--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> Summarizing.
>
> What I gather is that the developments that led to Slavic
> accentuation are chronologically the following:
>
> 1) Reshuffling of PIE accentual paradigms:
> - (some) thematic nouns and verbs acquire mobility
> - mobility becomes polarized (barytone/oxytone)
> For convenience's sake I'll call this whole ensemble of
> analogical changes "Pedersen's law".
I do think that this is very true. The mobility of Lith. algà,
al~gaN, algo~s is exacly the same as that of dukte:~, dùkteriN,
dukterès (> -er~s). It has not been understood that the dative
singular is barytone; I credited its accent to the locative (since
it is occasionally the syntactic successor of that case, cf. the
absolute dative), but that is unnecessary as I see now: Final accent
is retained, while non-final accent is shifted to the beginning of
the word (or of the entire accent group). And in i- and u-stems the
genitive had *-éy-s, *-éw-s, while the dative had *-éy-ey, *-éw-ey.
That of course means end-stress in the genitive, but not in the
dative. That may have been the model of the funny accentuation of
the dative, mirrored in dùkteriai. This could rid us of the problem
that the very numerous vocalic stems followed the marked less
numerous consonant stems. What the a:-stems followed may be the
combined pressure of i-, u- and consonant stem as they were after a
process of standardization. It demands no explanation that the
number of existing types was reduced in the weak cases. That would
produce the result *-ís, *-ím, *-éy-s, *-éy-ey; *-ús, *-úm, *-ew-s,
*-éw-ey; *-é:, *-ér-im, *-er-és, *-ér-ey. The types with a full-
grade suffix in the strong cases would then drive the accent back in
the acc.sg. because there was end-stress in *-é:, but not in *-ér-
im. The result of all this was then:
i-stems:
*-ís, *´-im, *-éy-s, *´-ey-ey.
u-stems:
*-ús, *-´um, *-éw-s, *´-ew-ey
r-stems:
*-é:, *´-er-im, *-er-és, *´-er-ey
And, on the analogy of all this,
a:-stems:
*-á:, *´-aN, *-a:~s, *´-a:y.
The identity of the underlying type is not quite clean. The basic
accent movement is that of the proterodynamic type, *´-is, *´-im, *-
éy-s, *-éy-ey, which is the only type that offers an explanation of
the final accent in the gen.sg., and of the initial accent of the
nom.pl. (and acc.pl.). This pattern, however, was forced upon the
hysterodynamic words, giving the dative *-ér-ey. Since many stem
types had no suffix syllable in the nom.sg., that could not well be
pre-endstressed, so it became endstressed, as it already was in some
words. That reduced the mobile paradigms to a single type, a two-bit
act of simple analogy (standardization).
> 2) Hirt's law. A non-vocalic laryngeal in the first
> syllable attracts the stress. Raises the number of
> barytones.
>
> [3) Winter's law. Causes acute tone, but does not (usually)
> result in retraction of the stress, so must come after
> Hirt's]
Only if the prosodic trigger was the same in the two cases. Since
that does not have to be so, nothing seems to be really known about
that point. It will be an argument only to those who assume
that "glottalization" had coalesced with laryngeals. How they can
believe they know that is beyond me.
> The above were Balto-Slavic. Now for the Slavic laws:
>
> 4) Dybo's law. Non-acute barytones become mesotonic
> (AP(b)).
Dybo's law moved the accent from a non-acute to the next syllable.
Mobile paradigms were immune to it (speakers of BSl. LOVE mobility),
but the law worked in non-mobile paradigms and in isolated words.
> 5) Meillet's law. Mobile paradigms lose their original
> stress (acute, circumflex or short) in the non-oxytone forms
> and become enclinomenic ["unstressed"] vs. oxytone.
Mobility is extended to work even on the components of long vowels,
so that initial accent yields a falling tone (first-mora accent) if
the paradigm is mobile. The extension to the accentual unit of the
sentence is not part of Meillet's findings, but that occurred too.
Thomas has shown me that it may well be common to the entirety of
Balto-Slavic and so be much older than this.
> 6) Stang's law. Stress is retracted from weak yers and
> (circumflex) long medial vowels, resulting in neo-acute
> accent on the preceding syllable.
>
> 7) Neo-circumflex and other accentual changes are
> post-Common Slavic.
I don't think they can be. Stang just says the "circumflex" in
question is not phonetically diifferent from other circumflexes, but
that is quite beyond the point he should be making. The fact is that
a circumflex appears where an acute was expected, unless some Pan-
Slavic change of acute to neo-circumflex is accepted. So that should
be accepted.
> About "Pedersen's law". This is perhaps the most mysterious
> and underspecified one. First, it's not a phonetic law, but
> an analogical one. Second, it's the most sensitive one to
> everyone's opinions on the reconstructed PIE accent. []
Right, therefore I now suggest the above.
> An exception are the (masculine) mobile o-stems, where there
> was a tendency to make the whole singular (except the
> instrumental?) barytone and the whole plural (except the
> accusative) oxytone.
That's the unmysterious part: o-stems did not follow the mobility
craze. Only the acc.pl. did, getting initial accent in end-stressed
paradigm. This may be seen as a complete standardization of the
acc.pl. which has initial accent in all words.
Jens