Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
> The output of *h2ah1- (+ consonant) in pre-Alb. is of course *a:
> (after the loss of the laryngeals), which is regularly rounded to *o
> > Common Albanian *wo, with a prothetic *w also found in loans from
> Latin, and with the regular unrounding of the vowel in some dialects.
> There's no "vae~voe" anywhere in this derivation.
>
> Piotr
I am not so sure we have to deal with a prothetic "w" here. There are
several facts which will speak for a diphtongation of "o" to "oa"(wa) and
from that point the consonification of "w" at the begin of the word. Both
are known phonetic changes which appears in other languages too.
In the intermediate position, the "wa" should have yielded "ua". The
problems I have here are not of phonetically nature but of timeline nature.
Take a look at Alb. "sh�rbetuar" comparative with Rom. "s�rb�toare". That is
an isoglose which even if considered of Latin origin, has just in Romanian
and Albanian this form and this meaning.
DEX considers "s�rb�toare" as being a properly Romanian derivative (not
Latin) from "serba" ( < Lat. servare") and suffix "-toare". Since Latin "o"
is reflected as "u/o" in Alb. and Latin "o:" is reflected as "�/o/u", how
would one try to explain the "ua" in "sh�rbetuar" since we do know, there
has been an "o" due Rom. "s�rb�tori" (pl. of s�rb�toare).
What kind of "o" was that one there ? Or it is just a loan in Albanian with
the already diphtongated form "oa" and it was simply remodelled after
Albanian phonetic making an "ua" out of "oa" (they are in fact almost the
same sound, the Alb. "ua" is a bit more dark as the Rom. "oa" but hard to
distinguish).
Alex