Re: [tied] Re: Slavic peoples and places

On Thu, 14 Jun 2001 09:32:23 -0000, tgpedersen@... wrote:

>--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:
>> Of course. I've wondered for some time, though, whether the
>> surprising phonetics of Russian pronominal/adjectival gen.sg. -ogo
>> (-jego) (with <g> prounced /v/) may have something to do with the
>> possessive adjectives in -ov (n. -ovo).
>>
>
>In Danish there is a "old, sloppy, dialectal" pronounciation of
>medial and final -b and -v as -w (løbe "run, løve "lion" both
>pronounced <lø:w(ë)> (not unsimilar to the Spanish situation) versus
>an "upwardly mobile" literal pronounciation. Some Jutland dialects
>have -w- all the way through. Whether the non-Jutland pronounciation
>goes all the way back to PIE w I don't know. In the same "old"
>pronounciation medial and final -g (standard G) becomes -w.
>Compare Swedish mage / Danish mave "stomach". The written Danish v
>renders "old" pronounciation w, but now becomes v. So there has been
>a development g > G > w > v. As for g > G, isn't that what happens in
>South Russian and Ukrainian?

Yes, and in Czech too (g > G > (voiced) h). However, G > v is not a
normal development in Russian, and it only affects the genitive
singular -ogo ~ -jego. I think that to explain the pronunciation
-/AvA/ (where /A/ is [o] or [a] or [@], depending on the accent) the
development g > G is a necessary precondition (it was more widespread
once, reaching up to Moscow), but for the further development -oGo >
-ovo (directly, not through -owo!), my hypothesis is that analogy with
the possessive adjectives in -ovo played a role.

>Since Slavic is IE at some time in the development there must have
>been w > v. When?

Not yet in Sorbian. Greek beta (vita) was adopted in Cyrillic to
represent <v>, so the change would have already happened by then, at
least in Thessaloniki.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...