Re: [tied] Alb. vjehërr [was: PIE *y > Alb. /z/]

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 38674
Date: 2005-06-16

Abdullah Konushevci wrote:

> and probably *sw- (>w/d like i
> *swek'ru > vjehërr 'father-in-law) is language-specific of
> phonotactics constraints of Albanian language.

The PIE stem was, in fact, thematic *swék^ur-o- for the male in-law,
*swek^rú-h2 for the feminine (not that the distinction makes much formal
difference in Albanian). The relation between the two is of course
metathetic, though the details are not clear (at least to me). We have
the variation *-wR.C- ~ *-RuC- in a few lexemes, so it should be
something like **swek^wr.-h2 > *swek^ruh2. The easiest explanation of
the Albanian shape of these words, is, I think, the assumption of
another metathesis: *swek^uro- > *wesk^uro- (or *wek^suro-), otherwise
the medial <-h-> is even more puzzling than the initial <v->.

Piotr