Re: slavic methathesis

--- In cybalist@..., Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
wrote:

> Liquid metathesis is not a common Slavic process but a group of

parallel developments that occurred independently and at different
times in the various Slavic-speaking regions, producing different
results. In certain peripheral areas (the Baltic coast, Macedonian
dialects) liquid metathesis took place very late or even failed to be
carried through consistently. In East Slavic we have early metathesis
in word-initial "vowel + liquid" combinations, but so-
called "pleophony", i.e. a disyllabic pronunciation instead of
metathesis, in word-medial positions (a special type of pleophony
occurred also in Krivichian):

>
> PSl. *gordU > Russ. gorod (pleophony: *or > oro); Pol. gród (*or >

ro); Cz. hrad, OCS gradU, SCr. grad (*or > ra); Polabian and
Pomeranian gord (no metathesis).

>
> Preconsonantal *ol, *er and *el underwent similar developments:
>
> PSl. *zolto 'gold' > Russ. zoloto (*ol > olo); Pol. zl/oto (*ol >

lo > l/o); Cz., OCS, SCr., Bulg. zlato (*ol > *la).

>
> PSl. *bergU 'tree' > Russ. bereg (*er > ere); Pol. brzeg (*er > re
> rze); Cz. br^eh, OCS bre^gU, SCr. breg / br(i)jeg / brig, Bulg.

brjag (*er > *re^, with dialect-specific developments)

>
> PSl. *melko 'milk' > Russ. moloko (*el > olo); Pol. brzeg (*el >

le); Cz. mléko, OCS mle^ko, SCr. mleko / ml(i)jeko / mliko, Bulg.
mljako (*el > le^ with dialect-specific developments).

>
> I have already explained the reasons why the *oR > Ra metathesis in

South Slavic must be dated to the eighth century.

>
> Piotr
>
>

Wouldn't it be possible to argue for (without loss of generality):
*or > *oro > *ro etc, so that pleophony becomes an intermediate
stage? If so, it would be one, not separate developments.
Dutch has the pronunciation /mel&k/ for 'melk', probably because of
the 'thick' l.

Torsten