Re: [tied] Re: about the wrong roots

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 24267
Date: 2003-07-08

08-07-03 00:11, Abdullah Konushevci wrote:


>> (Lat. phero) and borë < be:ra: 'snow' (quantitative apophony),
>> besides qualitative one: pjek < *pekW-, but aor. poqa 'I have
>> baked', etc.
> I forget to mention: *perd > Alb. pjerdh 'to fart', but *pe:rd- +a:
>> pordhë 'fart' (cf. Gr. perdix 'partridge').
>> Konushevci

The lengthened grade appears in rather well-defined morphological
environments (the aorist, deverbal feminine nouns). <sos> belongs in no
such category. In <poqa> you have a long vowel (expected in this case),
but also an initial /p/ (not */s/).

Look, Abdullah. You're flogging a very dead horse. <pesë> and
<pjek>/<poqa> (words that are etymologically as secure as one could
wish) ought to convince any linguist in his right mind that
Proto-Albanian had no Latin-type labiovelar assimilation. Why, then, do
you ignore the evidence and insist that the assimilation can be found in
Albanian? Because you believe in the following:

(1) the assimilation operated in Illyrian;

(2) Illyrian is ancestral to Albanian.

Therefore, you are desperate to find an example of the assimilation in
Albanian to reconcile (1) with (2). What makes you so desperate? The
fact that you treat (2) as if it were an axiom, not a hypothesis that
may be tested and rejected if it doesn't work. It _must_ be true.

Alas, Albanian offers no unquestionable examples of the assimilation
(while providing unquestionable _counter_examples), so you fly in the
face of reality and manufacture your own "special" evidence to make your
point. This, however, only demonstrates that wishful thinking blinds its
victim. You may deceive yourself if you so wish, but the intensity of
your conviction won't make it better founded in other people's eyes. Nor
will it turn your fantasy into reality.

Whether (1) is true depends on what we make of Illyrian proper names.
However, even if it _were_ true, it would only mean that the Illyrian
treatment of the labiovelars was Italic-(or Celtic-)like, and not
Albanian-like. In other words, it would militate against (2).

I rest my case.

Piotr