From: mkapovic@...
Message: 38088
Date: 2005-05-26
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>
> [On the prothetic v- in Cz vejce etc.]
>
>
>> It's risky to generalize from a single example, but that
>> would seem to indicate that the merger of *a: and *o: in
>> Slavic is a relatively recent phenomenon.
>>
>
>
> There is an alternative explanation that takes into account the
> circumstances that saw the rsie of prothetic vowels. It is generally
> assumed that they arose as automatic transitional sounds during the
> period when closed syllables had been eliminated, so that every word
> that started in a vowel was preceded by a word that ended in a vowel
> unless it stood at the beginning of a sentence.
>
>
> Now, since the word for 'egg' was neuter, the preceding word often
> ended in -o, which would have generated a [v]-like transitional sound
> that may have been generalized later on. However, an imaginary
> opponent might rightly object, the 'apple' word was neuter, too, so
> what is the difference?
>
>
> In my view the difference was accentological. The 'egg' word is
> mobile, whereas the 'apple' word (and also, say, the 'lamb' word) are
> stem-stressed. As a consequence you got on the one hand [the
> accentual sign merely indicates the place of the stress]:
>
>
> *tň aje 'that egg', with the stress on _to_ because both _to_ and
> *aje are mobile and the NAsg of the neuter o-stems is what the
> Russians call an enclinomenon.
>
>
> and on the other:
>
>
> *to ŕblko 'that apple', *to ŕgneN 'that lamb'.
>
>
> The labial element can't have failed to be more salient in the former
> type of case, where it was the rounded vowel that was stressed, than
> in the latter. This may have tipped the balance in the dialectal area
> continued by Czech and Slovak.
>
>
> [I don't doubt that this is somewhere in the literature.]
>
>
> Best,
>
>
>
> Willem
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