Re: Russian v(o), s(o) & k(o) (was: IE Thematic Vowel Rule)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "hwhatting" <hwhatting@...> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> The jers (Common Slavic reduced vowels) were generally dropped in
> word-final position and before non-jer vowels (weak position).

Jers

> in syllables before a jer in weak position were in strong

position,

> and were kept; they developed different reflexes in the various
> Slavic languages (in Russian "o" for the back jer and "e" for the
> front jer).
> Prepositions like v, k, s, which contained a jer in Common Slavic,
> therefore have doublets vo, ko, so, which arose originally before
> words where the first syllable contained a weak jer; in the
> contemporary language, these words begin with a consonant cluster
> (e.g. son "sleep" - vo sne "in (the) sleep", vo vnimanie "in(to)
> consideration"). In cases where such a cluster does not go back to
> the loss of an original jer, the doublet without "o" is used

(e.g.,

> v snegu "in (the) snow").
> As the rule is not synchronically transparent, the distribution of
> the doublets will not always reflect the loss of an old jer -

e.g.,

> the word l'od "ice" has moved secondarily to a declination class
> with loss of the stem vowel in the non-nom/acc. sg., like son, and
> also attracts the preposition doublets with "o": so l'dom "with

ice".

> Quite often, the doublet with "o" is used in order to avoid a

clash

> of two identical consonants (when the follwoing noun begins with a
> cluster) - e.g., vo vnimanie "in(to) consideration", but k
> vnimaniyu "to the attention / for the consideration" (although one
> sometimes also finds the historically expected ko vnimaniyu).

Thank you for the clear explanation. I suppose this means that 'mne'
and 'mnoy' once contained a jer (between m and n), whereas 'toboy'
and 'tebye' had a full vowel. The next question is how that jer
arose; "me" has full vowel also in the paradigm: 'menya'. Was there
an alternation in the Proto-Slavic paradigm of "me" between jer and
full vowel?


Torsten