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

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

> That /Rj/ is impossible doesn't worry me (I can analyze
> <giriu> [g'ir'u] as /girju/ and, say, <kac^iukas>
> [kac^'ukas] as /katjukas/ if I want)

You can, even if with some minor problems (<Matiùkas> =/
<Matc^iùkas>, [pjV],[bjV] marginally contrast with [p'V],[b'V])...

>, but the fact is indeed
> that the syllabization is always <gi-riu> etc.

... but doesn't the syllabification constraint itself opt for /C'/
(vs. /Cj/) as an optimal and natural solution? You need no such
constraint when there are no /Cj/ at all.

> As to your question how a hypothetical PIE/PBS *gWr.H-jó:
> (syllabified thusly) would have come out in Modern
> Lithuanian, I cannot tell. It depends on the exact nature
> of the acute diphtongs: did *r.H give /i:r/ with acute
> _length_ on the vowel (I don't think so, because that would
> have made the _syllable_ circumflex, as e.g. acc.sg. fem.
> *-ah2m with acute vowel, but circumflex syllable)

I must admit that the notion of a circumflex syllable with an acute
nucleus doesn't make much sense to me. Does it to anybody on the list?

> or /ir/
> with short vowel and acute (rising) intonation over the
> course of the diphthong? If there was actual vowel length,
> then when were the long diphthongs shortened: before or
> after Saussure's law, and before or after the change in
> syllabification?

First and foremost, how can we speak of diphthongs after the
resyllabifiaction? *i and *r are now heterosyllabic, don't they?

Then, actually, they were not shortened at all: eg, [i] in
(tautosyllabic) <ìR> is short only in a few South-West Auks^taitian
dialects which happened to underlie the standard language. Other
dialects mostly have a long [i:] (and [e.], [a.] in <éR>, <áR> are
semi-long even in the standard language and mostly long in dialects);
eg., their equivalent of <gìrti> could be represented in the standard
orthography as <gýrti>.

> If there was no length, merely tone, then
> what happened to it when the syllable boundary shifted? Or
> was the PBS syllabification already *gi-rjó:? Depending on
> the answers to those questions, we can have *gìriu, giriù,
> *gýriu.

>giriù

That was my point -- the form itself neither supports nor contradicts
the laryngeal deletion in question, it depends on...

By the way, *gìriu is impossible anyway, since resyllabification
preceded Saussure's law (*rj had already given *r', so no segmental
*j anymore) so there had been no diphthong by the time it began to
operate and the law could be fed with either *gí:.r'ó: (<.> --
syllable boundary, í: -- long acuted monophthong which inherited its
acute from an earlier acuted diphthong; there have been no short
acuted monophthongs in Baltic) or *gi.r'ó: (i -- short vowel
incapable of bearing pitch accent, if the acute was lost during
resyllabification). Other options are excluded. *gí:.r'ó: must have
yielded *gýriu, and *gi.r'ó: must have yielded <giriù>.

Sergei