On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 11:44:49 +0100, Mate Kapovic
<
mkapovic@...> wrote:
>From: "Miguel Carrasquer" <mcv@...>
>
>>So we all agree that these forms were originally
>>end-stressed. The question I was trying to answer was why
>>the stress got retracted, something which doesn't happen
>>with other disyllabic endings like -imì, -umì, -yjè, and,
>>even defying Hirt's law, -omìs, -osù (> -osè). [Except the
>>dat. pl. forms (-áms, -óms, etc.), which I don't fully
>>understand].
>
>Actually, in a recent festschrift for Jens, Thomas Olander (which has taken
>part in some of the discussions here) explains -áms and -óms as archaisms
>and -omi`s, -osu` etc. as innovations. He thinks that the stress was
>originally on the thematic vowel and that desinential stress can be
>explained via de Saussure in Lith. and via Dybo in Slavic with further
>analogical developments. I personally agree with his analysis.
I haven't seen Thomas' paper, which perhaps contains some
strong arguments in favour of that view, but on the face of
it, I can't agree.
The PIE (athematic) mobile paradigms had end-stress in the
plural oblique (*-mós, *-sú, *-mí:s), so what one expects is
end-stress transferred to the vowel stems.
We know that this transfer of mobility ("Pedersen's law")
took place _before_ Hirt's law, otherwise the thematic verbs
affected by Hirt's law would have become mobile (barytone
thematics => a.p. c), instead of barytonic as they are.
This means that the Slavic a:-stems are regular: *-ah2-mós,
*-ah2-sú, *-ah2-mí:s become -á:mos, *-á:s(^)u, *-á:mi:s by
Hirt's law. Everything in Slavic is explained by oxytonesis
through Pedersen's law, and retraction by Hirt's law in the
ah2-stems. We cannot apply Dybo's law, because Dybo's law
doesn't appy to mobile paradigms (just try to apply it on a
mobile o-stem singular for a laugh), and we don't need to.
Remains Lithuanian. There we would also have expected
Hirt's law to work in the ah2-stems. And indeed Saussure's
law in the ins.pl. (-ah2mí:s (Hirt)=> -áh2mi:s (Saussure)=>
-a:mí:s (Leskien)=> -omìs). The loc.pl. -osù (-osè) is
analogical one way or another (after all the other
declensions which have -sù (> -sè), or after the a:-stem
ins.pl. once that had restored final accent by Saussure's
law). The problematical case is of course the dat.pl.,
which for starters cannot reflect PIE *-bh(i)ós ~ *-mós.
Old Prussian -mans suggests a form rebuilt by analogy on the
acc.pl., but *-mó:(n)s would surely have triggered
Saussure's law in Lithuanian, and the dat.pl. precisely does
*not* have final stress. Another thing which I don't
understand is the acute on o-stem -áms, and the suggestion
that the ictus was originally on the thematic vowel doesn't
help to explain the acute, rather to the contrary: I can
sort of understand the possibility of a development *-amó:s
> *-áms with retraction of the acute (not *really*
understand it, but I can imagine there to be ways in which
that might have happened). I cannot understand how an
original *-àm..s makes it easier to explain actual -áms.
In sum, the Slavic and Lithuanian paradigms are adequately
explained by applying Pedersen, Hirt and Saussure (with
analogy in the case of -osù). Only the Lith. dat.pl.
remains a mystery. Not so much its accentuation, but more
generally the question "where does it come from" (nothing
can be said about the accent until that question is
adequately answered).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...