Re: [tied] Re: NEuropean IE for apple

On Thu, 26 May 2005 08:26:52 +0000, pielewe
<wrvermeer@...> wrote:

>--- 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]:
>
>
>*tò 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 àblko 'that apple', *to àgneN '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.

The case of vejce, vajce is unique, as far as I know, so any
explanation will necessarily have to be somewhat ad-hoc.

If your explanation above is correct, we would expect mobile
neuters to show prothetic v- more often than non-mobile
neuters. While forms like voko and vuxo do exist, I don't
have the impression that there's a correlation between
accent paradigm or gender and v- (cf. vohon', wokno,
vostryj, vulica, etc.). [The objection that *ajIce itself
is not mobile, but rather a.p. b, can be countered by
suggesting the v- originally arose in the simplex *aje,
subsequently lost in Czech and Slovak].

_My_ explanation also fails to be confirmed by non-existent
forms like *vagoda, *vasenU [we have *(j)agoda, *jasenU] for
roots with assured etymological *o:-, which is of course
unfortunate.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...