Re: [tied] Old Church Slavonic's crazy orthography

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 18:31:59 +0200 (CEST), Christopher
> Culver <christopher_culver@...> wrote:
>
> >* Why are there two letters representing the same sound /i/, both

the

> > "backwards-n" still used in Russian Cyrillic, and the dotted "I"
> > known in our alphabet? In what situation did the writers use one

or

> > the other?
>
> The "why" is easy: because in the Greek model, H (êta), I
> (iôta), and Y (upsilon) had all merged to /i/. As to when
> one or the other was used, I don't theink there ever was a
> standard. In general, I seems to be used more after vowels,
> and H more after consonants.

Vaillant (_Manuel du vieux slave_, 16.3) supposes that originally <H>
(named "i" 'and' < PSl. *i) and <I> (named "iz^e" 'which' < PSl.
*jIz^e) had different values, <H> rendering the Old Macedonian reflex
of PSl. *i and *ji and <I> rendering the reflex of PSl. *jI- (<IZ^E>
< *jIz^e 'which', <{IE}DINA> < *jedIna ~ *jedina 'one (f.)' as if < *
(j)ed#(j)Ina, <NOV{7I}I> *novUjI 'new (def. m.)' as if < *novU#jI)
and the reflex of PSl. *I before *j (so called "tense jer'": <TRI{IE}

> *trIje 'three', <BI{"iotified big jus"}> *bIjoN 'I strike').

According to him, the phonetic opposition could be that of long [i:]
(<H>) vs. short [i] (<I>) vs. schwa-like [I] (<6> "jerI"), but one
can imagine another opposition, such as that of tense [i] vs. tense
[I] vs. lax [I]. I don't know how to analyze all that in phonemic
terms (and Vaillant seems to be not inclined to clearly distinguish
between the phonetic and phonemic levels in his description).

Sergei