Revisiting the "ъ > o" Shift in Balkan Slavic (original) (raw)

On shortening, lengthening, and accent shifts in Slavic, RIHJJ 43/2: 381–402

The paper deals with several problems of Slavic historical accentology – pretonic length in the accentual paradigm c (and b) in South and West Slavic, the neo-circumflex phenomenon (including the accent in the genitive plural), the kȍkōt ‘rooster’ type lengthening in Čakavian, the ograda ‘fence’ type accent in Slavic, the reflex of Proto-Slavic *ò in Czech monosyllables (kůň ‘horse’ type words), as well as certain accent shifts (like the one in accentual paradigm b). The author criticizes the often untenable positions of Frederik Kortlandt on these issues, together with certain problematic aspects of his accentological modus operandi.

On shortening, lengthening, and accent shifts in Slavic

Rasprave: Časopis Instituta za Hrvatski Jezik i Jezikoslovlje, 2017

The paper deals with several problems of Slavic historical accentology – pretonic length in the accentual paradigm c (and b) in South and West Slavic, the neo-circumflex phenomenon (including the accent in the genitive plural), the kȍkōt 'rooster' type lengthening in Čakavian, the ograda 'fence' type accent in Slavic, the reflex of Proto-Slavic *ò in Czech monosyllables (kůň 'horse' type words), as well as certain accent shifts (like the one in accentual paradigm b). The author criticizes the often untenable positions of Frederik Kortlandt on these issues, together with certain problematic aspects of his accentological modus operandi.

[2014] Early Slavic dialect differences involving the consonant system [Trailer]

The consonant system of early Slavic is of particular interest because it is there that the earliest reconstructible dialect differences arose. The isoglosses setting off North Russian, Bulgarian-Macedonian and West Slavic from more central areas were produced by the Second Palatalization of Velars and developments that can be coordinated with it. All this happened before the uncoupling of inherited long and short vowels. With one or two exceptions all inner-Slavic dialect differences involving vowels or the prosodic system are significantly later. The reconstruction aims to reduce the number of distinct steps that have to be assumed to account for the data. It relies strongly on the technique by which dialect differences are attributed not to locally different chains of events, but to shared innovations hitting dif-ferent areas in different order. This trailer is a drastically pared-down version of my contribution to Dutch Contributions to the Fifteenth International Congress of Slavists ... Linguistics (= Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 40, to appear in 2014). Anybody interested in the full text please don't hesitate to contact me.

On the relative chronology of the II regressive and the progressive palatalizations of Common Slavic

Russian Linguistics, 2020

This article examines one of the oldest conundra of Slavic historical linguistics, namely the relative chronology of the II regressive and the progressive palatalizations of velar obstruents. To do so, it is first of all shown that these palatalizations constitute two discrete innovations and not a single bidirectional change. On the basis of a thorough analysis of the competing hypotheses it is then argued that the assumption of a relative chronology which dates the progressive before the II regressive palatalization (Pedersen’s chronology), allows the attested forms to be accounted for best. The main complication relating to this chronology concerns certain inflectional endings of the Old Church Slavonic pronouns vьsь and sicь. In the instrumental singular masculine and neuter and the genitive, dative, instrumental and locative plural these pronouns show endings of the hard inflectional type instead of the expected soft-stem endings. Contrary to what may be considered the communis opinio, this peculiarity can, however, be explained by means of a morphological innovation. This assumption is supported by evidence from the medieval Novgorod and Pskov dialects. Three morphological mechanisms, which may have been involved in the rise of the unexpected endings, are discussed: proportional analogy, product-oriented innovation and syntagmatic assimilation. Examples of typologically parallel developments from Slavic and other languages are provided in order to substantiate the claim of a morphological innovation.

The prehistory of the Slavic vowel system

The methodological differences between Kapović and myself are threefold: (1) He disregards the chronological aspects of linguistic developments. As a result, he mixes up elements from different stages of development. (2) He disregards the linguistic system in which developments take place. As a result, he reconstructs typologically improbable linguistic systems. (3) He multiplies the input criteria of his rules in order to arrive at the correct output. The larger the number of input distinctions, the easier it becomes to generate any desired output. A combination of these devices renders his treatment opaque and confuses the issues at hand.

2008. The Slavic Word: Suffix Order and Parsability

homepage.univie.ac.at, 2008

In this paper, I test the Parsability Hypothesis (PH) against data from Slavic languages. I demonstrate an intricate relationship between derivation and inflection in the sense that inflectional suffixes serve to identify derivational suffixes but the two types of suffixes differ in respect to further suffixation, and thus suffixes should be distinguished according to their position either in the derivational or inflectional word slot. Based on synchronic and diachronic evidence, I contend that in Slavic languages, parsability holds for inflection, provided that a language stacks suffixes in the inflectional word slot, but not for derivation, though parsability may be used as a supporting criterion for establishing the +/-closing character of a suffix in the derivational word-slot. I show that different stages in the diachronic development of a language exhibit different degrees of parsability, i.e. parsability is not a constant but a tendency. I conclude that in order to account adequately for Slavic word structure, PH requires some revisions: to consider the role of the word-length and assume two different domains of parsability -derivational and inflectional, as well as to allow the same suffix to apply recursively in derivation and to undermine the role of phonotactics in derivational morphology. initial suffixes and do not blur the morpheme boundary via phonological and morphonological alternations. Thus parsability depends on different factors and occurs by gradations, which allows affixes to be ordered hierarchically according to their ability to parse.