Re: [tied] Re: Etymology of "Warsaw"

On 9/9/04 1:08 PM, tgpedersen wrote:

> Another thing I was wondering: How does the change from initial to
> penultimate stress fit into this, time-wise? Changing the vowel of
> an unstressed suffix would be easier than changing that of a
> stressed one, it seems to me.

It doesn't matter in Modern Polish, where stress is mostly a matter of
intonation and doesn't affect vowel quality. I think the Polish rule of
penultimate stress had been stabilised by 1400 or so. During the earlier
period of initial stress medial syllables in trisyllabic names were
often syncopated, but qualitative changes don't strike me as a comon
phenomenon in this environment.

Piotr