Re: [tied] Re: Balto-Slavic accentology

From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
Message: 35622
Date: 2004-12-24

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004, willemvermeer wrote:

>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "elmeras2000" <jer@...> wrote:
>
> I have a small and probably stupid question for Jens, who writes:
>
>
> > They [never mind what, WV] had different forms in
> > the other persons, *-h1-ye-, *-éye-, *-eyé-, *-i-ye-, the three
> last
> > of which developed into Slav. -i-, which was subsequently
> > generalized to serve also with the stative e:-verbs.
>
>
>
> How do you reconcile the assumption that *-éye-, *-eyé- and *-i-ye-,
> yielded Slav. -i- with the nom. pl. of the msc. i-stems -Ije < *-eyes?
>
>
> I'm sorry about this, the answer is probably obvious, but I don't
> seem to see it.


That's not silly at all. I considered the possibilities, not being able to
make a definitive choice:

Fundamentally, I find it improbable that Slav. -i- would not be from
*-eye- if Lith. has -y- both in infinitives like daryti and in i-stem
nom.pl. -ys, and in try~s. Feminines have -i in Slavic, but that can
easily be originally the form of the acc.pl. Perhaps vIjetU and gostIje
show that there is no assimilation if the first or the last vowel of a
word is comprised, while there is assimilation -eye- > -iyi- > -ii- > -i:-
in the interior of a word. Or perhaps the masc. nom.pl. *-i:s was restored
as *-ey-es on the analogy of the u-stem form *-ew-es, in which case the
development to /Ije/ would apply only to surviving */eye/, i.e. when
comprising the initial syllable and where restored. It is probably
premature to formulate a definite rule, but it would also be premature to
declare that there is no theoretical room for an assimilatory developmemt
in Slavic. One would certainly like to derive these forms from the phoneme
sequences they reflect in the other IE branches.

Jens