Polish and Kashubian (the "Lekhitic" group) are the only modern Slavic languages that retain PSl. nasal vowels (before stops they are realised in Polish as VN sequences, where the nasal is homorganic with the following stop). In most of the remaining Slavic languages denasalisation took place about the tenth century or slightly later (in Bulgarian, for example, the change is dated to the 12th-13th c.). Old Church Slavic still had both nasal vowels. PSl. *o~ (= nasal [o]) became /u/ almost everywhere outside Lekhitic, but the Slovene reflex is /o/ (see João's list of 'bison' words), Bulgarian has /&/, and Macedonian /a/ (Bulg. zub&r is a loan).
In the older layers of mediaeval Slavic borrowings in Romanian, taken from languages that still had the nasal vowels, the normal reflexes are <âN/îN> (< aN) or <uN>, where the place of articulation of the nasal depends on the following consonant (it's /m/ before /b/, in particular).
Piotr
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
From: "alex_lycos" <altamix@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2003 9:02 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] bison
> João Simões Lopes Filho wrote:
> > According to http://www.informatika.bf.uni-lj.si/magus-slavic1.html#a
> > Croatian : europski bizon
> > Czech: zubr
> > Polish: z.ubr
> > Slovakian> zubor
> > Slovenian - zober
> > Upper Sorbian: zubr
> > Lower Sorbian: zubr
> > Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian: zubr
> > Bulgarian: zub"r
>
>
> Maybe Piotr can us say if the Slavic languages loose the nasal in some
> situation. How I said, the attested form is with nasal and even with "m"
> as in romanian and prussian.