Re: [tied] Syllabic liquids in Slavic [was: Thoughts on the existen

On Sat, 15 Sep 2001 22:18:15 +0200, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>Why project back onto the PIE (nay, pre-PIE) plane something that occurs only in Balto-Slavic? There is no other IE evidence (direct or indirect) to necessitate such a formidable complication of the PIE sound system.

I believe there is a large amount of additional evidence in general
(not restricted to the syllabic liquids, although there is evidence
for "hard" and "soft" flavours also in Sanskrit). The existence of
the triad (*k, *g, *gh), (*k^, *g^, *g^h) and (*kw, *gw, *gwh), as
well as *h1, *h2, *h3 when interpreted as *X^, *X, *Xw. Admittedly,
neither the palato-velars nor *h1 are exclusively the result of
pre-PIE palatalizations, but the evidence for labialized phonemes here
is sound. Then there are things like the Greek p/pt alternations (*py
gives /pt/ in Greek, so maybe pt < palatalized *p^?), Germanic *f in
lieu of expected *hw (from *pw, giving *kw elsewhere), as well as
cases of *gwh > *b in Germanic (from *bhw ?). The evidence for *t^ (>
*y) and *tw (> s-, -s, -t-) applies to PIE as a whole, and gives rise
to phenomena such as the Arm. plural in -k` or the Slavic 2sg. them.
in -es^i. We further have vacillations between *n ~ *y and *l ~ *y,
which may point to palatalized *n^ and *l^. There is also evidence
for *mw (~ *w) and *nw (~ *m).

>Parsimony militates against it. The Balto-Slavic distinction between *iR and *uR correlates by and large with the phonetic environment. As Vaillant and Kurylowicz pointed out, *uR is found mainly after Balto-Slavic velars (*k and *g), and *iR elsewhere.

The first example that comes to mind (*wilkas/*wl^kU) militates
against that.

>The loss of palatality in Polish is neither sporadic nor arbitrary. It is governed by a set of rigorous phonetic conditions (for one example, see below). I can provide any amount of further details on demand.

Please do. We can start with <bez>, or <jeden>.

> A form like Pol. <martwy> cannot be derived from Slavic *mUrtvU-, so for Common Slavic we have to reconstruct syllabic */r./ and */r^./ in any case.
>
>Why "cannot be"? The behaviour of yers in closed syllables need not be the same as in open syllables (Havlík's Law applies only in the latter case). Surely one can imagine *&r > ar (ir after a palatalised consonant) preconsonatally.

Can you give an example of yer > /a/ in Polish, where no syllabic
resonant is involved? It's my understanding that the results are
always /e/ or /ie/, respectively (is that Havlík's law?).

>By the way, contrary to what you suggest, <martwy> does derive from *mIr-tvU (cf. s'mierc' 'death' < s'mirc' < *sU-mIr-tI).

I never suggested that it didn't. I said that in this case, the
original situation is maintained in Russian, and has been altered in
Polish.