Re: [tied] trzymac'

On Uto, svibanj 30, 2006 12:22 am, Miguel Carrasquer reče:

> On Mon, 29 May 2006 13:34:13 +0200 (CEST), Mate Kapović
> <mkapovic@...> wrote:
>
>>No contraction in 3rd person is exactly what we have in Croatian:
>>
>>pi^ta:m, pi^ta:s^, pi^ta:, pi^ta:mo, pi^ta:te, pítaju:
>>
>>(notice the rising accent and short -a- in the 3rd person plural). In Old
>>Croatian, I guess there was also pitaju (the accent would be *pítaju),
>>although I'm not sure it's attested, but it was soon levelled to -a:m by
>>the analogy to -a:s^ etc.
>
> I'm not sure I understand this completely. The ^ is the
> neo-acute, I'm pretty sure,

You are right. Conservative Croatian dialects have pi~ta:m.

>but the í in the 3pl.: is that
> the neo-neo-acute (neo-S^tokavian retraction)?

Exactly.

>Does that
> imply that the original form of the 3pl. was pitáju:, with
> short initial vowel, stressed second (but what kind of
> stress? acute? neo-circumflex?) and long unstressed third?
> Was the initial vowel analogically lengthened in the 3pl?

Standard pítaju: is pi:ta``ju: in conservative dialects. The length of the
first syllable is analogous to other forms. Since it's only one form, one
cannot expect the short syllable to be preserved. I have not found up till
now any dialect with the short pit- in pitaju, but it might exist.
This form shows the old accent place, as Russian: pi:ta``ju: <
*pytájoN(tI) with the old acute. There was no contraction, so the accent
is preserved. In 2nd person plural for instance, *py:tájete > *py:ta^te
(pre-2-mora-rule contraction) > *py~ta:te (Stang-Ivs^ic').

Mate