> Richard wrote:
> Pre-Albanian *abull itself has one major problem - shouldn't
the /b/
> have dropped?
>
> Richard.
1. Of course that should be dropped if it was intervocalic, that
seems to be the case (from here my question to Marius Iacomi that
considered the dropped of intervocalic b in PRom a 'well known
situation'). So Alex is not 'such idiot' as Piotr indicated ...with
the 'dead horses' item.
For Romanian abur <-> Alb avull, Hamp indicated < PIE *n.bh(u)lo
from PIE root nebh- 'fog' [with n.>a in Early-PAlb]
In this case b is original there...(Hamp's solution is the best
one that I could read until now: however this solution didn't solve
the intervocalic b issue in this word)
2. In Romanian we have also '(sã) aibã' < Latin habeam and Rom.
roib < considered from Latin rubeum (with an unexplained ó>u in
PRomanian) => where the intervocalic b is well and safe there too
(of course there are different explanations on these exceptions but
none of them in my opinion is a safer one)...(like j in bj-e was
consonantic (Densusianu) or b was initially dropped and was restored
later to fill the hiatus etc..)
Best Regards,
Marius