Re: Slavic ptc.praes.act.

From: pielewe
Message: 39755
Date: 2005-08-25

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 09:54:56 +0000, pielewe
> <wrvermeer@...> wrote:


> The textbook (Leskien-9) does mention it:


> "Eine glagolitische Nebenform des [SMALL YUS], nämlich [
> SMALL YUS], wird nur nur im N. sg. m. der Partizipien wie
> <nesy> angewandt [..], die Aussprache ist nicht sicher
> bestimmbar"

> Apparently, this variant was beyond the typographical
> possibilities of Carl Winter Universitätsverlag in 1969.


Leskien-9 is a photocopy reproducing the last edition that was
produced while Leskien was still alive (1910), with minor changes of
the type you can introduce without disturbing the original lay-out
etc. In the quoted passage there is an extra space after "nämlich"
and I have always wondered if the original edition perhaps did have
the tail, but I never could muster up the energy to inspect it.

The extra letter is mentioned in every reasonably good grammar, e.g.
(in addition to Leskien) Van Wijk (1931: 191), Diels (1932/1963: 31),
Meillet (Slave commun 1934: 334), Trubetzkoy (1954: 36), Schaeken &
Birnbaum (1999: 78), but usually in passing.

Back when people still believed OCS was a language with a regular
contrast of hard and soft consonants (the Russian way), the letter
was interpreted as indicating an <eN> preceded by a hard consonant.
The ending could then be explained as an analogical intrusion from
the soft inflection (see, e.g. Meillet, who neatly explains why the
special letter is particularly frequent in the definite vorm).
However, after that idea was abandoned, nothing was left but to
assume that some dialects of the language underlying OCS had an extra
nasal vowel (e.g. Trubetzkoy).



> Fortunately, it's in Unicode now (GLAGOLITIC CAPITAL LETTER
> SMALL YUS WITH TAIL U+2C25 and GLAGOLITIC SMALL LETTER SMALL
> YUS WITH TAIL U+2C55).


I'm very happy, although I would be even happier if Old Cyrillic
would be treated as entirely distinct from modern Cyrillic instead of
a mere variant.


> There is another letter there (YO), which in the draft
> proposal for the Glagolitic encoding is described as: "For
> the letter ÷ even the phonetic value is uncertain: ö, jö or
> jo have been suggested. We have used YO, which was also used
> to name this character in ISO 6861:1996." Is there any
> other information about this sign?


A suitable place to look is probably Trubetzkoy's grammar
(1954/1968). Is it the sign that has the numerical value 7000 (p. 22)?



Willem