Re: Albanian (3)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 3. The incredible adventures of *s
>
> PIE *s disappeared from in many positions already in the earliest
> history of Albanian. It was lost before nasals (*smek^ru- > mjekër)

and

> probably always before and after liquids (the proposed development

of

> initial *sr- > *str- > shtr- is based on doubtful evidence). Some

of the

> examples discussed recently on this list suggest the compensatory
> lengthening of vowels before *-rs- and *-sr- (simplified to -r-),

as in

> *g^Hesr- > *3'e:r- > dorë 'hand' and *gWer(h3)snah2 > *3^e:rra >

zorrë

> 'intestine'.

[AK]
Alb. zorrë was copared with Old Slavic <zorno>, lit. z^a:rna and with
Germanic *garno 'yarn', all from PIE *g^Her-no 'gut, etrail' (cf.
Lat. <hernia>, Greek "khorde:). See also Alb. <zog> 'bird', New
Persian <zag>, according to Pedersen, from the PIE *g^(h)a:g(u)-

>
> Contrary to what is sometimes claimed, I can't see any tangible

evidence

> for the phonologisation of the RUKI rule in Albanian.
>
> Before Late Proto-Albanian (i.e. in pre-Roman times) *s underwent
> voicing prevocalically in stressed syllables but remained voiceless
> elsewhere (unless already lost). After the main wave of Balkan

Latin

> loans in Albanian but before the main wave of borrowings from

Slavic the

> fricatives *s and *z became retracted, yielding postalveolar *s^

and

> *z^. While *s^ survives as Modern Albanian <sh>, *z^, which had
> meanwhile undergone a merger with the reflex of Proto-Albanian *j,
> developed further into palatal *G' and merged with *g' (from *gl or

from

> *g palatalised before front vowels). The outcome of the merger is

Modern

> Albanian /g'/ (spelt <gj>):
>
> *serpm.no- > *ziärpan- > Geg gjarpën, Tosk gjarpër 'snake'
> *supno- > *zum(n)- > gjumë 'sleep'
> *solwo- 'healthy' > gjallë 'vigorous'
> but *septm. (with final stress preserved) + *-t-a: > *s&táta >

shtatë

>
> Alb. <sh> normally corresponds to Lat. /s/ in old borrowings (e.g.
> shigjetë 'arrow' <-- sagitta), but not to Slavic /s/, except in

several

> words that belong to the oldest layer of Slavic loans (e.g. shullë
> 'maidservant' <-- *sUlU 'messenger').
>
> Combinations of *s with other phonemes have produced some really

bizarre

> results. Initial *sw- gives Mod.Alb. d-, as in *sworgH-eje- >

dergjem

> 'lie ill' (middle voice) and *s(h2)wel-jo- (or the like) >

diell 'sun'.

> The development is puzzling and the intermediate stages are

difficult to

> reconstruct. The syllables in which it took place were stressed in
> Proto-Albanian (though not necessarily in PIE), so we may

conjecture

> that the first step was *sw- > *zw-. It seems that before a

following *w

> the fricative *z failed to undergo retraction and was fronted

instead

> (by dissimilation?); the resulting *Dw- gave /d-/ upon the loss of

*w in

> clusters. The fact that we don't find /D-/ in random variation

with /d-/

> in this lexical set is probably significant: *dw- and *dHw- are

also

> consistently reflected as /d-/ in Albanian. Of course *g^(H)w-

didn't

> follow the same path because it became monophonemic *3'W- (> *3^ >

z)

> already in Early Proto-Albanian.
>
> I don't know what happened to *sw- in unstressed syllables. I would
> expect *sw- > *Tw- > *T-, but I can't offer any examples.
>
> In <vjehërr> 'father-in-law' (PIE *swek^uros) the initial /v/ is

due to

> old metathesis (*swek'ur- > *wesk(')ur-), not to a special

treatment of

> *sw-, while <gjasht> 'six' derives from the PIE variant *sek^s

(plus

> secondary *-t-a:), not from *swek^s.

[AK]
*sw- in unstressed syllable yields /v/: *swekru:s > Alb.
vjehrrë 'mother in law', *swe-tí > vetë 'self'

>
> It seems that the combinations *k^s, *k(W)s and *sk(^) all yield
> Albanian <h> /x/:
>
> *sk(^)and-nah2 > Geg hânë, Tosk hënë 'moon'
> (cf. Skt. (s')candrá- 'shining; moon')
> *g^n.h3-sk(^)o: > njoh 'know'
> *keh1k^-sah2 > kohë 'time' (cf. Slavic *c^asU 'id.')
>
> Whether they fell together at the same time or not, they must have
> merged as something similar to or identical with *x by Roman times,
> since Lat. /sk/ --> Alb. shk and Lat. /ks/ --> Alb. fsh. However,

Early

> Proto-Albanian loans from Doric Greek are old enough to have been
> affected: Gk. kse:nos --> Alb. huaj 'stranger, foreigner'.

If in Alb. PIE root *g^hos-ti yields <dash>, preserved in copulative
compounds <dash-a-mir> 'benevolent', <dash-a-keq> 'malevolent', I
can't see any reason why should not suffixed zero-grade form *g^hsen-
wo > g^hse:n yields Alb. <i huaj> 'stranger'.

Konushevci

> Piotr

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