Re: Introduction to PIE Stress

In his book Slavonic accentuation (1957) Chr. Stang argues that there must
have existed mobile thematic nominal paradigms in PIE. He believes that the
"de Saussure's law" explaining shift of accent from the second syllable from
the end to the last syllable only operated in Baltic and that the Slavic
a.p.c (=mobile) nominal paradigms cannot be explained with help of a single
phonetical law. In his view the Slavic has inherited its mobile nominal
accent paradigm from the PIE language. If I understood him well, his idea of
the PIE mobility in thematic nouns and adjectives is that it must have been
a holokinetic type (ictus either on the first or on the last syllable of the
word). He finds a proof for this statement in a Greek relic orgyia (ictus on
the 1st syllable) Gen orgyies (ictus on the long last syllable) and in
Germanic in pairs like Gothic blotha- : Old Saxon blod or Gothic kasa- : Old
Norse ker. He admits though that for the Germanic examples other
explanations could be found, too.
What do you think about the possibility that a mobile (holokinetic) nominal
thematic accent paradigm existed in PIE?

lp
Simona
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