Re: [tied] Re: Latin pinso etc.

----- Original Message -----
From: "alex" <alxmoeller@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 2:48 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Latin pinso etc.


> Piotr, you want to have an sonore "z" which has given "z^"? I assume the
> "z" is not a very disponible sound to become more affricated as it is.

Check the meaning of "affricated" in a dictionary. [z] and [z^] are both
fricatives, and neither of them is more (or less) fricative than the other.
They can also rather easily change into one another. Cross-linguistically,
[z] seems to be quite prone to change.

> Do
> you have a properly method for showing the "gja-" is from "za" via "z^a"
> ( se > ze > gja) and not from se > s^a > gja ?

Yes. The Albanian change of *s > sh and the Romanian palatalisation of *s >
$ in Romanian before a front glide are both relatively late changes, since
Latin words regularly undergo them (in Albanian, the oldest loans from
Slavic show the effect of the change while younger ones don't, which means
that the shift can be roughly dated to the early Middle Ages). The Albanian
voicing must be much older, since we can't see in in Latin loans (I have
speculated that <gji> [Lat. sinus] might be a counterexample, and Miguel
suggested another one (<gjerb> 'sip'). Even so, they are vastly outnumbered
by examples of Lat. s- > Alb. sh- even under stress, so the most one could
claim is that the voicing might have taken place at the very early phase of
Latin/pre-Albanian contacts. The crucial thing is that the voicing must
precede the "shibilant" shift of Albanian fricatives, so that we have *s >
*z (in stressed syllables) in pre-Roman or (at best) early Roman times, and
the post-Roman shift *s, *z > *s^, *z^ (> sh, gj). The most likely order of
the changes was as follows:

(1) voicing: *serp- > *zerp- (in a stressed syllable)
(2) diphthongisation: *zerp- > *zi�rp- > *ziarp- (in a closed syllable)
(3) shibilant shift: *ziarp- > *z^iarp- (parallel to *s > *s^)
(4) "hardening": *z^iarp- > gjarp-

Piotr