[tied] Re: Grimm's Law is about to expire (Collinge 1985, p. 267, T

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> On 2007-03-16 14:58, mkelkar2003 wrote:
>
> > But let me ask you, is this criterion uniformely applied to group
> > languages in families i.e they must have shared innovations and are
> > all langauges that have shared innovations ALWAYS classified into one
> > family. If so, why is Albanian hanging out like that?
>
> Just because it lacks such tell-tale innovations shared with other
> groups. The satem treatment of the *k^ series is a possible exception
> (though some argue the satem shift may have happened independently in
> several branches). Commonplace changes like the merger of *a and *o
> don't count, since the likelihood of their independent occurrence is

high.

>
> Piotr
>

Thanks! So the vowel merger is an archaism not enough to group
Albanian with any other family.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_language

Oddly enough the above cite does not give Albanian cognates for any
IIr lanuages, even though it shows up right next to them in computer
generated charts.

M. Kelkar