Richard Wordingham wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:
>> m_iacomi wrote:
>>>> The amount of interjections which are not of Slavic origin
>>>
>>> ... is of no use since aspiration & vocalic yelling are always
>>> naturally encountered in interjections and since /h/ was instated
>>> as phoneme more than 11 centuries ago, there was plenty of time
>>> to identify that aspiration with it at the level of Romanian.
>>
>> Well, it is of use if the same interjection is found in more IE
>> languages. It is a crietrium for being an old IE interjection ,
> mostly
>> becoming a root for a family of words in actualy IE and New-IE
>> languages.
>
> Pokorny has only two roots in *h-, _ha ha_ and _ha:_. For
> comparison, I took a look at list of interjections in Thai starting
> in /h/ which, on phonological grounds, must have arisen in the past
> 700 years and are not regularly developed from other words in the
> language and, similarly, cannot be loans from Sanskrit or Pali:
>
> _ha H_ 1) 'yes', 2) ha! what!
> _han M lo: R_ 'hello'
> _ha:_ 1) 'sound made in laughter' 2) 'laugh'
> _ha:_ H 'no!', 'ha!'
> _hM_ H_ 'bah!', ha!
> _hMj M_ 'haw!'
> _hM:_ H 'sound made to show disapproval, boo'
> _h&:y M_, _hE:_ M
> 'particle used at the end of a stanza or song'
> _h&:y H_ 'hey, now then, hoy, hey there'
> _hew H_ 'boo!
> _h&: M_ 'bah, tut, tush, dear me, ah, oh'.
> _ho:_ M 'loud sound of weeping'
>
> Final M and H are tone indicators, M is the high back unrounded
> vowel. While a few of them may be from English or French, the
> general impact is to reinforce Marius's point about how
> interjections with aspirates appear spontaneously once the language
> allows aspirates.
>
> (The phonological argument is that an old word beginning with /h/
> must be in the low, falling or rising tone.)
>
> Richard.
I dont mean every interjection which today has an initial "h" was an "h"
in PIE. I just mean that the "h" can be very well much older as the
first Slavic loans. So far I observed, the "h" in Rom. can be from "k
,g, v, f, b" due the existence of the paralel forms ,words with initial
"h" and words with the regular consonants. Example:
fiu = hiu; hulpe= vulpe; câSâi=hâSâi;gãlãgie= hãlãgie; hoStinã= boStinã
On another hand, there is an initial "h" which is hard to establish
where it comes from since there are missing the paralel forms with
regular consonants.
The observations can go further and one can say that:
- after initial "h" can follow any vowel (a, ã, â, e, i, o , u)
- after initial "h" there is the only allowed consonant, the liquids "r"
and "l" (hrean, hlei=clei)
- the "h" is not in final position( I did not searched all the words, I
hope there are not exceptions here)
What I can do:
Now, my thoughts about. Since I can for sure observe that the initial
"h" can be from "k, g, v, f, b" then I try to re-place the "h" with one
of these consonants where I know for sure it is posible to have an "h"
from it.
Then I am looking at the interjections in other IE languages, at
Pokorny, etc.and I compare the meaning of these interjections.If the
meaning and the phonetical aspect fits, then the chanse that this
interjection belong to the same group is big enough. One can see in
which language exist for instance the interjection "hopa/hopaSa" (German
"hopsasa, hopsala,hopala")I see they have the same meaning and I think
if this can be a loan. If this cannot be a loan, then what can one do as
to consider it indigen?
What I cannot do:
- I cannot say in which time this change happened. I don't see any
control posiblity for establishing a time when they happened. The
affected words with paralel forms are from Substrate, Latin until
Slavic. I have not verified if there are such changes in Turkish words
but at the first view I will say there is not a such asspiration in
Turkish loans. In the neologisms the aspiration appears to be
inexistent.
One can say, (maybe too early, the last data have to be verified) the
asspiration ended before first Turkish loans but affected the old lexic,
inclusive Slavic loans. Thus , comparative with Thai as you exemplify,
the aspiration stoped in Rom. almost 600 years ago.
I don't know if one can make more out off these data.
Alex