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

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

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mcarrasquer" <miguelc@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> > >
> > > cf Russian derz^í!, vs búd'!, PSl *-í vs *´-I,
> >
> > They are both PSl. -i.
>
> Why the jer in Russian then? How do you know OCS bo,di isn't
> analogical?

Final -i has a tendency to be reduced in Russian. It's the yer-thing
all over again. CS <boN"di> (a.p. a) had initial stress, but it
happens in Russian even when the -i was stressed (matí > mát', motjí

> móc^'). I'm not sure if there was weakening first, then accent

retraction, then elimination, as in the case of the soft yer, but
that seems likely. The phenomenon is not only Russian (e.g. Polish
has reduced all final -i's, but then in Polish the stress was always
retracted).

There are a few Slavic verbs (perhaps boNd- "be" (but also n-infix?),
krad- "steal", klad- "put", id- "go", êd- "ride") whose present and
imperative stems are based on the PIE imperative in *-dhí (the
infinitive and aorist stem often has a different shape: byti "be",
iti "go", êxati "ride"). In that sense, the imperative *jIdí "go!" is
a descendant of PIE *i-dhí (in accentuation as well), even though the
actual ending -i (instead of *-I) comes from the 2sg. optative.

> > Yers are strong or weak according to Havlík's law, which works
> > independently of the place of the stress. Before Havlík's law,
> > all stressed yers had already lost the stress to the preceding
> > vowel. Of course, that vowel could be a yer, so there were still
> > some stressed yers left (there would have to be, in words with
> > nothing but yers).
>
> In other words, it moved to the preceding syllable, and if that
> contained a jer and was not the first syllable, it moved again,
> iteratively?

No, that's exactly what I'm not saying. A stressed final yer (a.p.
c), e.g. of the Gpl., lost the stress to a preceding vowel. If that
was a yer, the stress stayed there. Fortunately, because Havlík's
law works from the end of the word, that newly stressed yer was
always in strong position.