Re: [tied] Re: Loans, Slavs, Church (it was : Walachians are placed

On 05-01-03 08:30, willemvermeer wrote:

> Similarly it is almost a clichee of the study of Albanian and
> Romanian that it is possible to draw a joint Albanian-Romanian
> dialect map. Romanian as a whole is just a shade closer to Tosk
> (North Albanian) than to Geg (South Albanian). But within Romanian,
> the North (IR&DR) is in turn just a shade more Tosk than the South
> (MR&AR). The simplest explanation is that Albanian and Romanian were
> still contiguous or coterritorial as the earliest dialectal
> differences were arising in both languages, with Romanian staying in
> contact longer with the Albanian south than with the north, and with
> the Romanian north staying in contact longer with Albanian (Tosk)
> than the Romanian south.

Excuse me, Willem, but Geg is essentially _North_ Albanian and Tosk is
_South_ Albanian (the boundary runs approximately along the River
Shkumbin). If, as you claim, Romanian shows a litte more affinity with
Tosk, the consequences for the geographical placement of Proto-Romanian
are even farther-reaching, aren't they?

Other than this, I fully agree with you argument.

Piotr