Re: [tied] the bee

----- Original Message -----
From: "alex_lycos" <altamix@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2003 4:20 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] the bee


> Moment. Shouldn't latin "ct" gave an "ft" in Albanian? We have seen the explanaion where Latin "lucta" gave Albanian "lufta" ?

A good point, but there's a subtle difference between Romanian and Albanian in this respect. Romanian has /pt/ and /ps/ from VLat. /kt/ and /ks/ no matter what precedes; Albanian, on the other hand, has /ft/ and /fsh/ after back vowels only; elsewhere the /k/ was palatalised, eventually yielding modern /j/, hence *drEkt- > Rom. dreapta but Alb. drejtë.

> Why are you so sure this is Latin "saggita"? Do we know what meant the
Dacian capital "sarmi-segetusa"? We see there the "-segetusa" and this can/could be the counterpart of Latin "saggita" as the Dacian "genucla" is the counterpart of Latin "genuculum".

Let's be serious. You haven't got a shred of evidence as regards the meaning of Zarmi-(~ Zermi-)zegetusa.

> As a matter of fact, teh diminutival derivatives of "saggita" in Rom. word (sãgeatã) are: sãgeTicã sãgetuSã the both suffixes are to find very well in Thracian space : "-ica" and "-usa".

> Now for the Greek "mellita" if this was borrowed via Balkan Latin, and should have meant "bee" then this word should have been in Balkan Latin, meaning in Proto-Romanian vocabulary too. It is accepted the Latin words have been replaced by Slavic words into Romanian. Since the word for
"melitta" in Balkan Latin must have been "albina" how you mean, then how does it fits with Albanian "bletë" together?

What's wrong with the possibility that there were (at least) two different words for 'bee', one a descriptive Latin term (alvi:na > *albinam 'hive-dweller'), the other a cultural loan from Greek (melitta --> *melettam)? Such doublets for domesticated animals are rather common. The terms need not have been completely synonymous in Balkan Latin, though the precise difference between the original meanings may have been too subtle to be reconstructible.

Piotr