--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Mate Kapovic" <mkapovic@...> wrote:
>...
> As I understand it, Kortlandt assumes that the long neo-acute in
gen. pl.
> *gor'U > *go~rU in a. p. c is a regular development (this is also
the case
> in the a. p. c present tense like *neset'I > *nese~tI as you state
in your
> 1984 article). Thus, he assumes that in *st'olU there was no Dybo's
law
> because *stolU is short not long (and the a. p. b gen. pl. is long
> analogically to a. p. c gen. pl.). But I really don't see what is
gained by
> supposing this kind of development. Analogical development of gen.
pl. in a.
> p. b is required anyway and the lengthening in present tense
(*neset'I) is
> also not very conviencing.
Very briefly and superficially.
A. For the GPl what is needed is a source for the length alternation
you find in SCr, Sln and Slk, and in traces in Cz and P. In
Kortlandt's system, the loss of the stressability of final jers is
that source. Once length is present in (c), its spread to (a) and (b)
is a trivial analogy, as is its virtually total elimination in modern
Czech. But it has to start somewhere and that's a point where most
systems are acutely vulnerable.
B. For the present tense, the mechanism explains a number of
distributions that are actually attested, e.g. the link between
length of the thematic vowel and type (c) which Boutelje (and much
later Stang) established for Central Slovak, and also the type of
distribution of length and brevity you have in such C^ak dialects as
Susak and Vrgada. Living systems all over the Slavic world have
intricate distributions of length and brevity and it just does not do
to state, as has been done so often, that these are due to analogical
carry-over of length found elsewhere because there were no similar
distributions elsewhere. Most accentological theories don't even
begin to explain those distributions.
> Also, I cannot find an explanation in Kortlandt 1975 why does the
nom. sg.
> of a. p. b have a neo-acute (*poN~tI) if there was no Dybo and no
retraction
> from the jer.
Yet if you follow his reasoning in the "konj" chapter (13-19) closely
you'll find out easily that it is the regular reflex and that it is
*not* a neo-acute in the sense in which that term is used by
Kortlandt (notably p. 17, which, by the way, is still awaiting
elaboration).
A propos the latter: the terminological system comprising such words
as "acute", "neoacute", "circumflex", "neocircumflex", etc. is more
of a liability than anything else because it conflates synchronic and
diachronic considerations, prevents vowel length from being taken
seriously and effectively obstructs our view of the synchronic
properties of the various systems that must have succeeded each other
in the final phase of shared Slavic innovations (and which produced
those innovations). Different accentologists use those words with
different meanings. In extreme cases one guy's neoacute can be
another's circumflex. It is much more fruitful (and flexible) to talk
in terms of tone, vowel length etcetera.
Difficult stuff,
Willem