Re: [tied] Balto-Slavic accentology

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 35590
Date: 2004-12-23

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 00:06:28 +0000, elmeras2000
<jer@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>> The example of vi"dêti clearly illustrates the need for a
>> leftward accent shift besides Hirt's law. The PIE prototype
>> is a fientive/essive, with aorist root *wid-éh1-, present
>> root *wid-h1-yé- (> *wid-ih1é-?). We have:
>>
>> inf. *wid-eh1-téi
>> []
>> After Hirt's law :
>> inf. *wid-éh1-tei
>> []
>> After Winter's law :
>> inf. *wi:d-é:-tei
>> []
>> After -Dybo :
>> inf. *wí:dE:te: []
>
>This will of course demand a soundlaw if the development was
>phonetic. But was it? If it was, why did it not operate in sêdê´´ti
>and bêz^´´ati ?

I already discussed this. sêdê"ti and bêz^a"ti are mobile.
The infinitive system is in itself non-mobile (the inf. and
[s-]aor. always are, the l-ptc. has been immobilized here by
Hirt's law), so the soundlaw could have worked, but it was
blocked analogically by the fact that all other a.p. c verbs
in -êti have stress on the -ê. Note that in a purely
immobile context (bê"gnoNti) the soundlaw works fine.

>One would like to regard sly´´s^ati as analogical on
>vi´´dêti, but why is there *-s- in OHG hlose:n?

The editors of LIV don't know ("mit sekundärer
Wurzelbetonung").

>Could there be
>influence the other way around regarding the accent? Did the
>imperative *k^lu-dhí (Ved. s´rudhí) have an emphatic variant *k^lú:-
>dhi with initial accent, and could that be the starting point of the
>acute barytonesis? Greek klûthi does have the length but is of
>course irrelevant for the accent.

I don't know where the length in sly"s^ati comes from. Even
if laryngeal (which I doubt), applying Hirt's law will only
get us as far as slys^a"ti (but admittedly sly"s^oN in the
present). Your suggestion (original barytonesis, maintained
against Dybo's law by the [acute] length) sounds good to me.
I'm only worried by the circumflex on Grk. klûthi.

I had wanted to ask you about your thoughts on the origin of
the ê/i type in Balto-Slavic. Jasanoff says that your
thoughts are (independently) similar to his: barytonic 3pl.
-n.ti > -inti and then spread of -i- (Slav. i:-, after
iterative/causatives) to the other persons. Jasanoff's
brief account doesn't really convince me, maybe you can
explain it better.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...