Re: Albanian (1)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> > Further, on a Nostratic point of view, the lack of palatals is
> > unproblematical
> > but rather opens the doors for better correlations with language
> groups
> > like Uralic or Tyrrhenian.
> >
>
> I have a rather small brain which has room only for the simplest
> theories (which won't take up so much space on my harddisk).
> Therefore I designed one. It goes like this.
>
> The were two stop series in PIE, plain (*k etc) and uvular (*q

etc),

> later palatal (*k^ etc) and labiovelar (*kW etc). So, where do the
> plain stops (*k etc) come from? Well, a long time ago, when this

list

> discussed it, the thing that kept Piotr from accepting only two

stop

> series was that the reconstructed (*k) appeared always(?)

before /a/

> in Latin. Now suppose we accept Kuhn's claim that all occurrences
> of /a/ date to a certain period in pre-PIE; before that period the
> PIE vowel system was *i, ablaut vowel *a/*& (or *a/*ä), *u; after
> that it was *i, ablaut vowel *e/*o, *u and *a (which all occurred

in

> loans, either from a pre-PIE stage dialect that PIE conquered in
> central Europe (that of the Old European river names), or from
> outside Europe (overseas?)), and further that the old plain *k had
> been palatalised by then (spreading from occurrences of it before
> *ä), the we'd have a system that behaved as if it had the three

stop

> series of 'classical' PIE.

As to whether the western IE dialects of Latin, Germanic, Celtic
borrowed from a IE language at the 'a-stage', here is list of
Latin/Germanic correspondences (Kuhn leaves out the Celtic example,
from 'Ablaut, /a/ und Altertumskunde'):

ad, Gmc. at 'to'
(*atnos >) annus, Goth. aTn 'year'
aqua 'water', Goth. ahWa 'river'
arcus 'bow', OE earh 'arrow'
axilla 'arm pit', OS ahsla 'axle'
caput, ON ho,fuD 'head'
hasta 'spear', Goth. gazd 'sting'
(*mazdos >) ma:lus 'bar', OHG mast
natrix 'water snake', goth. nadr- 'adder'
ratio: 'computation', Goth. raTjo: 'number, account'
salix, OHG salaha 'meadow'
sapi:re 'taste', OS af-sebbian 'perceove'
saxum 'stone', OHG sahs 'knife'
tace:re, Goth. Tahan 'be silent'
vadum, ON vaD 'ford'

Further, the 'a-language' did not provide western IE with words for
navigation on rivers and lakes:

*srew-, *plew-, *ere- ('row')

but it did those for coast and sea navigation:

Latin aqua, amnis, lacus, stagnum, mare, sa:l, vadum

from which one might infer that IE reached the coast of Northern
Europe at a time where it accepted many a-loans.


Torsten