Re: [tied] IE genitive

>> From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen [mailto:jer@...]
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 11:50 AM
>
>> Not generally, but in a case like this one it certainly can.
>> Skt. icchaïti has zero-grade as expected in an sk-present.
>> That is certainly not the case with Lith. iïes^k-o- (older
>> -a-), Slav. is^c^e- also with acute. The short -i- of icchati
>> precludes a laryngeal, so the acute tone cannot be ascribed
>> to a prestage with "*HeyHs-"; nor can it be Winter's Law
>> since there is no voiced stop in it; it can however easily be
>> *H2e:ys-, the expected lengthened grade of *H2eys-. The
>> example is even so good as to be
>> decisive: the Dehnstufe-to-circumflex theory is simply wrong.
>>
>
> I'm not so sure. First of all, what makes you reconstruct Proto-Slavic
> *iskati rather than *jIskati (SCr.<ìskati>)? Or do you postulate an
> alternation *jIskati ~ *is^c^e-? But does SCr. <îsc'e> point to an old
> acute? As for the Baltic forms, taking into account extremely developed
> metatony, how one can be sure we deal with something original here?
> Lith. <ies^kóti> has the ictus retracted to the suffix by Saussure's
> law, which would point to an original non-acute pitch (cf. <láidoti> ~
> <léisti> etc., where the ictus is not retracted), and the accent of
> <íes^ko-> well may have been influenced by forms such as <ýs^kus>,
> <éis^kus> 'clear' (also by semantic contamination of 'seek' and
> 'explain, make clear'). One example is not enough to be decisive: IMHO,
> it takes a representative sample to be guaranteed against metatonic
> noise.

There is an ablaut in Slavic between the infinitive *jIska- (with acute on
the -a-) and the present *jisko-/jis^te- (with acute on the i). When I
wrote my note I looked it up and saw there was an acute on the prs. in
Slovene; I now see the C^akavian dictionary gives the same for SbCr. on
the whole. In other books on SbCr. I find the "double grave" on the i in
the present stem confirming the acute; the long falling tone is the one
regular with j-presents (which is^te- can also be, but not OCS iskoN), or
it may reflect the neaoacute of the mobile type which is productive. If
Baltic and Slavic have a common origin here, Lith. ies^kóti has replaced
earlier *is^kóti which would cause no problems. Vaillant is most reluctant
to speak about the accent of the verb (Gramm.comp.III,204), apparently
because the acute does not fit his expectations. Klingenschmitt gives an
account of the matter (Das altarmen. Vb., 67), crediting the acute either
to a lost s-aor. or to compounding with a preverb. As for the acute on
lengthened grade, you don't have to make due with a single example.

Jens