Re: [tied] Re: Albanian pre and Romanian prada (was: Question on Al

alexandru_mg3 wrote:

> So Only a proto-form with á could explain these outputs: Latin
> praeda > Balkan Latin *pra-a-da > Romanian pradã <-> Alb. pre

Why should it have become Alb. pre (/pre:?) of all things? And whence
the idea that the word was ever *pra-e-da or *prae-a-da (or anything
similar) in Latin? It was *prai-heda: (as usually cited) or *prai-hoda:
(more likely from the point of view of IE morphophonology) in the
prehistoric ancestor of Latin. By historical times it had already
produced disyllabic /prae.da/ -- always scanned as such in Latin poetry!

Cf. Ovid's

(tua)/ sum nova / praeda Cu/pi:do: (dactylic metre)

There's no Romance evidence for your fantasy either.

> And as I said: we have here the famous 'Second Example' that I
> always request to Piotr:
> Lat. aeramen < Balkan Latin (and not only) *a:ramen < Romanian
> aramã <-> Alb. rem 'copper'
>
> So the rule is "assimilation ae<->a => aa<->a" (next a:>a)
>
> This indicate us that this are very ancient loans from Latin (in
> the times when Latin ae didn't pass yet to the Latin e) (but I will
> come back with an 'exact date' here)

Utter nonsense. The regular development of aerá:m- (with unstressed /ae/
and long stressed /a:/!) would have been into *erám-, which could
undergo assimilation to /arám-/ at _any_ time in its early history. The
fact that we seem to be dealing with sporadic rather than regular
assimilation does not indicate _anything_ as regards its age.

Piotr