18-06-03 20:05, alex wrote:
> For "dushman" I do not make any comment for now but I am intrigued by
> the slavic form. Since in my dictionary the Slavic nasals are ignored,
> maybe Piotr will tell us if there is a nasal /e~/ in the Slavic word
> "prjiatelI".
What dictionary is that? Are you sure it doesn't mark nasality? That
would be quite unthinkable if the dictionary has any claim to decency.
The traditional nasality symbol in Slavic studies is the "ogonek" (a
small cedilla-like hook placed _under_ <e> or <o>).
The Slavic word is *prIjatelI, an agent noun with the suffix *-tel-,
derived from the verb *prIja-ti 'favour, like' (cf. Skt. priya- 'dear',
Gmc. *frijo:nd- 'friend'). There is no nasal in it, which only means
that a nasal was substituted for a glide in the Romanian word . Such a
dissimilatory change may happen sporadically in any language if there
are more than one sounds of the same type in the same word (one would
expect *prietei, I presume, with [j] from palatalised [l^]). Conversely,
if there are more than one nasals, one of them may change into a liquid:
compare Finn. kumppani > kumppali 'companion', Pol. kompan, coll. kumpel
'mate', Rom. venin vs. It. veleno 'poison' (< Lat. vene:nu-).
Piotr