Re: *H2kous- ‘to hear, feel’

From: Jens Elmegård Rasmussen
Message: 41258
Date: 2005-10-11

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Abdullah Konushevci"
<akonushevci@...> wrote:

> > Buzuku's old Geg text, as you characterized it, is full of Tosk
> > variants. I buy "Meshari" again and I start to reread it again.
It
> is
> > well-known fact that are also the forms with rhotacizm used
> > in "Meshari", but sometimes we can't see the tree from the
forest.
> >
> > I will come back with all material I could gather.
> >
> > Konushevci
>
> I didn't finish three pages and I fund: Kush ë këjo qi vjen porsi
> drita qi zbardhetë... (Lat. Quae est ista).
>

I'm not sure this whole line of reasoning is even relevant, but in
case it is: The passage you quote is from the bottom of fol. IX/2,
reading

<Cuseh cheio qi vien por sih drita qi zbarthete // zbarthete
ebucure : por sih anna / e sqiethune : por sih dielli : e mathe por
sih vsteria qi anste traituoN pr lufte.> (I choose arbitrarily q and
th for the two ambiguous letters that spell q/gj and th/dh
indiscriminately.)

What you quote is C,abej's reading which I'm sure is correct in this
point. The whole sentence is then:

Kush ë këjo qi vjen porsi drita qi zbardhetë, e bukurë porsi ana, e
zgjedhunë porsi dielli, e madhe porsi ushtëria qi âshtë trajtuom për
luftë "Who is she who comes like the light that turns white (i.e.
like dawn that breaks), beautiful like the countryside(?), exquisite
like the sun, mighty like the army that has been formed for war?"

I find the passage /porsi ana/ "like the side, like the district" a
bit odd. Couldn't <por sih anna> be for /porsi hânë/ 'like the
moon'? Is there a Latin original to this? If so, what does it say?

I cannot find anything about the enclitic (short) form of /âshtë/
(Tosk /është/) 'is' in Buzuk, so maybe there just is no "â" in that
linguistic norm. Perhaps the pair was /âshtë/ ~ /ë/ (or, more
probably then, /e/) in Buzuk. Could you direct me to a passage in
Buzuk where the Geg form corresponding to Modern /â/ is really
attested?

If there really is no other short form of /âshtë/ than <eh>, I would
be inclined to assume that <eh> represents a weakened form of /â/,
probably weakened to the point of being just a schwa, i.e. /ë/,
which would then normally surface as an /e/. I would then tend to
regard that as a case of weakening rather than a Tosk form.

Could you point out other candidates for specifically Tosk forms in
Buzuk's Albanian? That could be very interesting.


All this will of course only marginally affect the debate over the
basis of /dërgjo-/, Buz. <endilgo-> 'hear'.

Jens