Re: [tied] Re: Meillet's law

On Sri, siječanj 17, 2007 5:40 pm, mandicdavid reče:

> What makes you think the Meillet's law operated in the 8th century?

I didn't say that. However, if you relate Meillet's Law to the
disappearance of acute in unstressed vowels, there is some evidence that
this was posterior to liquid metathesis (cf. Holzers paper on IWoBA 1).

> Slavic populations had already been dispersed over the East of Europe
> by that time (they had reached the Adriatic coast by the beginning of
> the 7th ct); can a process like the Meillet's law spread over such a
> vast territory?

Well, Dybo's Law was also probably post-migrational and it operated in all
or most dialects.

> I meant it may have been earlier. If the laryngeal existed at that
> time (e.g. a glottal stop) in all syllables, and was subsequently
> lost in unstressed position, it would have dissapeared in a.p. c
> stems as well. In a.p. a, on the other hand, it would be preserved,
> and eventually yield the rising tone.

Sure, but there are a lot of acutes in Slavic which are not laryngeal or
Winter-derived... In that cases, you would have to assume an inserted
laryngeal/glottal stop in vrddhis like *ty´´kati, which seems impossible,
or you'd have to have the acute as well as the laryngeal.