Re: [tied] Alternance a-u in Romanian, Albanian and maybe in Lithua

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Sergejus Tarasovas"
<S.Tarasovas@...> wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
>
> >>>> as I know the
> >>>> alternace a-a a-u is present also in Lithuanian, but I

haven't

> >>>> enough knoledge on this
>
> >> "I don't follow. Could you elaborate on that or give an

example?"

> >
> > I can give you some examples:
> >
> > I. From Pokorny root a:p-2 we have:
> > Rom. apa 'water'
> > Lit. ùpė, Lett. upe `water, river, river

stream'

> > OldPruss. ape `river', apus `spring, fountain, stream,

brook'

> > Old Indian āp- f. `water'
> > maybe also :
> > Dacian Zaldapa -> Zald 'gold' - apa 'water'
> >
> > -------------------------------
> > So Rom. apa - Lit. ùpė
> > -------------------------------
>
> Thank you. I cannot comment on the other examples -- asking for

examples I

> meant Lithuanian only.
> East Baltic *upe: (Lith. ùpe:, Latv. upe) indeed looks aberrant

(if one

> wants to derive it from PIE *h2ap- 'water'), but whatever be its

origin,

> it's not what one would readily call "alternace a-a a-u in

Lithuanian",

> wouldn't he? Just an isolated word of unknown history.
>

Kuhn's non-IE Nordwestblock language (which is actually dispersed
much wider than the Nordwestblock), which he recovered from place
names, he also calls the other Old European or the ar-/ur- language,
and a characteristic of it is a alternation a ~ u. It is tempting to
claim that ap-/up- came from that language (and possibly the apple
word, Irish ubol (spelled by memory!) did too), so much more since
some claim PIE didn't have /a/, words with that vowel may be
suspected of being loans, in this case the suspicion is strengthened
by the existence of the similar root *akWa, which would be a
variant, if there was a way to connect p and kW in PIE, but there
isn't.

Torsten