Re: Various loose thoughts

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> domU (~ Grk. dómos, Lith. nãmas) and dolU (Grk. thólos) are
> originally a.p. b, so domò(v)i, dolò(v)i are regular, by
> Dybo's law.

That is interesting, but from a late Common Slavic point of view they
are (c). And given that fact, the presence of end-stressed "dolój"
and "domój" may (or may not) be significant.

> The ablative is also a "non-oxytonic" case (*-óod).
>
> The vowel stems, when they became mobile in BS, did
> introduce a few idiosyncracies of their own, like the
> (originally) end-stressed o-stem Npl. *-ój, or the
> end-stressed i- and u-stem L.sg's (*-é:i, *-é:u).

Yes but that too has to be explained.

> I have written about this on several occasions. The word
> peró (= Grk. pterón) is an oxytone neuter, and as such it
> was a.p. b _before_ Dybo's law.

I know, but we're not concerned with your theory here, but trying to
clarify K's theory so that intelligent and effective criticism
becomes possible instead of the ineffectual criticism based on
externalities that has been the norm for the past thirty years.


In K's theory oxytone neuters owe their existence to the limitations
of Ebeling's law as sketched in AS: 5-6 ("unless the preceding
syllable is closed by an obstruent"). Unfortunately, as I wrote
yesterday, the further fate of that paradigm has been dealt with very
skimpily by K or other accentologists continuing his work. We also
need a suitable term to refer to these cases because real (b)'s are
so completely different that it is courting disaster to operate with
a term containing the element "(b)". I've considered "(e)" in the
past, but that does not cover Baltic. [The point recurs later in this
posting.]

> The whole point of Pedersen's law (i.e. the spread of
> mobility to the vowel stems), at least in the nouns, must
> originally have been to distinguish the nominative sg. from
> the accusative sg. prosodically (a secondary, but more
> lasting, effect would have been to establish a prosodic
> distinction between NA pl/du and oblique pl./du.). That is
> why "oxytone" (better: theme-stressed) vowel stems were
> affected, because they could retract the accent of the
> accusative to the initial syllable, e.g. N. gol&vá: ~ A.
> gól&va:m, mimicking dug&té:: ~ dúg&terim. This also means
> that neuters were not affected. The neuter C-stems were
> barytonic anyway (*nébhos, *n.'mn.), there were no neuter u-
> and a:-stems, and the very few neuter i-stems (*mori) became
> neuter jo-stems. That only leaves the oxytone neuter
> o-stems, which remained theme-stressed and were unaffected
> by Pedersen's law.
>
> Illich-Svitych correctly identified the fate of oxytone
> o-stems in Slavic (his [sg.] examples are peró (Grk.
> pterón), gnêzdó (Skt. ni:d.ám), jeNdró (Skt. a:n.d.ám),
> oNtró (Skt. a:ntrám), sidló (Gmc. saila), gUrnó (Skt.
> ghr.n.ás), dUnó (*dhubnóm), sUtó (*k^m.tóm)), but this did
> not fit into the Lithuanian-inspired "two-paradigms
> paradigm", and was apparently forgotten by Dybo (who writes
> that there is "insufficient data" to clear up the fate of
> the PIE oxytone neuters).
>

Interesting. Do you happen to have the reference? (I'm very much
interested in this point.)

> I'm confused by your terminology. "Genuine (b)" for me
> means *pre-Dybo* (b)'s, in other words: (1) the neuter
> oxytones like peró, vêdró, okUnó; (2) the compound words
> made with dominant theme-stressed suffixes like *-ikós; (3)
> the theme-stressed verbs in *-jé-, *-né-, *-í:-.

What I call "genuine (b)" is Stang's (b), e.g. the paradigm that
started off as stem-stressed in Balto-Slavic (because the stem was
plus, in terms of the valency theory) until it became oxytone as a
consequence of Dybo's law only to receive stem-stressed forms as a
consequence of Stang's law. Since it is this paradigm that literally
*everybody* has been calling (b) since Stang introduced his taxonomy
in 1957, I think it is very confusing to use the designation (b) also
for a paradigm that has a completely different history and background
(even if they often merged with genuine (b)'s at a late Slavic
stage).


A second reason why I can't help finding (b) a dangerous choice
(dangerous from a communicative point of view) is that Stang's
taxonomy refers to a late Slavic stage, whereas you use his scheme to
talk about Balto-Slavic. To the extent that there is a traditional
designation of BSl accentual paradigms it uses Roman numerals, so
perhaps it might make sense to consider the possibility of calling
your BSl (b) something like "III", or whatever.


I wouldn't bother with terminology for a moment were it not for the
fact that the history of Slavic accentology is strewn with scholars
talking at cross purposes because they don't understand what the
other guy is going on about.

> I think vêdró was end-stressed before and after Dybo's law.
> So yes, the *ê was unstressed all along. This fits in
> nicely with Shintani's amendment to Winter's law (which you
> probably disagree with), which requires a vowel lengthened
> by Winter's law to be pretonic (which automatically explains
> the Latvian Brechton).

This type of examples does not differentiate between Shintani's and
Winter's formulation. The point is irrelevant here.

> But the PIE accent was still *dhworikós and *moldikós (and,
> incidentally, *bhrah2trikós). The suffix *-ikós is
> dominant, i.e stressed.

No. Please. This is important. Within the early MAS conception of BSl
stress assignment, which K's theory is built on, a dominant suffix
never attracts the stress from a dominant stem. So you inevitably end
up with *dhwórikos and *bhráh2trikos. This is a central point. The
MAS reconstruction just does not allow for suffixes that receive the
stress independently of the prosodic characteristics of the stem they
are attached to.


Mind you, I can very well imagine the MAS reconstruction breaking
down under scrutiny, but that's a point that should be addressed
seriously and at length. A paper that would refute the MAS conception
of stress assignment in a credible way and put something better in
its place would constitute a revolution. I for one would welcome it.
But as long as that has not been done it looks to me like an
unnecessary regression to pre-Stangian confusion.

> The a.p. of the base noun doesn't
> matter. All words in *-ikós (and similar suffixes) were
> a.p. b in Proto-Slavic. The retraction law which I have
> dubbed "minus Dybo" (or "Kurylowicz's law"), which is
> simultaneous to Dybo's law, pulls the accent back to any
> preceding acute (e.g. bra/tIcI' > bra"tIcI), but all others
> (i.e. from a.p. b and a.p. c base words) remain a.p. b, the
> only thing happening is retraction of the stress from a
> final yer (dvorI`cI, dvorIca`; moldI`cI, moldIca`).

That's all very nice, but you really need to show why "The a.p. of
the base noun doesn't matter" because that statement constitutes a
*fundamental* departure from one of the corner stones of post-
Stangian accentology. MAS accentology derives its strength from the
simple stress rule it reduces the multiplicity of Baltic and Slavic
stress patterns to. You need a strong case if you want to convince
people that that rule should be abandoned again.


I'd written:

> >Shënim: *dvorIcI is a derivation from (pre-Dybo) *dvòrU, which is

(b)

> >and as such is assumed to retain the stress in suffixal

derivations.

> >The MAS scheme (which K adheres to) unambiguously generates

*dvòrIcI

> >here, which is shifted to *dvorÌcI by Dybo's law.

Then you wrote:

> That is wrong. The word is dvoréc, dvorcá in Russian.

It is a misunderstanding to think that R. "dvoréc" cannot continue
*dvorÌcI.


[I won't discuss you reconstruction here because in my view that will
make sense only after it has been shown that the MAS rule for stress
assignment is insufficient.]


[On the Lsg of i- and u-stems:]

> ... how does Kortlandt explain that? Are *-e:i and
> *-o:u closed syllables?

I've no idea, but those endings are end-stressed in mobile paradigms
in Common Slavic and that's the point that is at issue here.

> In the case of synU, I would say that the BS form *was*
> stem-stressed (OLith sú:nus, 1>3). There are no a.p. a
> u-stems in Slavic, so something must've happened to them
> (they have become mobile).

Unless they didn't exist to begin with. Note that the word for 'son'
expresses a key concept and is one of the most frequent nouns of the
language. If it would have received consistent (a)-stress it is
pretty unlikely to have abandoned that stress pattern again even if
such other (a)-stressed u-stems as were around did become mobile. The
word is ideally fitted for a "last Mohican" role. It is quite often
idiosyncratic (cf. the Russian plural "synov'ja" or the Czech or Old
Croatian Vsg synu/sinu, to mention no other examples). It strongly
influenced the afterlife of the u-stem paradigm in Slavic. It was
supported by the semantically related word for 'brother'. This just
won't wash.

> Hirt's law did affect the Nsg. (*suHnús > *súHnus), which
> was enough to make the whole paradigm barytone, cf. C-stems
> like z^I"rny < *gWr.h2núh2, where _only_ the N.sg. was
> affected by Hirt's law [_all_ other case forms have two or
> more syllables, and Hirt's law could not affect them]. When
> Hirt's law killed mobility's raison d'être, it was given up
> (which makes it more remarkable that mobility wasn't killed
> off later when nom. and acc. merged in most root types).
>

Interesting.


That must be it, for the time being,



Willem