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--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mandicdavid" <davidmandic@...>
wrote:
>
> 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
Vowel length alone can give rise to an acute: cf. <sla"va> (a.p. a),
from the root *k^leu-, a formation completely analogical to that of
<tra:vá>.
The circumflex intonation in the first syllable of the word
for "grass" is due to the shape of the root *treuH-, with final
laryngeal.
The syllabification was: *s'lá:-wa: (c.q. *s'ló:-wa: if the
lengthened grade was already of PIE age), with acute first syllable,
versus *trá:u-?a: (c.q. *tró:u-?a:), with (falling) diphthong in the
first syllable. In the first case, the word simply remained barytone
<sla"va>; in the second one, the circumflex intonation remained after
the loss of the laryngeal (c.q. the loss of hiatal syllabification),
giving *trá~wa:, and after Dybo's law <tra:vá>.
In originally oxytone words, such as *me:m-sóm and *o:u-yóm, the
circumflex intonation in the pretonic syllable caused the whole
paradigm to become mobile, hence Slavic <mêNso> and <jâje>.