Re: [tied] Albanian (2)

04-02-04 19:12, alex wrote:

> Curious... Until now we have the lost of intervocalic "d", of intervocalic
> "b" and later in Romance time lost of intervocalic "g"
> The whole serie appears to dissapear due some reasons.. b, d, g;
> comparative the p,t,k series which appears to remain there.
> Should be just a coincidence the lost of the b d g serie? It appears so but
> it remains indeed curious..

Not so curious. Voiced stops are articulatorily weaker than voiceless
ones, and can easily be lenited out of existence in intervocalic
positions (usually via voiced fricative/approximant pronunciations). We
see very similar processes at work e.g. in Middle Indo-Aryan. Note that
Modern Spanish is reenacting the lenition cycle: intervocalic /-d-/
(from Lat. /-t-/) is realised as a voiced fricative (the normative
pronunciation) or reduced to zero (in some accents and styles): e.g.
Lat. -a:tum > -ado [-aDo] > [-ao].

Piotr