--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> And indeed Saussure's
> law in the ins.pl. (-ah2mí:s (Hirt)=> -áh2mi:s (Saussure)=>
> -a:mí:s (Leskien)=> -omìs).
I may well be missing something from your accentological conception
sketched recently in one of your messages, but if *-áh2- of *-áh2mi:s
doesn't yield Lithuanian acute, then what on earth *does* yield it?
And if it yields, how could Saussure's law operate on it?
> 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.
First and foremost, the pre-contractional form (-ãmus < -àmus) *is*
attested (both in dialects and in Old Lithuanian). The contraction of
bisyllabic desinences being very recent in Lithuanian, its accentual
output is a subject of direct observation: older -V`RVC yields -V'RC
(<'> = acute), while older -VRV`C yields -V~RC (<~> = circuflex; eg.,
akimìs > akim~s etc etc.), its explanation being obvious if one
considers the moraic level.
So it's not the pre-contractional place of the ictus that is a
subject of speculation, but rather whether it reflects the Balto-
Slavic/late-PIE state of affairs or is a later phenomenon of
analogical origin (eg., having been retracted from the last syllable
on the analogy with a:-stems).
Sergei