Re: [tied] Albanian

On 7/18/06, 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

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I guess that Alb. voiced palatal stop /gj/ has as an intermediary stage a voiceless palatal sibilant /sh/, probably with high distribution in Albanian vocal system, but, followed by central vowel /a/ or back vowels /o/, /u/ rise to simple palatal stop. Other outcome is, to my view, palatal glide /j/, that I will try to prove very soon.
Much interesting is *sw- > Alb. /d/: *sup-no > Alb. <gjumë> 'sleep', but *swep-o > Alb. <djep> 'cradle', *sw-el- > Alb. <diell> 'sun', but *uws-lo > Alb. <yll> 'star', etc.
I think that much harder explanation needs Greek's voiceless aspiration /h/ as outcome of voiceless apical sibilant *s-.

Konushevci

 

/s/ > /h/ seems relatively common. It happened in Iranian and syllable final is common in regional variants of Spanish and I suppose also occured in French and Italian

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