Re: Slavic *-je/o

> > All right, I'm back. The central problems are as follow:
> >
> > (1) The completely divergent development of the present-tense
> > *-éje- in Baltic (*-a~-) and Slavic (*-i~-).
> >
> > (2) The puzzling infinitive, _the same_ in both subbranches
> > (Slavic *-i"ti-, Lith. -ýti, both acuted, as if from *-ih-téi).
> >
> > To account for (1), we have to assume contraction in the
> > iterative/causative suffix. The 1sg. ending *-joN in Slavic
> > derives more or less regularly from *-ejo- > *-ijo- > *-jo-,
> > perhaps generalising an "anti-Sieversian" simplification
> > of the sequence after light syllables. The *-i:- from *-eje-
> > may be a regular development word-internally
> > (despite *trIje, *gostIje with *-Ije- < *-ije(h) < *-ej-es).
> >
> > For Baltic, the contraction of *-ejo- (with the *-o- variant
> > of the thematic vowel generalised, as is normal in East
> > Baltic) > *-eja- > *-ea- > *-a~- is not fully regular, but
> > looks natural enough, especially in a grammatical morpheme.
> >
>
> Here's another take:
> The *-je/o- extension appears just before the endings. It is a
> type of thematic ending.
> Suppose (Schmalstieg) the original verbal (mi-)inflection was
> the semithematic one, ie the one where those endings that have
> -o- in the thematic inflection (before voiced) are there and
> those that have -e- in the thematic (before unvoiced) aren't
> there. Such a version of a verb with the *-jo-/je- suffix
> would look like *-jo-/-i- instead. Suppose further that the
> thematic inflection was produced from the semithematic one by
> placing -e-'s before the unvoiced endings. We'd now have
> *-jó-/-íe-, it being so late that the latter (corresponding
> to your *-ih-) didn't go -> *-jé-, and therefore later could
> go to Slavic *i, like *ei and *i: did.
>

I never got an answer to what *-íe- would produce in Slavic, so
I made up one myself:
Stang postulates (Slavonic Accentuation, p. 109) that the reason
for the accentuation pattern in his a.p. b with neo-acute stressed
vowel of the root in the forms outside of 1sg, which has end-stress,
is that stress was retracted from the ending in those forms because
their vowel was circumflex in Proto-Slavic. He doesn't give any
reasons as to how this situation has come about.

I think my Proto-Slavic *-íe- ended up as PSlav. *-i^-, with
circumflex because it is a contraction of two vowels.

Note that my proposal places *-íe- in those forms in which Stang
claims the vowels had circumflex, except for 1pl, but that joined
the e-forms early, and 3pl.

That takes care of Stang's a.p. b, as far as I can see. Any other
problems you guys want solved? ;-)


Torsten