Re: [tied] "Fish" in Slavic

----- Original Message -----
From: george knysh
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2006 1:37 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] "Fish" in Slavic



****GK: "y" is (I think) an "i-type" pronunciation:
pbi-BA, pbi-Bbi in 15th c. texts. Does this go back to
an *u: ?*****

In old texts there were no strict rules how to spell Slavic sounds that
differed from Latin ones. The letter "y" comes from Greek where it denoted
"ü" once but merged with "i", say, in the early middle age. The i : y
spelling difference in non-Slavic languages was not related to pronunciation
then. Slavic languages which had the i : y difference in pronunciation, used
the two symbols for the two sounds. It does not mean that "y" is of the
"i-type" in general (and especially, that it was of the "i-type" in Common
Slavic).

In all contemporary south Slavic lngs *i and *y merged into i, indeed. Which
is more, in Czech and Slovak the i/y difference is orthographic in many
cases, and both symbols mean the same sound [i]. But if after some
consonants, "i" makes them palatalized while "y" does not.

In Lechitic and Sorbian subgroups of the western Slavic branch, as well as
in all eastern lngs, "i" and "y" still mean different sounds (even if the
difference may only be phonetical, not phonological in some of the
languages). The symbol "i" means a high, front, unrounded vowel (less or
more identical with the corresponding IPA symbol), and the symbol "y" (spelt
this way or transcribed) also means a high and unrounded vowel but not
front, and even if front, than less front than "i". Namely, the contemporary
Polish "y" is central and very close to IPA barred "i", but authors of some
books tell about a more front variant, never identical with "i". In my
opinion, yet 50 years ago or so, the prevailing pronunciation of "y" was
"middle-front" (and the vowel was very similar to English retracted [I] as
pronounced in "kill"). As far as I know, such a pronunciation is considered
standard in literary Ukrainian. Dialects differ much from one another, there
are "Karpathian" dialects (it is not a strict term) where "y" is described
as back unrounded (IPA "double u" or reversed "m"). It is hardly of the
i-type, so. Also standard Russian "y" is also back, or "middle-back", anyway
it is sometimes acoustically different from the Polish "y". In fact, the
pronunciation changes depending on position, and it is back after a labial
while front after an alveolar (it also may be due to influence of the
spelling!).

In Early Common Slavic all vowels were paired short-long: a, a:, e, e:, i,
i:, u, u: (no o-like, as IE o merged with a, both short and long), and some
diphthongs existed as well. Then the diphthongs monophthongized and mixed
with existed long vowels i:, e:, except au which never mixed with old u:.
Instead, the old u: was fronted and this way it did place for the new one.
The "official" explanation says that the vowel system showed an assymetry,
as the old fronted u: had no short counterpart. Anyway, there were two short
high vowels (next developed into yers) and three long high vowels (i:, old
u: = y:, and new u: from au).

In my opinion, another factor was more important. There was a strong
correlation of palatalness in Common Slavic (and it has survived e.g. in
Russian, or with some changes in Polish). The hard and soft (=
non-palatalized and palatalized) variants of consonants became phonemes
(mainly after loss of weak yers), and as a result, "i" and "y" became
allophones of one phoneme (as "i" could occur only word-initially and after
a palatalized consonant, while "y" could occur only after a non-palatalized
vowel). Notice also the OCS spelling convention: "y" = the hard yer + "i".
The y : u difference became more important than i : y. And this circumstance
caused the i : y difference to become less and less. In some languages it
disappeared completely. In the others, we sometimes find "i" on the place of
a former "y" and the way round, in strictly determined positions (e.g. in
Polish *ci, *dzi, *s^i, *z^i, *c^i, *r^i > cy, dzy, szy, z.y, czy, rzy, and
*ky, *gy > ki, gi).

Anyway, all these are rather Slavic than Indo-European problems. We should
concentrate on plausible reconstructions or on data from those Slavic
languages which do not merge "i" and "y".

Grzegorz J.



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