--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com,
> george knysh had asked:
> > *****GK: Does the *a change to "ja" or "ya" in all
> > Slavic languages or only some?*****
>
> Then Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> In almost all of them. Prothetic *j is the norm before reflexes of
> initial *a- and *e^-, which thus fall together with instances of
> _inherited_ *j-. OCS shows variation between forms with and without
the
> glide, e.g. ablUko ~ jablUko.
This is, of course, correct, but there are two minor but
complications:
(1) Czech and Slovak have prothetic v- in the word meaning 'egg':
vejce (Gpl vaji:c), vajce. Rather unexpectedly, the same word is
attested without a prothetic j- (let alone v-) in an early 12th-
century obscene birchbark letter unearthed in 1999 in Staraja Russa
near Novgorod (no. 35b, see NGB 11, 117-118, or the recent second
edition of Andrej Zaliznjak's "Drevnenovgorodskij dialekt", p. 335.)
(2) The reflex of *ablUko appears not to be attested in OCS (at least
according to the one-volume Czech-Russian co-production of 1994), but
if it were, one would not be surprised to find the variation
indicated, which is attested for instance in the 'lamb' word, but, to
be fair, not in all words in which one would be inclined to expect it.
Slavists tend somewhat to regard the subject of prothetic vowels as
unsuitable for polite conversation because it is so messy.
Best,
Willem