From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 20739
Date: 2003-04-03
----- Original Message -----
From: "Abdullah Konushevci" <akonushevci@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 2:56 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: slavic "dalto"
> Until gdhe is prefixed form ga- + PIE root *da- 'to devide'(cf. Alb. gdhij 'to wake up' and Alb. di-të 'day' from PIE zero grade form *dyu- or z- + ga- + fellë 'cave' from i thellë/i fellë 'deep', zgavër 'hole' from z- +ga- + vër>vrimë/birë 'small hole'), and gdhend from PIE *ga- + *da- + -ent, why couldn't Alb. dal-të be from PIE *dail- 'to divede', but must be a Slavic loan.
There's a difference of quality between saying that *dolb-to derives from *delb-/*dolb-/*dIlb-, a know Slavic root with numerous derivatives, the right semantics and securely established external cognates (including a Baltic set), and saying that <dal-të> may be related to PIE *da(h2)- and *dail-. The latter "root" is a questionable reconstruction in the first place (and as for "why not?", the last time I checked the Albanian reflex of *ai was /e/); the former is so short (and therefore so vulnerable to arbitrary manipulation) that without a strong argument showing and explaining the specific details of the derivation you won't make a convincing case.
The hypothesis that <daltë> is a Slavic loan is not a necessity or an article of faith; it simply gives us a better fit with the known data than any other explanation offered so far.
Piotr