[tied] Re: No Slavic Accentology, Please!

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Willem Vermeer" <wrvermeer@...>
wrote:

> But the list deserves much more: it could be used to compile an
> all-embracing typology of views on (B)Sl accentology. That would

make a nice book.

I think you should write that book. And thank you for your nice
words.

> [4]
>
> > So is the acute reflex of cases of Winter's lengthening. There

is still some hesitation as to the nature of the

> > restrictions imposed upon Winter's law, but its existence and

its result are common heritage by now.

>
>
> This is perhaps a bit of an understatement. The other day Rick

Derksen happened to write me an

> e-mail to the effect that alongside the original 1978 version

there are versions by Kortlandt,

> Shintani, Rasmussen, Matasovic/, Dybo, and Holst. There are pretty

serious differences between

> those versions and "some hesitation" would seem to be an

understatement.

Sure, I'm biased here, believing the problem will just evaporate if
the others wise up.

>
> [7]
>
>
> > There is complete agreement that lengthened grade in

monosyllables had circumflex tone.

>
>
> I doubt that. Here Rasmussen and Kortlandt happen to agree, but

what about others? I for one

> have no idea what Dybo would say here, for instance.

So what? Is silence a scholarly problem? Kortlandt made the
observation that many examples of circumflex vowels are root nouns,
which I find beyond dispute. He generalized that to say that
lengthened grade yields circumflex, which I did not like. I said
instead that monosyllables have circumflex, which he did not like.
Now, most of the examples are monosyllables and have lengthened
grade, so there is this massive common core which can hardly be
doubted.

> [9]
>
> > For Slavic specifically, there is complete agreement that mobile

words developed a falling tone in their first

> > syllable (Meillet's law).
> > [] There may be little agreement
> > of how that came about - by itself (increase of the

polarization) or by a series of sound changes, but the facts are

> > universally accepted.
>
> OK, but with restrictions. The Moscow people regard it basically

as the further development of a

> system of high and low tones inherited from PIE. The Leiden people

agree with this to some

> extent, perhaps entirely, I'm not completely in the clear about

their position.

I find it amazing how frequently the valencies are predictable. All
acute vowels are heavy, the only problem is the existence of light
long vowels. I have suggsted they reflect the propagation of the
circumflex that arose in monosyllables. I intuitively consider it
close to cheating to just write a feature of valency into the
segments, but I admit that by Balto-Slavic this system has been
brought about, and it does seem to be adequate for the explanation
of younger and productive forms.

> [11]
> > There is also general acceptance of Dybo's law, the shift of the

accent from a non-acute vowel to the next, except

> > in mobile paradigms. The process is not unlike Saussure's law

for Lithuanian, and Kortlandt's law for Old Prussian,

> > only the restrictions differ. I have seen no opposition to these

laws.

>
> OK, but:
>
> (i) In Moscow, Sergej Nikolaev has personally seen to it that

Dybo's law has disintegrated into a

> "rightward drift" comprising an entire series of changes which I

for one don't understand at all,

> but which is held to have enormous consequences for PSl

dialectology.

Is that wise? It seems that dialectology always wreaks havoc when
specialists want all variants to be accounted for as if they were
all equally old. If one were to look through the Germanic languages
of today for remains of Verner's Law alternant, the most probable
impression will be that there is no such rule at all.

> (ii) And in that connection, de Saussure's law has been

reformulated for the first time in almost a

> century.

Really? Saussure' law is as neat as anything we've got: A long vowel
takes the accent from a preceding short vowel - the strong one wins.
If the long vowel is given heavy valency in a younger system, the
law can logically be abolished; is that what has been done?

>
> (iii) Kortlandt's law is by no means unopposed among the four

(five?) specialists in Old Prussian.

> To put it mildly.

How so? Kortlandt's observation that geminated spelling is regularly
followed by accent mark on vowels is a rare case of empirical proof.
I am desperately behind in my reading. Could you tell us some more?

>
> As an Indo-Europeanist you see a number of nice correspondences

that are useful, in particular

> (but not only) to pinpoint the presence of laryngeals.
>
> As a slavist (baltist) you see a field where nobody talks to

anybody else and where even explicit

> reception (let alone discussion or evaluation) of other

investigators' ideas seems to be regarded as

> not done. It is better than mud-slinging but not by a great

margin. A few examples:

That is certainly true. The smaller and more specialized the field,
the less room does it offer for acceptance of the opinions of
others. That is just petty rivalry.

>
> (I) The Moscow people keep acting as if the outside world does not

exist, witness (for those who

> didn't know already) Dybo's recent monograph on Winter's law.
>
>
>
> (II) On the other hand Zaliznjak's obviously important book on

Russian does not seem to have

> been read cover-to-cover by anybody in the twenty years of its

existence and has never even

> been seriously reviewed.

It's one of those books one uses like the phonebook: I consult it
when I see the need, but I would not read it all through.

> (III) The seven (give or take) versions of Winter's law cannot

possibly all be of equal value, yet

> how much critical weighing of alternatives has taken place (apart

from one or two fruitless

> attempts from Leiden)?

I tried once myself, but the more recent additions have proved
discouraging. I make come back and speak my piece again though. We
have had some debate on this list, and the real divergences of
opinion were very modest.

> Literally nobody outside Leiden accepts Kortlandt's glottalic

interpretation of it, yet I'm not

> familiar with even a single systematic discussion. Given the

virtual consensus one would have

> expected several.

But what would there be to discuss systematically? If (apart from
aRD > a:RD) Winter's law works immediately before the accent, then
the Latvian tone would be the glottal one anyway. Shintani said
that.

> Another point is the rickety foundation of the attribution of

accent types to individual items,

> particularly in the case of nouns. The word for 'hand' (Lith.

_ranka_) has the reflex of fixed stem

> stress in Lithuanian (2) and is overwhelmingly mobile in Slavic.

The case is typical (most items

> are attested with more than a single accent type) and the

tradition is just to state apodictically

> whichever solution seems most convenient, often on the basis of

data from unpublished and

> unanalysed manuscripts or dialects. (The massive use of factual

material that cannot be publicly

> evaluated was initiated by Illich-Svitych, sorry to say.)

Sure, if ''hand' is 2 and c, don't use it; same with material that
cannot be trusted. There are enough words that prove the point. I
for one find Il.-Sv.'s presentation ond the conclusions drawn from
it absolutely compelling. I consider his oeuvre and his genius to be
on the same level as Saussure's.

I think it is an important duty of our fields to stop of every now
and again and take stock of what was sense and what was nonsense in
a lengthy discussion which has had the time to run its full course.
It can then sometimes be seen that real opposition is restricted to
peripheral matters, and that some perpetually disagreeing voices can
just be ignored. That constitutes an important part of progress in
dialectal scholarship. It is my pleasant impression that we are
largely in agreement here.

Jens