An albanian word family with etymological connections

Abstract

This article examines the etymological relationships among some Albanian words which appear to belong to the same source nest, despite their semantic developments. Etymological reconstructions show that words such as: kurth - trap, qerth(ull) - whorl, (n)gordh/(sh)kordh - peg out, kërthi(zë) - navel, gardh - hedge, (and many other derivatives of theirs) derive from the same Indo-European root, *kwert /gwerd. Leaving aside the differences that consonants show by their sound features, it is noted that these roots differ only from the vowels that they have in the phonemic composition: with /u/, with /e/, with /o/ and with /a/. The replacement of vowels seems to have served as a means of gaining different roots. It affects the quantity and the quality of the vowel. The change in the quantity and the quality of the root vowel (apophony) is seen as a phonetic phenomenon, but in such cases this seems to be a conscious substitution and consequently the apophonic shifting would be seen as a word gaining mechanism. The Albanian language has dozens and dosens of such source nests which in fact prove that Albanian is one of those languages that preserves quite well the traces of Indo-European apophony.