Re: [tied] Re: Slavic neutra ending -o

----- Original Message -----
From: "elmeras2000" <jer@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 7:22 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Slavic neutra ending -o


> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "÷ÁÄÉÍ ðÏÎÁÒÑÄÏ×" <ponaryad@...>
> wrote:
> > PIE *-om usually develops into Slavic -U. Unexpectedly, Slavic
> neutra of o-declension end in -o. As long as know, there were two
> attempts to explain this feature.
> >
> > 1. Vyacheslav Ivanov supposes that in IE o-declension neutra
> originally had zero ending, just as consonant stems do. Slavic -o is
> the trace of this archaic feature (because phonetically it can
> regularly reflect PIE *-o).
> >
> > 2. Another explanaition belongs to Frederik Kortland, who writes
> that in Slavic the IE original *-om in neutra was replaced with -od
> (from pronominal paradigms). Just the same we find in late Anatolian
> languages, e.g. in Lydian.
> >
> > Nevertheless, neither explanation seems to me satisfactory.
> Perhaps, it remains still better to assume that PIE *-om could give
> Slav. *-o sometimes. As a reason for such a conclusion, we find
> several examples where IE neutra seem to show the regular
> development *-om > *-U, and therefore are tracted as masculines,
> e.g. Slav. *darU (m.) vs. Gr. do:ron (n.) "gift". But why could *-om
> give both *-U and *-o, I fail to understand.
> >
> > Does anybody has any idea on this subject?
>
> Illich-Svitych explained this in what looks like a definitive
> manner. The transfer of neuters to masculine only hit words with pre-
> Slavic accent on the initial, cf. dá:rU : peró from *dóH3ro-m :
> *pteró-m. Therefore the change of *-om to -U is apparently confined
> to old unaccented position. Hirt had seen this already, but could
> not integrate the type dvòrU, dvorá which in Slavic accents the
> thematic vowel. The advent of what is now known as Dybo's Law
> changed this: IE *dhwóro-m (Vedic dvá:ram) shifted the accent to the
> second syllable (Dybo's Law: In Slavic the accent is moved from non-
> acute vowels to the next syllables, except in mobile paradigms).
> Before the operation of the accent shift unaccented *-om had already
> changed, the result being an ending with an accented reduced vowel
> which was incapable of retaining the accent in the long run and so
> threw it back on the root causing neoacute intonation in the
> process. Strangely, I have learned this by reading Kortland very.
> very slowly and, not least, following his references.

Illich-Svitych's rule functiones well with *dhwórom > dvor'7 (a. p. b) but
it does not with *déh3rom. Firstly,
Slavic dar7 is not a. p. b but a. p. c, secondly we need Slavic a. p. c (BSl
a. p. 2) for some kind of Meillet's Law deletion of the first syllable acute
(Croatian 'da:r, 'da:ra - a. p. c). If we were to accept secondarily a. p. b
> a. p. c in Slavic (which is supposed to happen quite often), we can hardly
explain why it's not a. p. a (with first syllable acute from PIE laryngeal).

Mate