Pedersen's account goes like this: IE s > pre-Alb. S (sh), retained
before unaccented(?) back vowels; before accented vowels voiced to Z
(zh), whence further dZ (dzh, dj), differentiated into gj. I am not
sure about the retention of the voiceless sh, rather the development
to gj seems to be quite general, but this is what Pedersen says in
KZ 36 from 1900.
Jens
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...>
wrote:
>
> There's something I've always found very remarkable about
Albanian: the fact that Indo-European *s in initial position before
vowels evolved to the Albanian consonant <gj>, which I understand is
a voiced palatal plosive. To me, it is perhaps the most unlikely
phonetic change I have ever heard of, yet it occurred (I actually
sometimes wondered whether Albanian words with <gj-> truly
originated from IE words with *s-). Can anyone offer a reasonable
hypothesis as to how a voiceless alveolar sibilant can evolve to a
voiced palatal plosive? It would be very reassuring and satisfying
to me if someone had an explanation for this change which to me
seems to defy the laws of nature!
>
> Andrew
>