Re: [tied] Re: Morphology (2/20)

On Sat, 17 Aug 2002 21:04:50 -0000, "sergejus_tarasovas" <S.Tarasovas@...>
wrote:

>--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>[defending Fortunatov-Kuznetsov-Watkins, now also -Carrasquer theory
>of origin of Proto-Slavic 3rd. p. verval marker: ]
>
>> OCS and East Slavic are the only evidence we have, as in all modern
>> West and South Slavic languages the 3rd. person forms have lost the
>> *-t(U) and/or *-t(I) [which is an aberration in itself].
>
>S. Nikolaev in _Rannee dialektnoje c^lenenije i vnes^nije sv'azi
>vostoc^noslav'anskix dialektov_ (1994) writes that while West Slavic,
>of South Slavic and Ukrainian/Belarusian have lost the *-tI marker in
>the singular, only West Slavic has lost in in the plural.

I don't know about Old Serbian, Old Croatian or Old Slovenian (modern -u ~ -o,
-e) but Modern Bulgarian indeed has 3pl. -at.

>By the way, in the same article he notes that in so called Viatichian
>(as it can be reconstructed on the base of today's Russian dialects),
>the -tI/-tU/zero distributian was "untrivial". Eg, e-verbs has sg.
>_sta'ne_ - pl. _sta'nut_ (more rarely _sta'nu_), sg. _nese'_ - pl.
>_nesu't_, while i-verbs has sg. _xo'di_ -- pl. _xo'd'ut' (more rarely
>_xo'd'u_), sg. _sidi't'_ (more rarely _sidi'_) -- pl. sid'a'.

Interesting...

>Interestingly enough, Krivichian (with its phonological if not
>morphonological archaisms) has lost this morpheme as well. Many
>features of Northern Russian have been explained via Krivichian, but
>this is obviously not the case here -- Northern Russian -tU must have
>originated from something else.
>
>> I would hesitate to call OCS aberrant here
>> (from a Slavic point of view). Northern (and literary) Russian has
>> hard -t in the 3sg. and pl., against soft -t' in athematic est' (sut')
>> [unless those are churchslavonicisms, I'm not sure], exactly as in OCS.
>> It is hard to imagine how, given Proto-Slavic thematic -etI, -o~tI and
>> athematic -tI, -e~tI, the OCS and N-Russian split (them. -tU, athem. -tI)
>> may have arisen, while the converse (East-Slavic merger) is
>> unproblematical.
>
>_Dictionary of Old Church Slavonic_ (ed. Vec^erka et al.), Moscow,
>1999 in the grammatical addendum gives _jestU_ (not **jestI), it also
>gives 9 examples of _jestU_ under the dictionary entry for _byti_,
>and zero examples for **_jestI_.
>_Old Church Slavonic_, A. Selishchev, Moscow, 1952.
>A bit outdated and idiosyncratic (but not to _that_ extent). Gives
>_jestU_ [and argues that Proto-Slavic *-tI yielded (rather early) Old
>Bulgarian -tU as a result of _de-palatalization because of weakening
>of articulation in auslaut_; also states that this de-palatalization
>operated rather late in Northern Russian]. Also mentiones sporadic -
>tI (mostly in athematic, but also in thematic -- as in _mInitI_ --
>conjugation).
>N. Rusinov in his _Old Russian_ explaines Northern Russian -tU as
>originating from de-palatalized -tI.
>
>What is wrong with my sources?

Chort! I was so sure OCS had <jestI>... You're absolutely right. Scratch what
I said about thematic/athematic.

Irregular depalatalization of *-tI to *-tU is a possibilty, but I would prefer a
solution that also explains the loss of the ending altogether, instead of
introducing that as a second irregularity. What if Proto-Slavic had both
primary *-ti and secondary (conjunctive?) *-t in the present, à la Italo-Celtic.
That would have given *-tI, and *-0 (after vowel) or *-t (after consonant, at
least after -s-). Then regularly *[jes]t > *[jes]tU, and also the zero-ending
after vowel is optionally extended with the pronoun *tU. As a result, we have
the attested Slavic situation: -tI (Russ. <jest'>, O.Pol. <jes'c'>), -tU (OCS
<jestU>, Pol. <jest>) and zero (Ukr., Bul., Cze. etc. <je>) in apparently random
distribution.

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