--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> I was just re-reading Jens' "Die Vorgeschichte der BS
> Akzentuierung", and I see that Latvian infinitives in -i:t
> and -u:t show the same phenomenon.
>
> Many of them have Dehnton (= acute barytone):
> sku~t, gu~t, pu~t, s^u~t
> ri~t, mi~t, pazi~t
> This is in accordance with Hirt's law.
>
> But others have Brechton (pointing to formerly end-stress):
> bût "be",
> liêt/lît "pour/rain", vît "turn,wind", dzît "live", mît
> "change", pît "twine", plîties virsu: "sich aufdrängen",
>
> where at least the first four match the Slavic forms nicely
> (bylá, lilá, vilá, zhilá).
Thank you for the flattering attention. I would suppose that the
shared surprises go back to a time preceding the separation of
Baltic and Slavic. It is my impression (but admittedly no more than
a simple overall impression) that the mobile verbs of this type are
more fundamental lexemes than those that show full mobility by
Hirt's Law. The pivotal point was shown by Stang to be in the aorist
since that is what the l-participle is associated with. The trouble
is that there are two possible avenues: Either(1) 2/3sg *bhuH-s/t
became circumflex because it was monosyllabic. Or (2) The old
paradigm *bú:-s/t, 3pl *buv-ént, was mobile. Contrary to what I have
said earlier I now believe that possibility (2) is the easier and
more likely one. If original mobility was retained in some basic
lexemes, but levelled away in others, it could easily lead to
mobility in the "aorist system" of byti, but immobility in that of
biti. In Latvian the mobility was then extended to the entire verb,
including the infinitive.
Thus, the dispute over the regular tone of monosyllables is not
necessarily at issue here. I still think that an undisturbed *bhuH-
s/t would end up circumflex by^ (SbCr bi^), while acute bi`` (from
biti 'strike') is analogical: If the rule stipulates circumflex on
monosyllables, negative examples are much easier to explain by
analogy than the other way round. That is only marginally affected
if some of the facts can have two reasons.
Jens