Re: [tied] Re: Nominative Loss. A strengthened theory?

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 19:00:50 +0000, Sergejus Tarasovas
<S.Tarasovas@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>>I
>> have no problem with the Lith. developments -ui~ or -õ: (if
>> Z^emaitian points to -ó:, I would understand that less
>> well).
>
>I've just re-checked. The ending shows no Saussure-Leskien
>(ve.~lkô.u 'wolf' D.sg. vs. ve.~lkò. In.sg.) and, as it turns out,
>has Auks^taitian parallels (vil~kuo), so it's *-õ:. BTW, some
>Auks^taitian dialects have non-acuted -u (vil~ku) -- a real mystery
>for Lithuanists, AFAIK.
>
>> Slavic probably also had *o:, which like *e:
>> subsequently developed into broken diphtongs *úo (ô) *íe
>> (ê).
>
>This is interesting. I think that Common Slavic *e^ was more or less
>[eæ] (raised to [ie] dialectally). The odd thing about this *uo ~ *ie
>thing is that it is *y (*u:) and not *u (your *uo) that looks like a
>back correlate of *e^ in Common Slavic.

In what sense does it look that way?

The proto-Slavic vowel inventory was asymmetrical (short
vowels already so in PBS): i e a(>o) u, long i: e: a: u:,
diphthong ai, au, (ei>i:). The rare phoneme that resulted
from *-o:i(-) momentarily filled the gap in the long back
vowel slot for /o:/. I suppose it was the emergence of new
long vowels /e:/ /o:/ from short /e/, /o/ what caused the
breaking of ê (and ô). au > u: must have caused u: > y(:).
Between them they swallowed up the two instances of ô
(dat.sg. -ô > -u, ins.pl. -ôh > -u: > -y).


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...