On Wed, 05 Jul 2006 14:13:07 +0200, Mate Kapovic
<
mkapovic@...> wrote:
>How do you explain possible Hirt's Law in bo´´lto? Shouldn't it be the same as in golv'a?
I'm glad you asked.
*gal@... may have /a/. I would put Hirt's law before
Winter's law, and Winter's law still distinguishes between
/a/ and /o/, so Hirt's law may work differently for *oRH vs.
*arH.
The rule also doesn't seem to apply to *a and *o from *e
after *h2 and *h3: Latv. ar^t < *h2ar@3téi and ar^kls <
*h2ar@3tlóm, aûst < *h2au@... (I don't have any actual
examples for *h3e-). Whether it applies in the case of
"unmotivated" /a/ (not in the neighbourhood of *h2, *k, *g,
*gh) is unclear: dê"verI (*daiHwé:r) and its Baltic cognates
would seem to suggest it does, but Latv. sal^t (*k^al@-téi)
suggests it doesn't.
The idea that *oRH is subject to Hirt's law (unlike *erH)
was suggested to me by Jens' article on Hirt's law, where he
explains both *poih2mé:n > píemuo (> piemuõ) and the Latvian
infinitives bar~t, kal~t, mal~t, kar~t [*] as (different)
special cases. Generalizing out of that a general rule
*oRH-'- > *-óRH- allows an explanation of the Slavic verb
po``joN, pê"ti, where the infinitive system is a.p. a (e.g.
oná pê"la). The development must have been *poiHláh2 >
*póiHlah2, with Hirt's law retracting the accent in the
infinitive system. Slav. bol"to, Latv. bal~ts also fits
this pattern.
[*] The Slavic infinitives (bor"ti, kol"ti, mel"ti) are
non-probative, as all infinitives with an acute root have
retracted the accent in Slavic, by the "ja"blUko law" (this
excludes a small group of verbs in *-erH- and *-eNH- with a
mobile zero-grade present where the acute intonation had
already been lost in Balto-Slavic, e.g. Slav. z^ertí
z^I``roN, Latv. dzer^t (*gWerh3-), Slav. pertí pI``roN,
Latv. sper^t (*(s)perH-), Slav. peNtí pI``noN, Latv. pît
(*penH-), Slav. teNtí tI``noN, Latv. tît (*temH-)). Only
Latvian can show the difference here between Hirt's law and
later retractions.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...