Re: [tied] Re: the glottalic theory

On Fri, 15 Nov 2002, Sergejus Tarasovas wrote:

> > From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen [mailto:jer@...]
>
> > > But are there any
> > >non-commonplace
> > > points in Kortlandt's _Slavic Accentuation_
> > > (http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/sa/) and _From Proto-Indo-
> > > European to Slavic_
> > (http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art66e.pdf)
> > > you do agree with?
>
> > I credit him with the Old Prussian accent shift law, which is
> > a first-rate
> > discovery.
>
> This idea was also supported by those belonging to the Moscow
> Accentological School, AFAIK.
>
> >Meillet's law of circumflex in barytone parts of
> > mobile paradigms in Slavic is accepted by us both, although
> > we explain it
> > very differently.
>
> Kortland posits prosodically-conditioned deletion of a laryngeal,
> analogically extended to all the barytone forms of mobile paradigms.
> What's your solution?

It comes all by itself: If accent is being polarized to dance between the
first and the final *mora* of an accentual unit, then a long initial
syllable will take a falling tone if accented at all. And proclitics will
take the accent from barytone forms of mobile paradigms, simply due to the
accentual polarization already. I therefore suggest that Slavic just went
one step further in this process than Baltic. Is that not simple?

>
> > For the totality of Balto-Slavic we both accept
> > polarization of mobility (Pedersen's law)
>
> Do you accept loss of genuine PIE accentual mobility in
> Proto-Balto-Slavic? If I get it right, the basic insight is that when
> only columnal mobile paradigms survived, even the columnicity couldn't
> guarantee the stress fixed on the same morpheme simply because of
> inherited null-grade forms like *dHugHh2trós (where the -er-columnicity
> cannot be hold), and this irritating problem was solved at the expense
> of innocent properly colunmnal forms like *dHugHh2térm., throwing the
> ictus to the first syllable because due to love of order the
> Proto-Balto-Slavs in the cases they let stress go back and forth at all
> they tended to keep one of the counters (from the beginning or the end
> of the word) at the value of zero (and the phenomenon Kortlandt calls
> "oxytonesis" can be explained along the same lines)?

My understanding is that IE mobility was basically retained in BSl., if in
polarized form. The obvious model for the polarization is root nouns which
have only marginal syllables. I believe the same analogy had caused the
emergence of the amphikinetic type in a prestage of PIE already.

>
> > My objection
> > that it strains credulity that a different accentual doublet is always
> > chosen whenever other IE languages point to a sequence -VHCV'- is
> > countered by reference to the single example gývas (3) which
> > has retained
> > the accent position of *gWiH3wo'-s. *My* objection to that is
> > in turn that
> > "living" is a strange word with irregular development in so
> > many languages
> > that it cannot be used as serious evidence. Some languages
> > have lost the
> > laryngeal (Celtic) or assimilated it to the initial (Germanic), and if
> > BSl. has replaced it by simple length by dissimilation it is
> > not evidence
> > against Hirt's law.
>
> If we accept (as Kortlandt does) the development *CHV- (not only *CVH-)
> > (acuted) *CV:'- in Balto-Slavic and reconstruct the archetype as
> *gWh3iwós, the problem disappears. Or what?

Sure, but the full grade is Avestan jya:-. I know of no certain examples
of THi-/THu- yielding Ti:-/Tu:- (T being any stop). This is just a rule I
do not know, at least not with any degree of certainty, though I am sure
the last word has not been said on the matter. But yes, this is another
potential way of saving Hirt's Law, which I just do not think we can do
without.

Jens