Re: [tied] Enclosed Places (was: The unexplained link between Greek

13-07-03 08:10, alex wrote:

> I fail to see your comparative point here. You get very well from the
> low meaning fence) a semantic development town, but not other ways. For
> comparation, in South Slavic you have "grad"= town . Do you expect an
> backwards development in Alb. and Rom. to the sence of "fence"?. Piotr
> try to see a specialised semantic in Slavic, hence there must have been
> the meaning in Slavic of "fence" and this is why Rom. and Alb. has the
> meaning "fence". Why _must_ have been in Slavic a such meaning even if _
> there is no meaning_ in actual Slavic for fence? Because otherways you
> cannot explain the senses in Alb. and Rom, and then this is not a loan
> from Slavic then.

No, because otherwise you cannot explain why the Slavic denominal verb
*groditi means 'enclose, supply with a fence' and not 'supply with a
town'. The meaning of Germanic *gardaz is also notoriously shifty; Goth.
gards could also mean 'house', 'household' or 'court'. And the semantic
development of English <town> is of course a perfect parallel for the
case of Slavic *gordU.

> In fat this is an old subject and the way too see the
> things, is a point of view developed by Miclosicz in fact. ( There must
> have been something in Slavic _now lost_ because it is to find in Alb.
> or Rom. or in both of them.Thus these words are like germanic words in
> finish "frozen" there, but they must have been coming to these people
> trough Slavic.) This is why Abdullah made the remarque about the "drink
> on the expense .. etc." The remarque of Abdullah was not directed
> specialy for Piotr, but specialy for the easiness of explaing everything
> trough Slavs.

"Everything"? This is a straw-man argument. I think we all agree that
there are plenty of Slavic loans in both Albanian and Romanian. We
disagree about some individual items only, and I'm arguing for what I
think is the most reasonable solution from the point of view of a
linguist. I'm not a Slavic linguistic imperialist and I have no
particular axe to grind in this dispute.

> In fact one forget easy here that the Slavs have been
> migrating people but they are supposed to have brought to the sedentary
> population where they came, notions which are related to the sedentar
> life.

The Slavs migrated, but they were not specialised nomads. On the
contrary, farming was their main occupation. They certainly had fences,
enclosures and palisaded forts. And it seems to me that the
Proto-Romanian population wasn't all that sedentary either, if it
included a large proportion of seasonally migrating pastoralists. People
don't always borrow new words together with new inventions or concepts.
They very frequently borrow a word for no _obvious_ reason, like e.g.
<cattle> for <feoh> 'livestock, property' in English.

> And there was nothing cleared, otherway Piotr wont bring back that the
> Rom. and Alb. words are a loan from Slavic:-)

Richard meant the timing and outcome of liquid metathesis. I think
_that_ was dealt with rather well.

Piotr