>> As for the expected Slavic development of
word-initial *oi-/*ai-, I'd expect at least partial confusion of *ei- and *oi-
there, like that of *e- ~ *o-/*a-, *eu- ~ *ou-/*au- (> *ju- ~ *u-) or *e:- ~
*a:-/o:- (> *e^- ~ *a-).
> To be sincere that confusion is a news
for me. Examples?
I say "jutro", you say "utro", I say
"jezioro", you say "ozero" ..., <a->, <ja-> and <je^-> vary
quite freely in OCS. I do not mean a complete merger in PSl, but local mergers
leading to a lot of dialectal variation.
>> There are other possible examples, e.g. *iskati 'look for' (Lith.
ies^k-, Germanic *ai(s)-sk- 'ask, seek'). I'm not sure if the accent is
significant.
> But what about recently discussed Slavic *(j)e^snU ~
Lith. ai's^kus? The pitch accent is the same.
Right. That's what confusion is about :)). Either the
etymology is wrong (we don't even know for sure if the Baltic and Slavic etyma
are related or similarly derived -- maybe the Slavic word is simply *a:s-no-
< *h2ah1s-no-, i.e. related but not parallel), or the accent is NOT
significant, or both. My point is that the reflexes of *oi-/*ai- in Slavic may
be hard to predict. >> _Final_ *-oi became *-i (via *-e.:)
in the nom.pl. of thematic masculines.
> Curiously enough, this is
often ascribed to the effect of the _circumflex_ accent (which is rather
unnatural for me if we accept at least the assumed original Baltic phonetical
rendering of a diphthong's circumflex: it's the _first_ component which is
acoustically more prominent, not the second one).
... which simply means that there are still problems waiting
to be solved.
Piotr