Re: [tied] *kuningaz (again)

----- Original Message -----

From: george knysh

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 3:10 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] *kuningaz (again)

*****GK: Thank you Piotr (and thanks to Miguel for his
parallel contribution). How does one explain the sound
shift away from "g" in Slavic? Esp. East Slavic. In
the latter, one has both "Varyagi" and "Variazi"
developing from "Vaeringar" (with the nasal loss), but
I have never seen "knyagi" only "knyazi". And the "g"
to "z" may even have antedated the loss of nasals
here, since there is an Arabic text of the 8th c.
which explains that "knez" is the Saqaliba term for
"malik".******

It's a regular development -- the so-called progressive palatalisation in late Common Slavic (actually it seems not to have reached the Krivichian dialect). The whole story is rather long, but the essentials can be summarised as follows: the velar consonants *k, *g and *x were palatalised when preceded by *I, *i or *IN (which eventually developed into the nasal vowel *e,). The result of the palatalisation was:

 

*g > *Z [dz'] (> East Slavic /z/, but /dz/ in Polish and OCS, hence <ksia,dz>, <kUne,ZI>)

 

*k > *c [ts']

 

*x > *s' (> West Slavic /s^/, elsewhere /s/)

 

The progressive palatalisation is indeed older than the denasalisation of the vowel in East Slavic. It took place in preliterate times, so you won't find this *g recorded in writing. I am not sure if the existence of the variant <var'agi> (which reflects an old acc.pl. in *-g-y, while <var'azi> would be the expected nom.pl. even without the progressive palatalisation) simply demonstrates that the loan is later than <kn'az'>, or if there's anything more to it (Krivichian influence? failure of the palatalisation to apply before the originally back vowel *-y?). That's Sergei's field and I am sure he will soon give us his opinion.

 

Piotr