[tied] Re: Various loose thoughts

From: willemvermeer
Message: 36284
Date: 2005-02-14

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 19:36:58 +0000, willemvermeer
> <wrvermeer@...> wrote:
>


> The mobility of ljudIje is itself secondary (*léudhi- =
> Latv. l^àudis; Lith. for some reason has an unetymological
> acute here: liáudis). As a barytone i-stem with circumflex
> root, the word should have developed into an a.p. b i-stem.
> These a.p. b i-stems, with few exceptions, subsequently
> became mobile, but this can only have happened _after_
> Dybo's law.


Kortlandt's discussion is not about ljudIje but about the
accentological characteristics of mobile (in Slavic) i-stems. So the
specific background of ljudIje is irrelevant.



> The Old Russian D. pl. ending has the valency (-) in the
> o-stems as well (Zaliznjak p. 141) [the L.pl. has (-Re), but
> that comes to the same thing in a.p. c words], and we have
> the accentuation zúbomU, pó gradomU (enclinomenic) in a
> large part of the East Slavic dialectal area (Zaliznjak
> 3.45, 3.46).
>
> It seems, then, that this has nothing to do with yers.



I suspect Kortlandt (at least the 1975 Kortlandt) would not like this
for a number of reasons, e.g. because it separates Baltic and Slavic
and because bisyllabic endings are always plus so you expect the Dpl
to be plus too. Kortlandt's mechanism explains how stem-stressed Dpl
forms arose in Slavic in i-stems and u-stems. It goes without saying
that speakers immediately reinterpreted these forms as enclinomenic
because *all* stem-stressed form of mobile paradigms were
enclinomenic, so the stem-stressed Dpl was spectacularly anomalous.
Indeed, they could hardly have done otherwise. The analogical spread
of this accentuation to the o-stems is so trivial as not to need
comment. Note that Czech appears to have retained the reflex of the
original end-stressed ending.


[On the other hand I can imagine accentologists devising some kind of
mechanism linking the Slavic facts with the special status the Dpl
appears to have had in Baltic, as highlighted recently in the Olander-
Kortlandt discussion. If a plausiblke mechanism could be devised it
would dispense with Kortlandt's 1975 mechanism.]



Willem