Re: [tied] Re: 3rd Slavic palatalization

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
To: "Grzegorz Jagodzinski" <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2005 3:36 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: 3rd Slavic palatalization


> At 12:47:14 PM on Friday, October 7, 2005, Grzegorz
> Jagodzinski wrote:
>
>> willemvermeer wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>>> In the traditional formulation it is a very ordinary
>>> phonetic rule, to wit a progressive palatalization of
>>> velars preceded by high front vowels unless followed by a
>>> consonant or a high rounded vowel.
>
>> The traditional formulation is a little different: the
>> process occured after a front vowel (including 'r.) and
>> before a vowel, a more precise formulation is that the
>> process occured after i, I, e, perhaps 'r. (in the
>> dialects where such a sonant existed), and before a vowel.
>
> Admittedly my knowledge of Slavic linguistics is minimal,
> but Willem's version is the only one that I've encountered.
> E.g., Terence R. Carlton (Introduction to the phonological
> History of the Slavic Languages, 1990) gives it as follows:
>
> /i(:)/, /e,/ + /k/, /g/, /x/ + vowel (except /u(:)/) >
> /c/, /dz/ or /z'/, /s^/ or /s'/.
>
> Certainly what I've read gives me no reason to doubt that
> this is now the traditional formulation, even if it's not
> the original one. (In my own field the traditional and
> original definitions of 'compact space' are quite different,
> for instance.)

Brian, you know, it seems that all depends on what we understand as
"traditional". I am a Pole and I live in a Slavic country. For us the Poles,
only the view which is presented in school and academic books or
encyclopaedias can be termed "traditional". But our school teachers which
specialize in teaching children the Polish language (Polonists, there are
plenty of them) learn both historic Slavic grammar and OCS grammar
(differences between hypothetical pre-Polish and OCS are not too strong).
So, the only view which can be named "traditional" is the view of authors of
universyty books and similar sources, especially that they are based on the
original Badouin de Courtenay's formulation.

Of course, such a view is based on more "serious" sources, see my
quotations in one of the previous posts. Perhaps these sources are not
available in English.

> Carlton also seems to look with some favor on the
> possibility that the progressive palatalization is actually
> very old, pointing out that this could explain a number of
> exceptions; I'd like to ask Miguel and Willem what the
> subsequent fate of this idea has been.
>
> Brian

I believe that the author of the idea on the early progressive
palatalization was Lunt (http://www.pensoft.net/notes/9554.stm). On his
rather controversial ideas and methods, see e.g.
http://hdl.handle.net/1887/1902 and http://hdl.handle.net/1887/1885:

== beginning of quotation ==

To summarize, Lunt's chronology cannot be maintained. It is based on a few a
priori assumptions which cannot be substantiated and which force him to
posit an arbitrary phonetic development of the diphthongs and an arbitrary
morphological replacement in the imperative, to reformulate the progressive
palatalization äs a subphonemic development, to dismiss the counter-evidence
of petrified forms by questioning the material without offering a solution,
and to exclude pronominal forms from consideration because they may have
been subject to unknown developments

== end ==

Grzegorz J.





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