Re: [tied] Re: Balto-Slavic -RHj-?

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 11:43:15 +0000, Sergejus Tarasovas
<s.tarasovas@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>>> Yes, and that was my point, and why I think the Lith. forms
>>> *are* relevant to Slavic.
>
>I still think they probably aren't. My point was that whether the
>laryngeal was deleted from *-RHj- (R={*r,*l,*n,*m}, but not *u) or
>not, the (Modern Standard) Lithuanian outcome of, say, *gWr.Hjó:
>would be <giriù> anyway. Otherwise you would have to postulate that
>at the time Saussure's law operated the syllabification still was
>*gí:r.jó: (<.> -- syllable boundary), because otherwise we would have
>*gi.rjó: (or, rather, *gi.r'ó: with a palatalized r') with
>heterosyllabic i+r, so no acute (syllabic pitch accent can't cross a
>syllable boundary, can't it?). But the syllabification like -R.j- is
>rather improbable even in Proto-Balto-Slavic, far less at the time of
>Saussure's law, which is a rather late phenomenon (hasn't operated in
>Latvian) and by which time *j had already disappered from
>etymological *Rj as a segmental phoneme, yielding a palatalized *R'
>(vs. unpalatalized *R).

That's what we have in Latvian (e.g. nirt nir,u < *nr.H-).

>So the Lithuanian forms may be irrelevant in
>the sence they neither support nor contradict Pinault's law.
>
>The only way I see to return the relevance to the Lithuanian forms in
>question is to postulate that had the laryngeal been not deleted,
>*gWr.Hjó: would yield *gí:r.jó: rather early (before the Balto-Slavic
>resyllabification of *-R.j-), so that by the time of Saussure's law
>(after the resyllabification) we would have *gí:.r'ó:, which would
>yield Lithuanian +<gýriu> instead of the actual <giriù>, thus the
>laryngeal *has* been deleted. But then it's a matter of the relative
>chronology of the following processes:
>
>(1) *.VRH. > *.V':R. (Balto-Slavic "acutization" of tautosyllabic
>VRH);
>(2) *R.j > *.Rj (> *r')(Balto-Slavic resyllabification of *R.j, *R=
>{r,l,m,n});
>(3) Saussure's law.
>
>If it indeed was (1), then (2), then (3), then your are right and the
>Lith. forms are relevant, but not so much because <giriù> is end-
>stressed, as because it has a short root vowel rather than long
>acuted one (<giriù> rather that +<gýriu>). Is that what you meant? If
>not, how do you imagine the exact way from *gWr.Hjó: to
><giriù> /g'i.r'ù/?

What I meant was simply that if we take the suffix *-yé- as
having had the structure -CV-, blind application of the
syllabification rules would yield *gWr.H-yé- = gWr.:-yé-
(where /r.:/ is a traditional "long syllabic resonant"),
which presumably would have given Slavic *z^ir"joN (a.p. a)
and Lith. *gìr-ju (syllabified like dìr-bu). This is what
happens if we add a -CV- suffix like the infinitive:
z^Ir"-ti, gìr-ti.

But the Balto-Slavic reflexes suggest a syllabification
gWr.-Hyé > gir-jé- with no acute in the first syllable. I
must say I had never heard of Pinault's law, but if that is
correct, it's not just a Balto-Slavic thing, but general
PIE.

Another special treatment of the laryngeal is seen in the
sequence *-ayH-/*-oyH- (or perhaps more generally
*-(a/o)RH-?), which, according to Rasmussen ("On Hirt's law
and laryngeal vocalization") yields *-oyH- and not expected
*-oy&-, thus explaining why Hirt's law worked in *poih2-mé:n
(Lith. piemuõ 1>3) and daiH-wé:r > Lith. díeveris, Slav.
dê"verI. This immediately explains the accent of po``joN,
pê"ti, pê"la (*poih-o:, syllabified poi-ho: > poi-o: >
po-jo:, and poih-téi, poih-láh2 > póih-tei, póih-lah2 by
Hirt's law), a verb which I had previously failed to
understand, so Jens must be correct.

>By the way, any ideas why we still do have <ý> in the preterite
>(gýriau, gýrei, gýre:)?

Not offhand.

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