Re: [tied] Re: Estimated timeframe of albanian s->sh transformation

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 15:10:38 +0000, elmeras2000 <jer@...> wrote:

>I have been observing this thread with some scepticism. I think the
>question can only make sense if it means, "How long time passed
>between the first sign of a new fashion (sh) and the last sign of
>the old one (s) it came to replace?" Now for a small village that
>can probably be quick, if the villagers have been observing the
>speech of outsiders with increasing tolerance and suddenly act in
>unison in adopting it. But then it's not the story of a whole speech
>community.

It can be. For instance if the village is Rome, around, say, the year 25
AUC.

In the case of first millennium Albanian, we don't have a clue how big at
any given time the community was whose speech would eventually lead to
modern day Tosk and Geg (and the Albanian dialects in Italy and Greece, as
far as they're documented).


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...