27-04-2004 21:02, Christopher Culver wrote:
> Is the difference between Russian "gde" (where) and "kuda" (to where) a
> remnant of PIE ablaut? If so, I would assume that Old Church Slavonic had
> other examples of ablaut. Where might I find reading material on this?
There are lots of reflexes of ablauting roots in Russian, OCS and
elsewhere in Slavic. Your example isn't quite appropriate, since the
relationship between the forms in question is not quite straightforward:
<gde> comes from *kU-de, a combination of interrogative *kU with the
locative particle *de (< *dHe), whereas the /u/ in <kuda> reflects a
Proto-Slavic nasal vowel (*ko~d-, cf. Polish <doka,d> 'whither', <ska,d>
'whence', <ke,dy> 'which way', with preserved nasality).
Typical examples of genuine ablaut look like this:
*bHeudH- > *bjud- (as in OCS bl'usti, bl'udo~ 'observe')
*bHoudH- > *bud- (as in OCS buditi, buz^do~ 'wake [sb.]')
*bHudH- > *bUd- (as in OCS bUde^ti, bUz^do~ 'be awake')
or
*weg^H- > *vez- (as in OCS vesti, vezo~ 'transport')
*wog^H- > *voz- (as in OCS vozU 'wagon', voziti, voz^o~ 'transport [iter.]')
You can easily identify their Russian counterparts.
Piotr