Metatony in monosyllables (original) (raw)

Baltistica, 2014

Abstract

There are two chronological layers of metatonical circumflex in monosyllables, viz. an early Balto-Slavic layer which is reflected e.g. in Lith. dės , jos , duos and a recent Aukstaitian layer which is found e.g. in nom.pl. tiẽ , acc.pl. tuos , inst.sg. tuo . Leskien’s law was younger than the former but older than the latter. This analysis is not based on a comparison with Slavic or Indo-European but on the internal evidence of the East Baltic languages. The Baltic future represents two Indo-European paradigms, viz. an s‑ present with accentual mobility between the suffix and the ending and an s‑ aorist with fixed stress on the root and monosyllabic lengthening in the 2nd and 3rd sg. forms. Both of these formations have exact correspondences in the Old Irish subjunctive. They must have existed side by side in Proto-Baltic in view of Prussian teīks ‘make!’ beside postāsei ‘you will become’. The circumflex of Latvian sāls and guovs shows metatonical length as a result of monosyllabic lengthening. There is no evidence for a PIE phoneme *a in sāls , zuoss and nass , nor for the vowel *e in the PIE paradigm of guovs , nor for a PIE paradigm with fixed stress in the case of guovs , nass and zvrs , nor for a generalization of the original nom.sg. instead of acc.sg. accentuation in sāls and nass .

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