[tied] Re: Various loose thoughts

From: Thomas Olander
Message: 35986
Date: 2005-01-17

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> But obviously Kortlandt doesn't think it didn't work,
> otherwise he'd just stated that, and nothing more needs to
> be said about Olander's theory.

Sorry, just a few words more...
Kortlandt's article in Baltu Filolog'ija touches upon a relevant problem for the idea that the
seemingly final (not thematic) stress of the ending-stressed word-forms of the Lithuanian
and Slavic mobile paradigms is due to Saussure's and Dybo's laws. Jens also mentioned it
when he read my article in his festschrift. This is the mobility of Pre-BSl. *suhnús in
Lithuanian and Slavic. If this paradigm was thematically stressed when Hirt's law worked,
we would expect all forms of the word to have root-stress.
I explain the mobility in this word in the same way as Mate does (# 35909) - Dauks^a and
other Old Lithuanians (plus Illich-Svitych 1963: 75-76, p. 59 in the translation) actually do
vote for original root-stress in this word. The mobility in Modern Lithuanian might not be
original; spread of mobility is a phenomenon we've heard of before in this language. For
the Slavic mobility, as Mate said, at some point u-stems seem to have become mobile.

To focus again on the basic idea, I agree that we cannot exclude that the final stress in the
relevant forms of the mobile paradigms is analogical. It's just funny that our well-known
accent laws would yield the same result and, as a bonus, they solve the riddle of the
thematic stress of the dative plural.
As to the reduction of *-mas to -mus to -ms, note that Stang got convinced of it after
having read Kazlauskas (Stang 1975: 49). So did I.

Thomas

P.S. A few references:
- Kazlauskas, I., "O balto-slavjanskoj forme datel'nogo pad. mn. i dv. ch." – Baltistica 4/2
(1968): 179–183.
- Olander, T., "The ending-stressed word-forms of the Baltic and Slavic mobile
paradigms". – Adam Hyllested, Anders Richardt Jørgensen, Jenny Helena Larsson and
Thomas Olander (eds), Per aspera ad asteriscos. Studia Indogermanica in honorem Jens
Elmegård Rasmussen sexagenarii Idibus Martiis anno MMIV. Innsbruck 2004: 407–417.
- Olander, T., "The dative plural in Old Latvian and Indo-European." – Forthcoming in IF.
- Stang, Chr. S. Stang, Ergänzungsband. Register, Addenda und Corrigenda zur
Vergleichenden Grammatik der baltischen Sprachen. Oslo / Bergen / Tromsö 1975.