Re: Slavic accentology: "Pedersen's Law"

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

> 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.

You appear to have the language users on your side - they too found
it too complicated to have final accent aopposed to non-final accent
and so polarized it to final versus initial. But it certainly was
not that way from the beginning: the IE accent basically alternates
between adjacent syllables. In root nouns that would be the first
and the last, which may have been a factor in the rise of the
polarized accent.

> >> 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.

Then what *did* you imply? What caused you to use the fact that
Winter's law does not cause stress retraction to assign it to a
later period? I can't follow your reasoning here.

> >> 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.

I don't think we can, for the languages agree too closely. The fact
that the neocircumflex was caused by contracted vowels must mean
that there were contractions already in Proto-Slavic, if only as
variants. It should be remembered that new forms begin as variants
in earlier periods. This demands at least two simultaneous layers to
be understood.

Jens