Re: [tied] Albanian intervocalic s > h

alexandru_mg3 wrote:

> Sorry, Piotr but when you said:
> "'wolf' word is probably exceptional "
> you apply once again one exception for one word...
>
> There is no Rule wi > wu in Albanian ....."due to the labialising
> influence of *w"

Who says there is? I was speaking about *wl. > ul, not *wi > wu. The
'wolf' word probably varied between *wl.'kWo- and *lúkWo- already in the
protolanguage, and the excess of labiality in it may have invited other
assimilatory reshapings, cf. Gmc. *wulfa-. The word requires exceptional
treatment across the family, so why not in Albanian?

> So wl.kWos > [l. > ul] PAlb. *wulk- > Alb. ulk/ujk is regular
>
> The outputs for PIE *l. *r. are also ul~lu and ur~ru and not ONLY
> li~il and ri~ir
>
> Examples:
> 1. grurë 'wheat' < PAlb *gruna: < PIE g'r.:nom 'grain' ->so r. > ru

Wrong example. There was a laryngeal in *g^r.h2no-, and that should have
given Alb. <ar>, not <ri>, let alone <ru>. Before a syllabic consonant
*g^ would have developed into <d(h)>. Your etymology is evidently faulty.

> 2. ul-zë 'elm' < PAlb *ulma < PIE l.mo- 'elm' ->so l. > ul

And what happened to the *m? And if its loss can be somehow explained,
how will you rule out borrowing from Latin?

> 3. ujk 'wolf' < PAlb *wulka < PIE wl.kWos 'wolf ->so l. > ul

See above.

> So gjuhë 'tongue' < PAlb *glusa(:) < *gulsa(:) < PIE *gl.sos is
> regular.

Tou haven't offered even one independent example of *l. > lu, so what
are you talking about?

>
>
> III.
>
>>>Piotr wrote
>>>It was *gjishë
>
>
> Of course if you don't accept that the intervocal s gave h you will
> apply sh.
>
> But for intervocalic s that gave h (>zero) we have :
>
> 1. Alb. kohë < PAlb *ka:sa: < PIE *ke:sa (see Sl. c^as&)

With *-k^s- not ruled out yet. It would have given Slavic and Old
Prussian /s/, and I still haven't seen any counterevidence to *k^s > h
in Albanian.

>
> 2. Alb. gjuhë < PAlb *glusa(:) < PIE *gl.so zero-grade for Sl.
> *galso
>
> 3. Alb. vjehërr < PAlb *wesura < PIE *swek^uro
> based on 'alternance c <-> s'-> for which we have more then 1 example

This is rubbish. Your "alternance" is arbitrary -- you're merely trying
to give yourself a licence for obtaining what suits you. The change of
intervocalic *k^ > h is unsupported by anything in the standard accounts
of Albanian historical phonology.

> 4. Alb. vaj-zë < LPAlb *warjë <- *warë < PAlb *wehara: < EarlyPAlb
> *swesara: (-> Hamp's derivation)

Which one might or might not believe, even if it comes from Hamp. The
word means 'girl, daughter', not 'sister', so in addition to funny
phonology we have funny semantics here. Hardly counts as solid stuff.

> You need to propose other derivations for all the above examples in
> order to explain the h in all the above forms.

No etymology is usually better than an implausible one.

> (for No. 3 you have proposed *swe > *wes but for this supposed
> metathesis you don't have a second example).

Metathesis is rarely regular. In most cases it targets individual words.
There is "no second example" of <ask> ~ <ax> in Modern English (people
don't say "tax" for <task>), and yet nobody doubts they are variants of
the same word. Sibilants, because of their lax phonotactics, are often
involved in metathetic transpositions. There's a cost attached to it, of
course, but my particular proposal (well, it isn't really mine, I just
happen to accept it) does away with two problematic points in one fell
swoop, and so gives a net gain.

Piotr