that word. After they did it, the slavic made the usual metathesis as known, so the word is "dloto".

More or less.

> The question is, is in South Slavic that word?
> I guess you agree, the word could be loaned just from South Slavic.

No, not South Slavic as we know it. At the time, Slavic was not differentiated the way it is now.

> Let us see:
> bulgarians: "dletp"

It's <dleto>.

> serbo-croatian: there is just the verb so far I know: "klesati",
> "tesati"

SCr. dlijeto 'chisel'. All these South Slavic forms are from *dle^to. However, outgroup evidence (Old Prussian <dalptan>) shows that *dol(b)to was the original Proto-Slavic form, whereas *dle^to (for regularly expected <dlato>, known only from Church Slavic in Russian redaction) is secondary, modelled on the -e-grade verb *dle^(s)ti < *delbti (cf. dialectal SCr. dlisti).

> In this case Piotr, how could then Romanians and Albanians to get the
> word ? Wherefrom? From Russian? From Polish?

From what to all intents and purposes can be called Common Slavic. Russian or Polish did not exist yet as individual languages, and the Slavic colonisation of Poland was just beginning at best. The linguistic ancestors of the Serbians and Croatians had not yet migrated south. The areal configuration of languages that we call South Slavic began to consolidate some 100-200 years later. It would be extremely naive to project the present-day linguistic situation back onto the Balkans ca. AD 600.

Piotr