Re: Various loose thoughts

From: willemvermeer
Message: 36312
Date: 2005-02-15

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:


I'd written:

> >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.
>


Then you wrote:


> Perhaps not.


Well, anything can happen, but it's important to realize that K's
discussion is *not* about particular lexical items but about what
happened to a particular accentual paradigm during a fairly late
Common Slavic stage.


I'd written:


> >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


Then you wrote:


> Why? I think the original Common Slavic accentuation in
> mobile paradigms was *-VmÚ, *-VxÚ. I was talking about a
> local East Slavic development (perhaps with some South
> Slavic parallels?).


In that case there is no difference of opinion. What Kortlandt tries
to do at the place involved is propose a mechanism explaining why the
stress shifted to the stem and why Slavic differs from Baltic here.
By the way, it is unlikely to have been a local development because
stem-stressed dative plurals are attested so widely.


I'd written:


> >and because bisyllabic endings are always plus so you expect the
Dpl
> >to be plus too.

Then you wrote:

> I don't see a connection between the number of syllables and
> the valency: o-stem -omI/-UmI, u-stem -ovi, -ove, and i-stem
> -Ije are minus.


I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. The point depends on the
mechanisms K sketches to account for the shape of the mobile paradigm
in BSl (SA: 4-10). Any Npl in -s is minus, like one or two other case
forms, as a consequence of analogical extension of the stem stress in
consonant stems of the type *dùkteres by the mechanism proposed by
Pedersen (SA: 9). All other cases of stem stress in mobile paradigms
are attributed to the phonetic retraction K calls "Ebeling's law",
which entirely depends on the shape of the ending (see notably p. 5-
6). Since bisyllabic endings never undergo Ebeling's law, they are
automatically stressed (i.e. "plus") unless they happen to have
received stem stress as a consequence of Pedersen's mechanism.


The o-stem Isg -omI/-UmI is a recent formation in Slavic, which
developed ages after the system of valences must have broken down,
just like the stem stress in plural datives and locatives of the type
ljudImU/ljudIxU. It cannot possibly be relevant in this connection.


I'd written:


> >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.


Then you wrote:


> I would go along with Stang, who reconstructs for Common
> Slavic *kostI`mU, *kostI`xU, with final accent.


So does K for the chronological stages preceding the loss of the
stressability of final jers, which is a fairly late Common Slavic
development.


And you wrote on as follows:


> The
> question then is why in Old Russian the D and L pl. became
> enclinomenic in i-, u-, jo- and o-stems, and why ljudIje
> specifically (and dêti and perhaps a few others) show signs
> of barytonesis on an even wider scale (Common Slavic?).


Stem-stressed plural datives are also found in C^akavian, Slovene and
Slovincian. To all intents and purposes it is a Common Slavic
phenomenon that has preferably to be explained on a Common Slavic
basis.

Then you wrote:


> ...
> However, I find it a bit hard to believe that a handful of
> aberrant i-stems would have completely reshaped the
> accentuation of the D and L pl.


First, in K's conception it is not "a handful of aberrant i-stems",
but the i-stem *paradigm*, in other words: all mobile i-stems. Like
Stang, he is talking paradigms, not individual lexical items.


Moreover, the i-stems comprised a number of extremely frequent words,
like the nouns meaning 'people' and 'children'. (And the tendency of
masculine i-stems to adopt the jo-stem paradigm, which was well
underway in OCS, may have caused stem-stressed plural datives to
appear in a jo-stem setting.)


But finally and more generally, the objection is invalid as such
because it so often happens that patterns originating with a handful
of words are analogically extended way beyond their original
distribution. The main reason is that text frequency is more
important than the number of lexical items involved. Speakers of,
say, early eighth-century Common Slavic may well have heard the Dpl
of 'people' and 'children' as often as all other plural datives
combined. Slavic abounds in examples such as the analogical extension
of the athematic 1sg present -mI to other classes, in some cases to
all verbs.


Then you write:


> In the Lpl. at least, it
> seems more likely that it was the o- (and jo-) stems which
> initiated the shift: the accent retraction (by Stang's law)
> of originally a.p. b (> a.p. c/d) words with the ending -êxU
> can easily have spread to originally mobile nouns, and then
> have been mimicked by u-stems, and i-stems. In the i-stems,
> if the model of 'ljudIxU, 'ljudImU already existed, the D
> pl. may have followed suit ('kostImU, 'zvêrImU), and this
> then spread in some areas to the jo-stems and u-stems and
> eventually to the o-stems, perhaps helped along by the fact
> that the D is enclinomenic in the sg. too. The
> root-stressed/enclinomenic forms in the Old Russian o-stem
> ins.pl. (-y) must in any case be attributed to influence
> from the Lpl. (a.p. b) or Apl. (a.p. c).


But is this scenario better than K's? Note that there is no reason to
assume an early breakdown of the difference between (b) and (c) in
the oblique cases of the plural in Slavic. In the late seventies of
the twentieth century my Omis^alj informant still distinguished
neatly between:


(b) Dpl stolòm vs. Lpl stòli:h.


(c) Dpl m'u:z^em vs. Lpl muz^'i:h.


(In other words: nothing had changed since Milc^etic/. These are
types. I'm not sure those particular examples are attested. It is
rare for the Dpl to be attested from the same nouns as the Lpl
because the Dpl is virtually limited to animates and the Lpl to
inanimates. I do recall examples of Dpl volòm and lots of examples of
the type muz^'i:h even if that particular word is not attested in
that case form.)


> The remaining question is: where did 'ljudIxU, 'ljudImU come
> from? If the other mobile i-stems adhered to the pattern
> kostI`mU, kostI`xU (originally root-stressed with short root
> vowel); zvêrI`mI, zvêrI`xU (originally ending-stressed),
> Stang would seem to be correct in assuming that the origin
> lies in originally root-stressed nouns with circumflex root
> vowel. It would be interesting to know the accentuation of
> ORuss. D and L pl. putImU, putIxU (ap b). Zaliznjak's rules
> would predict putI`mU, putI`xU, would I wouldn't be
> surprised if pu'tImU, pu'tIxU also existed.


This moves beyond K's theory and I have nothing to say about it.


> Stress shift in the presence of a pretonic circumflex is
> also seen in e.g. *meNsó > 'meNso, *jaje' > 'jaje. Perhaps
> that has something to do with it, although I'm unable to
> formulate a soundlaw (it's certainly not the case that a
> pretonic circumflex _always_ attracts the ictus).


If I remember rightly, K puts the analogical introduction of the
pronominal ending *-o < *-od into the (at the time) oxytone neuter o-
stems at some relatively late Balto-Slavic stage preceding Ebeling's
law. The attested stem stress in these examples is then due to the
retraction he calls Ebeling's law. In that conception, it is not a
matter of circumflexes attracting the ictus, but of final syllables
of certain shapes losing it. (If the valency system still existed at
the time as a phonetic reality, you can picture it as a
neutralization of the difference between "H" and "L" in final
syllables of certain shapes, with the architoneme being realized
as "L".)



> And, as
> Stang notices, it's difficult to explain why we see D, L
> lju^dImU, lju^dIxU, but not G, I *lju^dIjI, *lju^dImi. The
> G and L are supposed to have had a long final vowel
> (ljudIjI:, ljudImi:), so there may be a pattern there, but
> it's also one that's difficult to generalize.


In K's theory the difference arose phonetically as a consequence of
the loss of stressability of final jers. In the Ipl there was no
final jer, so there was no retraction. In the Dpl and Lpl the stress
was retracted and skipped the intervening jer because Havlík's rule
had not yet arisen. In the Gpl the intervening jer was not skipped
because before *j jers were realized more strongly than in other
positions, so that they were not prevented from receiving the ictus
(AS: 16). (The greater strength of jers followed by *j is of course
well documented.)


Does this clarify matters?



Willem