Rick McCallister schrieb:
>
>
> My impression is that Dalmatian looks closer to Italian than to Romanian
> but it's well known that Italian and Venetian were prestige languages
> and so, may have had an adstratal relationship on Dalmatian.
not only perstige langauges for that time but the dalamtian speakers
have been closely in contact with these langauges thus, having
influences from these languages should be an option which can be keep
open, of course.
> Dalmatian has /kt/ > /pt/ like Romanian and it has palatalization before
> /i/ but not before /e/.
> This latter trait seems very conservative.
> Why no palatalization with /e/? Any ideas?
kt > pt not allways. Apprently there is reduction to "t" of the "kt"
cluster. If this was done via "pt" I don't know yet. For instance
Dalmatian "drat" from Latin "directus" comparative with Romanian "drept"
but eight "guapto" from Latin "octo" versus Romanian "opt" ( maybe under
influence of "septem", Dalm. "sapto"? . Thus, maybe there are indeed
Italian/Venetian influences which have been added on the features
of Dalmatic in its development from Latin. As for palatalization, if you
mean herewith Latin short "i" and "e", I guess they have different
developments. Latin "i" became "e" and latin "e" became "ia".
Comparatively in Romanain and Albanian there is too an "ja" which is the
thirth development of "e", a change to trace via e > ie > ia; the
phonetical evolution and phonologic context of this change is somehow
appropiate in Albanian and Romanian, yet I cannot trace for Dalmatian
since I don't have a such ample database of it.
> My only guess is that <e>
> changed from /e/ to something closer to /a/ or /@/.
Dalmatian should have had had an "@"?
Alex