Abdullah Konushevci wrote:
> I must confess too that also in Albanian are many bird's names in
> diminutive suffix -zë/-za: <pupëz, pupza> 'crested lark, turtle
> dove', <shqitëz, shqitëza> 'swan', etc.
>
> Konushevci
This is why I asked Piotr. Because there are a hand of names identicaly
in Rom & Alb, the words mean the same thing, one and the same bird and
they are ending in "-zã" in Rom. and "-zë" in Alb. And there is no such
funny semantic shift. In fact, the word "barza" appears to be almost the
only word with semantic shift of this manner between the lexical shared
data between Alb. and Rom. I guess the relationship Alb. fem. "bardhë"
and Rom. "barzã" was made as usual on the basis of the phonetical
similarities and explaining the semantic shift as "explanable". I guess
the name of the "barza" is not because of its colour ( I don'T remember
of any bird in Rom. called somehow because of it'S colour, but I can be
wrong). The birds are mostly named because of other properties but not
because of the colour.
Question: is there in any other IE language the story about the babies
which are beared to the parents by a certain stork and if yes, where /
when was attested first time this story?
Alex