Re: [tied] Albanian "f"

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 25744
Date: 2003-09-11

11-09-03 02:19, Abdullah Konushevci wrote:


> Because you are so interested in Alb. /f/, I will try to answer,
> taking not e little risk to be misunderstand.
> If we take a look to some PIE roots, like *spend- `to make an
> offering, perform a rite, hence to engage oneself by a ritual act',
> we should easy notice that Alb. verb <fal> `to release, to relieve,
> to pardon, to excuse, to forgive' and its intransitive form
> <falem> `to pray, to beg, to supplicate' with many idiomatic
> constructions, like "Të falem, o Zot" – I am offering myself to you,
> o God'; with many other derivates: <falemnderit> `Thank you', adv.
> <falas> `free' gratuitously', <falëmeshënder> `greetings,
> salutation', faltore `shrine, temple', preserved in one much
> fossilized form in place names Fandi i Madh and Fandi i Vogël, we may
> conclude that these words are derived from *(s)pend-. Indeed, the
> first group: fal, falem, faltore, falje are probably derived from
> suffixed zero-grade form *(s)pHnd-lo, developed later in *(s)pand-lo,
> and are deverbative of name in –lo stem, through regular evolution
> of /dl/ > /ll/, as I mention many times before, when palatal
> liquid /ll/, being in intervocalic position, became alveolar /l/.

Isn't it simply a relatively late loan from Slavic? The substitution of
/f/ for /xv ~ xf/ is easy and frequent: SCr. <hvala> 'gratitude, thanks'
(pronounced <fala> by Macedonians!), <hvala ti> 'thank you!', <hvaliti>
'praise', etc.

> Phonetically speaking, much convincing are words: <farë> `seed,
> sperm, semen' <*(s)por-a:-, present also in Romanian, with derivates:
> farëhedhës `sewer', <farëpalënë> `childless', <farës> `seedy',
> <farëhumbur> `scatter-brained', <for a>, <bëj fora> `scatter' and
> <hamshor >`stallion, stud-horse', _frushkull/vrushkull_ < *(s)prus-k-
> lo- `spray;, all from different grades and forms of PIE *(s)per- `to
> strew'.

I agree about <farë> and related. *sp- > Alb. f- is credible, and
parallelled by *sk- > h-. Of course, it's a combinative change and
doesn't allow one to posit *p > f without the accompanying *s.

Piotr