A controversial issue in Slavic accentology is Russ. píl,
pilá, pílo. One would expect Hirt's Law to have worked,
making the paradigm barytonic/acute (AP a), as in bíl, bíla,
bílo.
Kortlandt's solution (*ph3ilah2 fails to trigger Hirt's law,
but Hi > i:) makes no sense to me. Rasmussen's analogical
solution (monosyllabic aor. pi:t becomes circumflex pî(t)
automatically, and by analogy this triggers mobility of the
l-participle; in biti, however, the analogy did not work)
leaves me wondering if there is perhaps a better solution.
One important discovery in laryngeal theory is that the fate
of *iH and *uH sequences can depend on the nature of the
laryngeal: *ih2 > ya:, *ih3 > yo:, *ih1 > i: / *uh2> wa:,
*uh3 > wo:, *uh1 > u: (in Greek and Tocharian).
Hirt's law draws the accent leftward in Balto-Slavic if
there was a _consonantal_ laryngeal in the first/root
syllable. What if in Balto-Slavic, too, *ih2/*ih3 and
*uh2/*uh3 differed from *ih1 and *uh1 in vocalizing the
laryngeal?
We would then have *pih3l- > *piOl- > *pi:~l, *bhuh2l- >
*buAl- > *bu:~l (circumflex after contraction of /i/, /u/
with the vocalized laryngeal), but *bhih1l- > *biHl- >
*bí:l- (acute, triggers Hirt's law).
If I divide the modern Russian "short" verbs in -iti and
-yti into two groups:
Like bil, bíla:
LIV
bit' *bheiH-
shit' *syeuH-
brit' *bhreiH-
myt' *myeuh1-
vyt' ?
kryt' *kreuH-
nyt' ?
ryt' *reuH-
Like pil, pilá:
vit' *wyeh1- (!)
lit' *leiH-
pit' *peh3i-
zhit' *gwyeh3-
gnit' ?
plyt' ?
byt' *bhweh2-
LIV isn't very helpful in the first category. But the only
specified laryngeal (that of myt') fits. In the second
group, vit' has *h1, but the others fit: pit', zhit', byt'.
That looks encouraging...
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...