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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Mate Kapoviæ <mkapovic@...> wrote:

>
> On Uto, sijeèanj 30, 2007 7:54 pm, mandicdavid reèe:
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Mate Kapoviæ <mkapovic@> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Uto, sijeèanj 30, 2007 12:17 am, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal reèe:
> >> > On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 23:53:30 +0100 (CET), Mate Kapoviæ
> >> > <mkapovic@> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >>On Pon, sijeèanj 29, 2007 11:20 pm, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

reèe:

> >> >>> Pardon my ignorance, but I was wondering about that. When
> >> >>> Ivs^ic''s law causes withdrawal of the stress from a weak
> >> >>> yer to the preceding syllable, that syllable receives
> >> >>> neo-acute intonation. But what intonation does the next
> >> >>> syllable receive when the stress is moved forward from an
> >> >>> initial weak yer? Apparently, in Slovak (though not in
> >> >>> Czech or Polish) dU``cer- > dcé:r-,
> >> >>
> >> >>Oh it happens also in Czech and Polish, but dialectally... I
> > think there
> >> >>are forms like dcóra in both...
> >> >>
> >> >>> with lengthening of /e/
> >> >>> (neo-acute?). In kc'i^ / hc^i^, the intonation remains
> >> >>> falling, but what happens when the newly stressed syllable
> >> >>> is not final?
> >> >>
> >> >>Well, the oblique cases in Croatian are G. kæe``ri, D. kæe``ri
> > which
> >> >>should derive from *d7``kter- so I guess that answers your
> > question.
> >> >>
> >> >>And it doesn't just occur when the jor is accent, cf. Kajkavian
> > *v7
> >> >>ju´´tro > (v) ju^tro.
> >> >
> >> > Does that mean that these are two different soundlaws,
> >> > separated in time (1. retraction from weak yer with
> >> > neo-acute on preceding syllable; 2. advancement from weak
> >> > yer with "neo"-circumflex on next syllable)? Or can they
> >> > still be simultaneous (retraction from weak yer with
> >> > neo-acute on preceding syllable, if there is one, else
> >> > advancement from weak yer without neo-acute on next
> >> > syllable)?
> >>
> >> Some of it may be simultaneous, some if it may not be... I don't
> > know. But
> >> I don't think we should lump it all together...
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > I still find the whole story about weakening of stressed yers

rather

> > weird despite all the explanations in this thread. However, what I
> > think is that stress (which is assigned automatically in

enclinomena

> > forms) simply started being assigned to the second syllable when

the

> > yer in the first one got weak. In other words, the yer got weak

and

> > thus unstressable, and the second (now indeed the first) syllable

got

> > stressed. The tone is, of course, falling because it's in an
> > enclinomena form.
> > In languages like Slovak (dcé:ra) this syllable must have been
> > lengthened after the shortening of vowels in long falling

syllables,

> > and this means, I suppose, this 'shift' was carried through (and

yers

> > in the 1st syllable got weak) after the shortening.
> > Thus:
> > 1. *'gra:dU > 'gradU
> > 2. *'dUcer- > 'dce:r-
>
> *dUcer- > dcér- is basically a process of compensatory lengthening

so

> there's no real problem in getting the length there.
>

Sure, but I wasn't talking about the length. I was talking about
tone - what we have in kæi^ is neither neo-circumflex nor neo-acute,
it's rather the same thing we had in dU``t'i, only it's long because
it's on a long vowel. There was no stress advancement at all - the
stress has always (since the Meillet's Law?) been in the same place,
i.e. on the first syllable, and the only difference is that the
syllabic structure of the word changed from *dUt'i to *dt'i. Of
course, the stress can be automatically assigned to the proclitic, if
there's one.

In any case, the two processes you were talking about might well have
been simultaneous - if both final and initial yers got weakened at
the same time. However, I don't think it was a single sound law, they
can rather be regarded as inevitable consequences of the weakening of
yers.

Synchronically, the apparent 'advancement' was not a new rule,
whereas the retraction was.