On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:51:02 +0200 (CEST), Mate Kapoviæ
<
mkapovic@...> wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Miguel Carrasquer
>> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 1:13 AM
>> Subject: [tied] Some lengthened vowel Slavic verbs
>
>> As noticed by Dybo, the distribution of je-verbs with
>> lengthened root vowel is the following:
>> - i > i:, u > u: are in a.p. a (sy"pati, my"kati, smy"kati,
>> ty"kati, sy"sati, pry"skati, bry"zgati, sti"gati)
>> - e > e:, a > a: are in a.p. b (skaka"ti, xapa"ti, xrama"ti,
>> maka"ti, kaza"ti, drêma"ti)
>>
>> The lengthening of the root vowel in these verbs must
>> therefore be relatively ancient, as it follows the PIE
>> distribution where the only long /i:/ and /u:/ were acute
>> (from /iH/ and /uH/), while a:, e: and o: could be either
>> acute or circumflex.
>
>I don't understand the point. Do you wish to propose that these new long
>*i: and *u:'s got the acute because *i: and *u:'s had the acute always
>originally?
They got the acute beacuse at the time there was no such
thing as circumflex long /i~/ or /u~/. Only /a~/, /e~/ and
/o~/ had been inherited from PIE. I agree with your earlier
remarks that the story of long (lengthened) vowels in Slavic
is complex and contains several chronological layers, but
realizing that lengthened /i/ and /u/ could only become
acute /i:/ and /u:/ at a time when circumflex /i~/ and /u~/
simply didn't exist in the phonological inventory allows us
to economize on the number of layers. Sy"pati, my"kati,
smy"kati, ty"kati, sy"sati, pry"skati, bry"zgati, sti"gati;
and skaka"ti, xapa"ti, xrama"ti, maka"ti, kaza"ti, dre^ma"ti
can be put in the same chronological layer without
contradictions.
>> In short, the accentological evidence from Slavic seems to
>> suggest that iteratives with a long root vowel are indeed a
>> category inherited from PIE. Furthermore, it confirms that
>> PIE long non-circumflex vowels give a Balto-Slavic acute
>> (unless followed by a semivowel/resonant, but we knew that
>> already: Lith. s^uo~ < *k^wo:n, Lith. ah2-stem acc.sg. -aN~
>> < *-a:m < *-ah2m).
>
>So you adhere to the traditional theory that the PIE lengthened grade
>yielded the acute in Balto-Slavic? On what evidence do you base that
>claim? I've missed that in your mail, it seems...
The whole point of the exercise into lengthened-grade
i-verbs was precisely to determine whether PIE lengthened
grade yields acute in Balto-Slavic or not, as the evidence
usually adduced in discussions on the subject is largely
irrelevant or inconclusive. My preliminary conclusion is
that it does: the verbal category itself can be traced back
to PIE times rather solidly (and Jens has provided a
rationale for the presence of the long vowel). If the long
vowel is inherited from PIE, then the fact that ga"ziti,
pa"riti and va"diti are a.p. a can only be explained if this
lengthened vowel indeed yields a Balto-Slavic acute.
As to the other evidence pro and con, if I take the examples
of PIE lengthened grade and their Balto-Slavic reflexes from
Kortlandt's article "Long vowels in Balto-Slavic", I get the
following picture. Most of the examples showing
Balto-Slavic circumflex are simply a consequence of the fact
that _any_ vowel followed by *i, *u, *m, *n, *l or *r (in
other words, a diphthong) was circumflex in PIE, whether the
vowel itself was short (e.g. o-stem acc.sg. *-om), acute
long (e.g. ah2-stem acc.sg. *-ah2m) or circumflex long (e.g.
o-/ah2-stem gen.pl. *-o~m). There is no contradiction
between the Greek evidence (-ón, -é:n, -õn) and the
Lithuanian evidence (-aN~, -aN~, -uN~), except for the fact
that in Greek, /m/, /n/, /l/ and /r/ have lost their ability
to make diphthongs, and are treated as normal consonants. So
Greek shows us the intonation of the vowel, while Lithuanian
shows the intonation of the diphthong itself. Conversely,
any diphthong followed by a laryngeal (or, in Balto-Slavic,
by a voiced non-aspirate consonant) has acute intonation:
tautosyllabic *VHR is circumflex, but *VRH is acute.
The intonation of Lithuanian akmuo~, dukte:~, Slavic
z^e``ra:vU (< *gero:us) is therefore as expected: the long
diphthongs *-o:n, *-e:r and *-o:u yield an acute vowel
wrapped in a circumflex diphthong. Original root nouns
ending in a resonant must also yield Balto-Slavic circumflex
as is the case with Lith. ge:là / Slav. z^âlI (*gWe:l-s),
Lith. z^ole:~, Lith. me:sà, Latv. mìesa, Slavic mêNso
(*me:m-sóm), Slav. jâje (*o:u-yóm), Latv. sà:ls (*sa:ls),
guòvs (*gWo:us). But when a (non-resonant) consonant
follows, we have Latv. nãss, nãsi (*na:ss, *nasm.), with
what looks like an acute. The Slavic examples with a
consonant after the long vowel given by Kortlandt are:
(vodo-)têc^I, rêc^I, (noc^-)lêgU, sapU, slêpU, krâsU,
(u-)z^âsU. If I'm not mistaken, they are all mobile (as
they should be, if from original root nouns), so Slavic is
inconclusive: Meillet's law should have eliminated the
acute. Kortlandt does not give Baltic counterparts for any
of them.
The only solid piece of evidence I can think of of a word
that indeed suggests a development long vowel > circumflex
is Lithuanian me:nuo~ (< PIE *méh1no:ts, PBSl *meh1nó:ts),
where we would have expected *me:nù. However, the ending
-uo~ here could easily be analogical here after s^uo~,
píemuo, akmuo~ etc.
The main part of Kortlandt's article is devoted to the
lengthened grade s-aorist. I don't have the time to go into
that right now, and I am still investigating the matter. My
first impression is that the evidence from the aorist is
again largely inconclusive, because of the complete mixture
of forms from s-aorist, sé-aorist, root-aorist, é-aorist and
thematic imperfect. A form like 1sg. rêxU (with neo-acute
*rêxÚ > *rê'xU), while it has the vowel of the s-aorist,
continues the _accentuation_ of the sé-aorist (*-sóm), which
never had a long vowel; and 1pl. rêxòmU, while it has the
desinential structure of the sé-aorist, must continue the
accentuation of the root-aorist or imperfect (*-(x)omÚ), as
original *rêxómU (*-só-mos) would have had to retract the
stress to *rê'xomU by Stang's law.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...