Re: [tied] jer / full vowel question

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 12:52:26 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>acc. meN/mene teN/tebe
>gen. mene tebe
>dat. mIne^/mi tebe^/ti
>ins. mUnojoN tobojoN
>loc. mIne^ tebe^
>
>It seems that the front vowels are original and the back ones in the
>instrumental are due to some kind of umlaut-like assimilation.

I'm not so sure for the second person: cf. Skt. D túbhyam.

The pattern seems to be *téwe ~ *twé => *twé-bhy- (vs. *méme
~ *[m]mé => *[m]mé-g^hy- c.q. *méwe ~ *m[w]é =>
*m[w]é-g^hy-), which gives Skt. táva ~ tvá- ~ túbhy- vs.
máma ~ má- ~ máhy-, Slavic tébe ~ tob- vs. méne ~ *mon-,
with different kinds of levellings, assimilations and
dissimilations going on.

>There are
>occasional contaminated variants like the rarer dat. mUne^ beside mIne^,
>and cf. dat./loc. tobe^ in much of North Slavic (Pol. tobie, Ukr. tobi,
>Cz. tobe^).
>
>The enclitic forms of the dative (mi, ti) are archaic, though the vowel
>is a bit problematic if they come from *moi, *toi (see Miguel's latest
>posts). So are the monosyllabic forms of the accusative (meN, teN), cf.
>IIr. *ma:m, *twa:m, which are extended variants of old enclitic *me,
>*t(w)e (possibly preserved in Old Polish), whereas the disyllabic forms
>are borrowed from the genitive.
>
>The stem teb- resulted from the reanalysis of the old dative
>*t(w)e-bH(e)i. The *b < *bH crept into other case forms, e.g. gen. *téwe
> > tebe
>
>The yer in the 1sg. results from the accentually conditioned treatment
>of the secondary nasal stem *men- extracted from the reanalysed gen.
>*méne (and perhaps acc. meN). Strong/weak vowel alternation (e/I) may
>have been more natural before a sonorant

Perhaps it was just raising e > i (o > u) in a nasal
environment.

>than before an obstruent, but
>note also such variants as OCS c^eso ~ c^Iso.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...