15-11-03 17:36, alex wrote:
> Alb. katër is seen by Gustav Meyer and Pedersen as a loan from Latin
> "quattuor". If this is true, then there cannot be the same stratual(!)
> basis for Alb. and Rom. since they hadle different all the "problem"
> clusters.
This idea is (rightly, I believe) rejected by Hamp. If it were true,
<katër> would be the sole borrowed numeral below 100 -- and that looks
unlikely. Why 'four', of all things? Of course Latin would be the
obvious source if we had any reason to exclude the possibility of an
inherited word -- but that isn't the case. The allomorph *kW&twor- (with
"shwa secundum", i.e. an epenthetic vowel inserted in order to "repair"
nil-grade *kWtw(o)r-) is known not only from Latin but also Greek and
Slavic. It became Proto-Alb. *kátwar-, with the normal initial stress of
the original "strong" allomorph *kWétwor-. The failure of the vowel of
the first syllable to show open-syllable lengthening in Albanian
dialects proves that the *w was lost relatively late.
Piotr