[tied] Re: Meillet's law

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Mate Kapoviæ <mkapovic@...> wrote:

>
> On Sri, sijeèanj 17, 2007 5:40 pm, mandicdavid reèe:
>
> > 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).


That's true. However, I find it a bit hard to believe that a system
with tonal distinctions in all syllables could have existed since the
loss of PIE laryngeals (already in PBSl) till the Common Slavic
period, completely unchanged (I mean without any considerable
analogical processes).

> > 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.

Why is it considered to be post-migrational? If it occurred in, say,
8th century, It had to reach (almost) all Slavic dialects in quite a
short time, certainly before the 10th century.
The loan words from (and to) other languages might help here perhaps,
but I don't really think the loans are very relevant.

> > 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.
>

I agree. That would mean all vrddhis were circumflex, and they
aren't. Glottal stop insertion seems improbable to me too. But isn't
tykati circumflex (like tícati)?