Re: Balto-Slavic C-stems / long vowel endings

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mandicdavid" <davidmandic@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@>

wrote:

> > >
> > > On 2007-01-22 22:21, tgpedersen wrote:
> > >
> > > > Specifically: How can a stressed vowel become a jer? Jers are
> > > > ghosts of departed (well, departing) vowels. Vanishing is

what

> > > > *un*stressed vowels do.
> > >
> > > Reduced is not necessarily the same thing as unstressed. There

are

> > > many Slavic words with no other vowels but jers (*pIsU 'dog',
> > > *mUxU 'moss', *sUnU 'sleep, dream', *krUvI 'blood (acc.)',

*dInI

> > > 'day' etc.). In such cases one of the jers is reinforced
> > > phonologically, yielding a full vowel again. The quality of

that

> > > vowel varies dialectally (cf. OCS sUnU, Bulg. s&n [with a

central

> > > shwa-type vowel!], SCr. san, Russ. son, Pol./Cz./Slk. sen) and

it

> > > often disappears in inflected word-forms and
> > > derivatives:
> > >
> > > *pIsU, gen. *pIsa > Pol. pies, psa
> > > *pIsUkU (dimin.), gen. *pIsUka > OPol. psek, pieska (> Mod.Pol.
> > > piesek, pieska)
> >
> >
> > Not all yers became 'weak'. First they became lax (similar to
> > English vowels in 'big' and 'pull'). Later some of them shifted

to

> > e/o (cf. the development of Latin short i and u) or schwa, which

in

> > some languages subsequently yielded a.
> > The rest of them disappeared. Something similar happened in some
> > Croatian dialects, where the short i is frequently reduced or
> > dropped: vid (2sg imperative: look!) etc.
> > This probably has something to do with metrical properties of

words

> > in PSl.
>
> cf Russian derz^í!, vs búd'!, PSl *-í vs *´-I, ie PIE *-éi vs *´-i.
> Since the two forms are related by stress-induced ablaut, the
> variation must go back to PIE (and impv *-éi-/*´-i- is threfore PIE,
> and traditionally assumed *-dhi- is impv. of *dhe:- as aux. verb. in
> perifrastic composition.
>
>
> > The stressed yer weren't 'weak' - they were ordinary lax vowels.
> >
> > What I don't understand is how the word-final yers could

disappear

> > even if they were stressed.
>
>
> I think there is something methodologically wrong with a language

with

> 'normal' and 'supershort' vowels. Aren't linguists backprojecting

the

> present state of affairs onto PSlav. (or even to ChSl.)? How about
> renaming them 'long' and 'short' as they are named in any other
> language with two vowel lengths, which would make PSlav i/u into

i:/u:

> and I/U into i/u? That means stressed 'jers' (I question-mark them
> now, they are i/u) were not reduced to ghostly I/U, like the
> unstressed ones were, and with that formulation we need no
> 'reinforcing' of stressed 'jers' (and that saves us one step forth

and

> one step back).

I agree with you about your claim that stressed yers were 'normal'
short vowels. I just think they were lax - so that they didn't merge
with tense i and y after the latter vowels had been shortened in some
contexts. This also explains the fact that yers (sometimes) became
tense before a 'j' (mladyi 'young, Nsg.m.' from mladUjI, Cro.
mijem 'wash, 1sg.pres' from mIje-...). It's quite an ordinary
phenomenon then.
The point is, however, that the UNSTRESSED yers (and not all of them)
became 'reduced' and eventually disappeared. Now, the question is why
did the stress shift from word-final yers to the preceding syllable
and not from, say, e or o?