From Proto-Indo-European to Slavic (original) (raw)

1994, Journal of Indo European Studies

A correct evaluation of the Slavic evidence for the reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language requires an extensive knowledge of a considerable body of data. While the segmental features of the Slavic material are generally of corroborative value only, the prosodic evidence is crucial for the reconstruction of PIE. phonology. Due to the complicated nature of Slavic historical accentology, this has come to be realized quite recently. 1 As a result, much of the earlier literature has become obsolete to the extent that it is based upon an interpretation which does not take the multifarious accentual developments into account. I shall give one example. In Evidence for laryngeals (ed. by W. Winter, 1965), which remains a milestone in Indo-European studies, two of the authors adduce the short accent of SCr. sȑce 'heart' as evidence for a Proto-Slavic acute tone (117, 133). Actually, Slavic *sьrdьce has a falling tone and mobile accentuation, as is clear from the Slovene and Russian evidence. The circumflex was regularly shortened in trisyllabic word forms (see 9.4 below), e.g. mlȁdōst 'youth', cf. mlȃd 'young', and prȃse 'suckingpig', gen.sg. prȁseta. This does not detract from the fact that we have to reconstruct an acute tone for Balto-Slavic in view of Latvian sirds 'heart'. In Slavic, the acute tone became circumflex in words with mobile stress in accordance with Meillet's law (see 5.4 below). The tone of trisyllabic neuters can never be used for comparative purposes because they always have mobile accentuation if they belong to the older layers of the language. The Balto-Slavic acute tone in the word for 'heart' is no evidence for either a laryngeal or a PIE. long vowel because it arose phonetically before PIE. *d in accordance with Winter's law (see 4.3 below). The only evidence for an original long vowel is found in Old Prussian seyr, which in combination with the East Baltic and Slavic material points to a PIE. alternating paradigm *ḱēr(d), *ḱṛd-. The full grade form of the root *ḱerd-is attested in Lith. šerdìs 'core', OCS. srěda 'middle'. The small chapter on Balto-Slavic in Evidence for laryngeals is not only very short, but also quite useless. In the following I intend to present a synopsis of the main developments from Proto-Indo-European to Slavic in their chronological order so far as that has been established at this moment. It is largely based on my earlier account of the accen-1 For a survey of recent research I refer to the Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 92 (1978), 269-281.