Re: [tied] i-verbs in Baltic and Slavic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> Are there any traces whatsoever of Winter's law in Albanian?
> The other day I discovered a major error in my thinking
> about the Balto-Slavic merger of /a/ and /o/, which I had
> assumed to be Proto-Balto-Slavic or even pre-Balto-Slavic,
> possibly Proto-Balto-Slavo-Albano-Indo-Irano-Germanic :-)

Isn't it trivial enough to be disqualified as evidence of relatedness?
There might be something areal about the unrounding of *o, but it
carries no phylogenetic signal (cf. the fate of <lot> in American
English; words loke <cause> and <song> are catching up right now).

> However, Winter's law gives /ad/ > /a:d/ but /od/ > /o:d/
> (with some cases of /a:d/ as well), which implies that /a/
> and /o/ were still distinct when the law started to work.
>
> This can mean either that the merger of /a/ and /o/ is
> younger than I thought, or, less likely, that Winter's law
> is older than I thought, hence my question above.

I'm not aware of anything that might be interpreted as a trace of
Winter's Law in Albanian, but then I haven't really looked for such
things, and I doubt if anyone has. I'll think about possible evidence
-- or counterevidence.

Piotr