Re: [tied] Slavic accentology: "Pedersen's Law"

On Sat, 04 Dec 2004 15:28:21 +0000, elmeras2000
<jer@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>> Summarizing.
>>
>> What I gather is that the developments that led to Slavic
>> accentuation are chronologically the following:
>>
>> 1) Reshuffling of PIE accentual paradigms:
>> - (some) thematic nouns and verbs acquire mobility
>> - mobility becomes polarized (barytone/oxytone)
>> For convenience's sake I'll call this whole ensemble of
>> analogical changes "Pedersen's law".
>
>I do think that this is very true. The mobility of Lith. algà,
>al~gaN, algo~s is exacly the same as that of dukte:~, dùkteriN,
>dukterès (> -er~s). It has not been understood that the dative
>singular is barytone; I credited its accent to the locative (since
>it is occasionally the syntactic successor of that case, cf. the
>absolute dative), but that is unnecessary as I see now: Final accent
>is retained, while non-final accent is shifted to the beginning of
>the word (or of the entire accent group). And in i- and u-stems the
>genitive had *-éy-s, *-éw-s, while the dative had *-éy-ey, *-éw-ey.
>That of course means end-stress in the genitive, but not in the
>dative.

It's ingenious. But after some thought, I think I'll stick
with your earlier explanation of the locative influencing
the dative. The problems I have are:

While the form *-ewey (> *-owey > -ovi) is attested in
Slavic, *-éyey is attested only in Vedic and nowhere else.
I don't think PIE had separate forms for the dative and
locative in the i-stems. Analogical pressure (on the
a:-stems) only from the u-stems seems unlikely.

Moreover, in my opinion it's a question of _initial_ accent
vs. _final_ accent (not merely final vs. non-final, which is
too abstract for my taste). While *dhug&2té:r an its
paradigm played a role in establishing the pattern for the
oxytone forms, the example of *h2ákmo:n and *nébhos and such
was just as important for establishing the pattern for the
barytone forms of the mobile paradigm.

>> 2) Hirt's law. A non-vocalic laryngeal in the first
>> syllable attracts the stress. Raises the number of
>> barytones.
>>
>> [3) Winter's law. Causes acute tone, but does not (usually)
>> result in retraction of the stress, so must come after
>> Hirt's]
>
>Only if the prosodic trigger was the same in the two cases. Since
>that does not have to be so, nothing seems to be really known about
>that point. It will be an argument only to those who assume
>that "glottalization" had coalesced with laryngeals. How they can
>believe they know that is beyond me.

I wasn't implying anything of the kind. I do observe that
both Winter's law and laryngeals result in acute prosody.
But that includes vocalized laryngeals that do *not* trigger
Hirt's law, so there is no basis even _without_ Winter's
law.

>> The above were Balto-Slavic. Now for the Slavic laws:
>>
>> 4) Dybo's law. Non-acute barytones become mesotonic
>> (AP(b)).
>
>Dybo's law moved the accent from a non-acute to the next syllable.
>Mobile paradigms were immune to it (speakers of BSl. LOVE mobility),
>but the law worked in non-mobile paradigms and in isolated words.
>
>> 5) Meillet's law. Mobile paradigms lose their original
>> stress (acute, circumflex or short) in the non-oxytone forms
>> and become enclinomenic ["unstressed"] vs. oxytone.
>
>Mobility is extended to work even on the components of long vowels,
>so that initial accent yields a falling tone (first-mora accent) if
>the paradigm is mobile. The extension to the accentual unit of the
>sentence is not part of Meillet's findings, but that occurred too.
>Thomas has shown me that it may well be common to the entirety of
>Balto-Slavic and so be much older than this.
>
>> 6) Stang's law. Stress is retracted from weak yers and
>> (circumflex) long medial vowels, resulting in neo-acute
>> accent on the preceding syllable.
>>
>> 7) Neo-circumflex and other accentual changes are
>> post-Common Slavic.
>
>I don't think they can be. Stang just says the "circumflex" in
>question is not phonetically diifferent from other circumflexes, but
>that is quite beyond the point he should be making. The fact is that
>a circumflex appears where an acute was expected, unless some Pan-
>Slavic change of acute to neo-circumflex is accepted. So that should
>be accepted.

I haven't looked at the neocircumflex much yet, so correct
me if I'm wrong. The impression I got from browsing trough
that part of "Osnovy" is that in S.Cr., Slov. and West
Slavic (as far as can be observed) we have a circumflex
instead of an acute in certain positions, most notably in
the G.pl. (*-U:), to a lesser degree also before lengthened
thematic -e:-, and to an even lesser degree before other
"old" long endings, as well as before new contractions
(-ojoN > -o:/-u:, -aja > -a:) and lengthenings (to do with
loss of yers). These last circumstances clearly point to a
post-Common Slavic timeframe, and from the point of view of
what I am planning to do (which is try to reproduce and
verify the accentual laws automatically with the Sound
Change Applier), I think I can safely ignore the
neo-circumflex, as long as I get the lengths right.

>> About "Pedersen's law". This is perhaps the most mysterious
>> and underspecified one. First, it's not a phonetic law, but
>> an analogical one. Second, it's the most sensitive one to
>> everyone's opinions on the reconstructed PIE accent. []
>
>Right, therefore I now suggest the above.
>
>> An exception are the (masculine) mobile o-stems, where there
>> was a tendency to make the whole singular (except the
>> instrumental?) barytone and the whole plural (except the
>> accusative) oxytone.
>
>That's the unmysterious part: o-stems did not follow the mobility
>craze. Only the acc.pl. did, getting initial accent in end-stressed
>paradigm. This may be seen as a complete standardization of the
>acc.pl. which has initial accent in all words.

That can't be right. The core of the mobile (AP(c)) o-stems
are the PIE oxytone o-stem masculines and adjectives.
Somehow, we got from an oxytone to a barytone paradigm:

*gWih3wós > z^ívU
*gWih3wóm > z^ívU
*gWih3wóei > z^ívu
*gWih3wói > z^ívê
*gWih3wóod > z^íva

Acc., loc. and dat. are automatic. The abl. > gen. has no
counterparts anyway, and that left only the nominative
(which was also pulled back in the plural, in Slavic at
least). [The ins.sg. kept final accent in the isolated
vc^erá].

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