Re: [tied] Re: Meillet's law

On Pon, siječanj 15, 2007 10:07 pm, mandicdavid reče:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Mate Kapović <mkapovic@...> wrote:
>>
>> On Pon, siječanj 15, 2007 7:58 pm, mandicdavid reče:
>> > Does anyone know of an explanation for the lack of an acute mobile
>> > accentual paradigm in Slavic other than the acute-to-circumflex
>> > metatony and Kortlandt's theory involving a gradual loss of the
> reflex
>> > of the PIE laringeals?
>>
>> Kortlandt's theory should be more acceptable in traditional terms:
> the
>> acute is eliminated in pretonic (and posttonic syllables), thus
> also in a.
>> p. c. Enclinomena-forms have the accent by analogy to forms with
> pretonic
>> accent.
>> Jens of course preferes to think of Meillet's law as a tendency to
>> polarize the accent in Slavic by which *sy´´nU becomes *sy^nU
> because
>> *sy'ynU > *s'yynU. In this way, the accent is on the absolute first
> mora
>> and Meillet's law can be related to Vasiljev-Dolobko's law and the
> rise of
>> enclinomena-forms.

> What do you mean by 'pretonic accent'?

Sorry, pretonic syllable.

> If 'acute' means 'long and rising' (or any other sort of tone) the
> loss of it in any case has to be considered a movement of the
> intonational peak within a syllable.

Or a loss of distinctive pitch in non-accented syllables, cf. Štok.
dialects with ri``ba:ma - the ex-acute length is the same as in ko``ra:ka
where there was no acute.

> But the question is what caused
> it.
> As far as I know, according to Kortlandt 'acute' syllables weren't
> characterised by a special tone but by the presence of a phoneme, the
> reflex of the PIE laryngeals. In that case, such an analogy would
> have been very probable.

Sure, but you have to have a "laryngeal" in 8th ct. :)

> On the other hand, the loss of phonologic stress might have arisen
> quite a long time ago in APc 'barytone' forms - even before the rise
> of distinctive tone, while the reflex of the laryngeals was still a
> phoneme. In that case this phoneme would have disappeared in all
> contexts at the same time, leaving a say rising tone in stressed
> syllables only. I'm not quite sure of this but it seems an
> interesting supposition.
> The 'laryngeal' must have existed at some time because the acute
> couldn't have evolved directly from the vowel length alone - compare
> e.g. tra:vá, or m^e:so

Sorry? Didn't really get the point... The laryngeal did exist, in PIE.
Probably later in Balto-Slavic in some positions. In 8th ct. Slavic, I
doubt it.