ONCE MORE ON DESINENTIAL ACCENT IN BALTO-SLAVIC MOBILE PARADIGMS (original) (raw)

The three accent paradigms of Proto-Balto-Slavic

In the following presentation, I will try to outline a theory of how the three Common Slavic accent paradigms (a, b and c) can be derived from accentual patterns in Proto-Indo-European, for both nouns/adjectives and verbs. A central assumption will be that Balto-Slavic had three accent paradigms, not two, as is usually assumed.

Balto-Slavic accentuation revisited

Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch, 2010

Balto-Slavic accentuation revisited There is every reason to welcome the revised edition (2009) of Thomas Olander's dissertation (2006), which I have criticized elsewhere (2006). The book is very well written and the author has a broad command of the scholarly literature. I have not found any mistakes in Olander's rendering of other people's views. This makes the book especially useful as an introduction to the subject. It must be hoped that the easy access to a complex set of problems which this book offers will have a stimulating effect on the study of Balto-Slavic accentology. The purpose of the following observations is twofold. On the one hand, I intend to show that what the author evidently regards as his main result, the "mobility law", cannot be accepted because it is incompatible with the data. On the other hand, my aim is to pinpoint the essential differences between Olander's theory and mine (e.g. 1989a, 2005b, 2008a) in order to clarify where progress can be made. In the following, bracketed numbers which do not denote the Lithuanian accent classes (1) through (4) will refer to the pages of the book under discussion (Olander 2009). The origin of the mistaken analysis which has resulted in Olander's "mobility law" must be sought in his reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Slavic. Following the German (Brugmannian, pre-structuralist) tradition, Olander reconstructs five short and five long vowel phonemes *i, *e, *a, *o, *u, *ī, *ē, *ā, *ō, *ū, of which *i and *u had non-syllabic variants which were "probably in complementary distribution" but are nevertheless distinguished in the reconstructions, four resonants *r, *l, *m, *n with "syllabic realisation between consonants" distinguished by a ring underneath, "four fricatives" *s, *h 1 , *h 2 , *h 3 , the latter of which had "vocalic variants" *ə 1 , *ə 2 , *ə 3 , three labial stops *p, *b, *b h , three dental stops *t, *d, *d h , three palatal stops *k • , *g• , *g• h , three velar stops *k, *g, *g h , and three labiovelar stops *k w , *g w , *g wh (83), i.e. a total of 10 vowels, two of which had consonantal realizations, and 23 consonants, seven of which had "vocalic variants". This large and complex phonological system, which allows an impressive number of 425 CV and 10625 CVC sequences, is clearly at variance with Olander's professed "methodological choice to attach considerable weight to simplicity" of reconstructed syn

Issues in Balto-Slavic accentology

Accent Matters: Papers on Balto-Slavic …, 2011

After the very well-organized Leiden conference for which we must be grateful to Tijmen Pronk, it seems appropriate for me to review some of the papers, as I did after the previous conferences in Zagreb and Copenhagen. The aim of this review is merely to point out some of the differences of opinion which require further debate. Mislav Benić presents a detailed description of verbal accentuation in the dialect of Kukljica on the island of Ugljan. The dialect has no tonal distinctions but does have vowel quantity in stressed and pretonic syllables, with large-scale lengthening of short vowels under the stress. It has preserved the Common Slavic distinction between original pretonic long vowels, which were shortened as a result of the rise of the new timbre differences, and new pretonic long vowels which arose as a result of Dybo's law (cf. Kortlandt 2005: 126-128), e.g. jazȋk 'tongue' (with secondary lengthening of the stressed vowel) versus nạ̄ rȍd 'people'. It has also preserved the distinction between simplex verbs with mobile stress, e.g. budȋn 'wake up', gasȋn 'turn off', and compound verbs where the prefix lost the stress to the root in accordance with Dybo's law, e.g. prebȗdin, ugȁsin (ibidem, 127). Moreover, it has preserved the accentual mobility of the original nasal present in nȅ znon 'don't know' (cf. Kortlandt 1985) and the retracted stress of the original imperative in vȗci, cȋdi of vūčȇn 'pull', cidȋn 'filter' (cf. Kortlandt 1979: 53). Miguel Carrasquer Vidal proposes a derivation of acute and circumflex tones from the syllable structure of the proto-language. His account involves tones on unstressed syllables, resyllabifications, analogical replacements, ad hoc rules for different stem formations and for different languages, secondary developments, unexplained exceptions for which he posits a PIE distinction between *i and *j, and structural ambiguity of the postvocalic ending *-ns. He lists a number of Slavic Auslautgesetze in order to arrive at the correct output. Since I have discussed all of the issues elsewhere, I shall not return to the many points of disaggreement here. Vladimir Dybo compares the West Caucasian, Balto-Slavic and Japanese accent systems in terms of "dominant" and "recessive" morphemes expressed in syllables and contours. In my review of last year's conference in Copenhagen, I have shown how the class of dominant suffixes originated from several retrac

Proto-Indo-European long vowels and Balto-Slavic accentuation

Baltistica 47/2, 5–48., 2012

The article is a critical review of the evidence regarding the reflexes of Proto-Indo-European long vowels in Baltic and Slavic. It is argued that in Balto-Slavic, inherited long vowels receive circumflex intonation in all positions in the word. Examples like Lith. várna ‘raven’, žvėrìs ‘wild animal’ and grė́bti ‘to rake’ that are traditionally thought to show that an Indo-European long vowel obtained acute intonation must be explained differently. A number of verbal roots forming a yod-present can be shown to have undergone metatony rude in Lithuanian and Latvian and metatony douce in Lithuanian. There is no evidence for the thesis that Balto-Slavic monosyllables always had circumflex intonation. Lithuanian examples that would show this development can be shown to be due to inner-Lithuanian innovations. Finally, Balto-Slavic ā-stems and intensive verbs with long vocalism generally have circumflex intonation and can be shown to reflect Proto-Indo-European formations containing a long vowel.

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.