Re: Chronology of Slavonic palatalisation?

From: pielewe
Message: 37499
Date: 2005-05-02

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Christopher Culver <crculver@...>
wrote:
> The textbooks of Old Church Slavonic I have explain the relationship
> of the three separate palatalisations of the velars to each other. For
> example, the change of k, g, and x into c^, z^, and s^ when followed
> by a front vowel or soft liquid sonant happened before the other
> two. However, can these three developments be located chronologically?
> The first palatalisation seems to have occured after the Slavs came
> into contact with the Germans, so can that fact help to track down the
> century in which it took place?


The First Palatalisation appears to be observable in one or two Gothic
words, which would seem to indicate that it took place after the Goths
became an important factor. It is my (informal, subjective, musing
etc.) impression that the evidence is thin. If I recall correctly,
Jorma Koivulehto needs a significantly earlier chronology to square the
Slavic facts with his understanding of Baltic Finnic.


The effects of the Second Palatalization are not found in the variety
of Slavic continued by the medieval dialects of Novgorod and Pskov.
This is a relatively recent insight, first clearly formulated by Sof'ja
Gluskina in the late sixties and later taken up and strengthened by
Andrej Zaliznjak, who noted forms of the type _ke^lU_ < *koilu 'whole'
in birchbark letter 247 and 351, in addition to the abundant dialectal
material discussed by Gluskina. This would seem to indicate that the
Second Palatalization postdates the spectacular expansion of Slavic
that took place in the decades immediately preceding and following 600
AD, of course depending on the type of mechanism one makes responsible
for the change.


The Third (perhaps better: Progressive) Palatalization can be observed
in Novgorod/Pskov at least in the case of PSl. *k. However, in all
other respect The mutual relationship of the Second and Progressive
Palatalizations is ontroversial.


Novgorod/Pskov apart, it is important to realize that Second and
Progressive have the same reflexes. The mutual relationship of the two
developments has been interpreted in three different ways:


(1) Second and Progressive are two aspects of a single two-sided
palatalization: all nineteenth-century investigators, and also for
instance: Meillet (e.g. 1900, 1910, 1924), Lorentz (1904), Nitsch
(1926), Vaillant (1950), Henning Andersen (1969), Kortlandt (1979),
Townsend and Janda (1996).


(2) Progressive is later than Second: launched by Jagiæ (1901), Belic
(1921), Berns^tejn (1961), Shevelov (1964), Stieber 1969.


(3) Progressive is earlier than Second: launched by Pedersen (1905).
This is the dominant chronology. Other representatives: Lehr-
Spl/awin/ski (1911), Trubetzkoy (1922), Jakobson (1929), Milewski
(1932), Mareš (1956 = 1965a = 1965b = 1969), to mention a few.


(4) An extreme version of Pedersen's chronology puts Progressive before
First. This was launched by Martinet (1952, 1955) and later taken over
by Channon (1972), Lunt (1981), and others, e.g. Schwartz (2001).



It is my conviction that those who want to separate Second and
Progressive have not shown they have a case. The Jagic/ chronology is
particularly shaky and as a matter of fact very few people have ever
taken it seriously. The Pedersen chronology in nearly all its forms is
based on a nice and crisp piece of reasoning, which however generates
the wrong facts. The Martinet chronology generates the same wrong facts
and is in addition based on an a priori argument which would require a
cross-linguistic study to be taken seriously. For further discussion
see my "Comedy of errors or inexorable advance? Exploring the
dysfunctionality of the debate about the progressive palatalization of
Slavic", Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 30, 2003, 397-452,
with references to a lot of literature.


The subject is too complicated to be treated coherently in introductory
handbooks, all of which have had to cut corners and none of which has
managed without omitting fundamental issues. So you can't avoid reading
the primary literature.



>
> I believe I have read somewhere that all palatalisations occured in
> the first millennium A.D., but the five or six hundred years between
the
> birth of Christ and the breaking up of Common Slavonic seems like a
> too brief time for so many changes.


This looks a bit like a prejudice. Slavic spread like wildfire in those
centuries. That cannot have happened without multiple contact
situations of the type that produces rapid change. Latin and Germanic
also changed very rapidly during those very same centuries.


Willem