Re: [tied] "One" in Albanian [Was: some terms for George]

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 23440
Date: 2003-06-17

17-06-03 22:36, alex wrote:

> I guess the explanation is very simple. Albanian lost the initial "u"
> from *une ( Take a look at how many words begin with "un-" in Albanian.
> The derivation should be as follow:
>
> *oino > une > né > nie > nje > një

Despite your pretension to simplicity, this derivation is actually so
complex that one can legitimately call it crazy. It violates a great
number of regular developments in the history of Albanian, and every
single step in your sequence is arbitrary:

(1) *oi does not yield (Proto-)Albanian *u; it gives e (< *e: < *ai <
*oi); before a nasal *e: would have become a nasalised vowel (*â = [a~])
in Common Albanian.

(2) Stem-final ("thematic") short *o disappears in Albanian. Short *o
doesn't change into /e/ except under some special umlauting conditions
that don't obtain in this case.

(3) *oino- did not have final stress.

(4) You leave dialectal forms totally unaccounted for.

In a word, bullshit.

Piotr