From: Abdullah Konushevci
Message: 23951
Date: 2003-06-27
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "m_iacomi" <m_iacomi@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
>
> > 27-06-03 15:27, m_iacomi wrote:
> >
> >> That doesn't fit Romanian <mãgura> since there is *no* Slavic
> >> loanword to exhibit rhotacism of VlV. Either the word would be
> >> a strange singular case of *very* early Slavic loanword, or the
> >> word is pre-Slavic. At this point, I would pick by far the
second.
> >
> > It's _very_ early but not that singular, and certainly not
isolated.
> > Albanian reveals a few other words
>
> For Albanian, yes. For Romanian, no. In this case, Romanian hints
> through rhotacism _and_ stress it could hardly be linked to Slavic.
>
> > [...] the very first Slavs who made it into the Balkans, perhaps
as
> > early as AD 600. Those words show the characteristic substitution
> > of Albanian /a/ and /u/ for PSl. *o and *y, which were still
> > pronounced [a] and [u:] at the early stage of common Slavic
>
> As said: Albanian word does not exclude the hypothesis of an early
> Slavic loanword. It fits well. Unlike Romanian word which does not
> fit well in this theory.
>
> > Now <magullë> for *mogyla [magu:la:] shows exactly the same
pattern
> > and allows one to assume a pre-rhotacism loan into both Albanian
> > and Romanian from a common source.
>
> Why *both*?! Things gravitate around magical threshold A.D. 600:
> that's the epoch from which one can infer the first Slavic
loanwords
> entered Romanian, but none with rhotacism. That is: rhotacism
should
> have been no longer active after A.D. 600. [Rosetti goes even
further
> by stating that Slavic /l/ _could not_ rhotacize since it has a
> different pronunciation from Latin and substrate /l/; that would
> relax timeline of rhotacism, allowing it to extend up to Common
> Romanian period and would rule out any possibility for rhotacized
> words to have Slavic origins].
>
> > If it's the only good example of Romanian rhotacism in a Slavic
> > loan, so be it: the reason is that the _oldest_ layer of such
loans
> > is very thin; we'd better be grateful for this single example
>
> The thin layer of the oldest Slavic loanwords recognized as such,
> still doesn't contain any rhotacized word, only VlV, as in Slavic.
> Considering it as "good example" would imply that the mentioned
> thin layer should be restricted to this only word. That doesn't
> sound like a very probable assumption. And one has to explain also
> stress pattern modification.
>
> > Independent borrowing from Iranian is of couse a possibility, but
> > a less likely one, since the word is not directly attested in
> > Iranian, while it's found everywhere in Slavic.
>
> There was another possibility out of this Iranian connection.
>
> > The assumption of a Slavic source is simply safer on
methodological
> > grounds -- ask Ockham.
>
> ... but you yourself recognized that Slavic word remains basically
> unexplained. That means it should be probably a post-PIE specifical
> construction or loanword, which could very well located at some
> historical moment on the Satem branch, before its' further split.
> It's obvious that the word entered at some moment in Slavic or
> in one of its' ancestors, and Ockham has nothing to do with the
> choice of the historical moment of entrance. That is: nothing
> obliges us to infer it was invented or loaned by Proto-Slavs.
> Slavic origin theory for Albanian word doesn't require it, but
> Romanian phonetism and stress, and presence of the word "moGoro"
> `low hill` and toponym "Mogoro" in Campidanese (with proparoxytone
> stress, cf. M. Wagner) are suggesting the word was already in
> Mediterranean region prior to Slavs' arrival. That would require
> an insertion in a Satem (sub-)branch before split of Proto-Slavic.
>
> > As for borrowing the same word twice during prolonged contact,
> > well-known examples are aplenty.
>
> That's true, I used a bad argument.
>
> Regards,
> Marius Iacomi