From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 35929
Date: 2005-01-15
>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:No, I was just being stupid.
>> 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'tOK. So if I understand correctly the i- and u-stem endings
>> 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analogical origin (eg., having been retracted from the last syllable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).