--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:
>
> alexandru_mg3 wrote:
>
> > So this possible Iranian influence on Proto-Romanian rhotacism
is 'at
> > least as well as possible' as your 'internal evolution' trigerred
by an
> > unknown cause'
>
> If there's an Iranian connection, why did Romanian rhotacise only
> intervocalic /l/'s? There's nothing resembling such a restriction
in
> Iranian.
First the Iranian process finished long before the Pre/Proto-Romanian
one (so we don't have here synchronized processes).
Next I can explain like this: the intervocalic-l-rhotacism was
trigerred first in intervocalic positions because there were
the "most 'sensible/visible' context' where the difference between
an 'Iranian' pronunciation and a 'Dacian one' appeared...If we
supposed there a bilingual Iranian-Dacian population (later absorbed
in Dacian area) where the ruler class was Iranians (Scythians or
Sarmatians) is easy to imagine that this adaptation was trigerred by
the need 'to adopt the pronunciation of the ruler class' (but of
course the social reasons are less important due to the lack of any
information)
Next the other positions weren't trigerred because the situation
changed: meanwhile either 'the assimilation took place' or 'the ruler
class has changed'
(We can find other examples of such partial transformations: a
similar situation is with *sy: *sy became sh first both in PRom as in
PAlb...Later s>sh happened globally in PAlb but the processed didn't
continue in PRom. (And please note that Indo-Iranian l>r was not
synchronized (is at least with 1000 years older than the Romanian one)
> And if the l-rhotacism in Romanian is due to an Albanoid Dacian
> substrate, why is there no l-rhotacism in Albanian? Tosk does have
> n-rhotacism, but that in turn can't be due to Iranian influence.
This is easy to explain : the dialectal split betwen Proto-Albanians
and Pre-Romanians started somewhere between 500 BCE - 300 BCE:
Arguments:
1. It was before a: > o was started in PAlbanian (because PAlb a:
> Rom a, PAlb a: > Alb o) (rosë <-> raTã, modhull <-> mazãre)
2. It was before the Latin Loans in Proto-Albanian (because Latin
a: <-> PAlb a)
3. The (Doric) Greek loans in Albanian reflects also a: > o
(Doric Greek a: > Alb. o like for Romanian) so the Proto
Albanians 'arrived' in a Greek vicinity Before Roman Arrival in
Balkans and especially when they still have a: in place of o.
So if we assume that Proto-Albanians arrived in a Doric Greek
vicinity somewhere between 500-300 BCE, we next need to place the Pre-
Romanian dialect on the Nord of Proto-Albanians (because there is no
place on the south)=> that means Northern Balkans (Moesia) and Dacia
This will make room for the Pre/Proto-Romanian innovations that we
couldn't find in Proto-Albanian (and of course also for PAlb
evolutions like dh, th, ts, dz in place of the Commons : dz, ts, c^,
g^ the reduction of pt>t in PAlb and its preservation in PRom) like:
a) Pre/Proto-Romanian intervocalic-l-rothacism (where I suspect an
Iranian Influence (Scythian or Sarmatian)
b) Pre/Proto-Romanian gw/a,o > b; kw/a,o > p (where I suspect a
Celtic Influence -> it could have been a Greek one too, but based on
the above arguments seems not to be the case )
> Sorry,
> Marius, but the whole thing makes absolutely no sense.
>
> Piotr
This non-sense was first asserted by Bonfante (see how easy is to
move the responsability :) )...on my side I have tried to understand
the reasons before to accept it or not : so you could find my main
reasons above and in the previous posting on this subject.
Marius
P>S> Regarding the n-rhotacism: this affected mainly the
(nord&middle?)-western-part of PAlbanian and PRomanians dialects 'in
the same time'. Rosetti asserts that the 2 phenomenons were distinct
in PRom and PAlb (based on some supposed 'r-Slavic Loans' in Alb
and 'no r-Slavic loans' in Romanian he considered that the Tosk
rhotacism happened later, but the 2-3 words in discussions could be
explained otherwise in my opinion).
So I don't agree here with Rosetti (even it was Romanian :) and
usually he is more accurate than Bonfante ...). But what is important
at Rosetti is that he proposed a transition n > nr > r with a very
solid argumentation.