Re: Balto-Slavic C-stems / long vowel endings

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
>
> > > cf Russian derz^í!, vs búd'!, PSl *-í vs *´-I, ie PIE *-éi vs
> > > *´-i. Since the two forms are related by stress-induced ablaut,
> > > the variation must go back to PIE (and impv *-éi-/*´-i- is
> > > therefore PIE, and traditionally assumed *-dhi- is impv. of

*dhe:-

> > > as aux. verb. in periphrastic composition.
> > >
>
>
> >
> > I agree with you about your claim that stressed yers

were 'normal'

> > short vowels. I just think they were lax - so that they didn't

merge

> > with tense i and y after the latter vowels had been shortened in
> > some contexts. This also explains the fact that yers (sometimes)
> > became tense before a 'j' (mladyi 'young, Nsg.m.' from mladUjI,

Cro.

> > mijem 'wash, 1sg.pres' from mIje-...). It's quite an ordinary
> > phenomenon then.
> > The point is, however, that the UNSTRESSED yers (and not all of
> > them) became 'reduced' and eventually disappeared. Now, the

question

> > is why did the stress shift from word-final yers to the preceding
> > syllable and not from, say, e or o?
>
> The *-óN, *-´esI, *-´etI pattern reminds me (but Schmalstieg first)

of

> PIE secondary *-om, *-s, *-t. Now assume there was some rule of
> trochaic or iambic ordering similar to Havlík's in PIE. If that had
> proceeded from the front, 123sg would have similar stress-patterns,

so

> that is out of the question. However, if a PIE Havlík rule started
> from the end of words, the extra syllable of the 1sg would have

thrown

> it off course, thereby creating the fine mess that Piotr's example
> illustrated. 123sg becomes sort of odd, even, even; note that the

1sg

> is either stressed on the last *or* the first syllable, preferably

the

> preverb, in accordance with the general principle that stress

changes

> not by moving a syllable, but by selecting the second-most stressed
> syllable as the new most-stressed syllable, unless non-phonetic

causes

> apply.
>
> Eng. altérnative Da. altérnativ Ger. alternatív
> Eng. áctive Da. áktiv Ger. aktív
> Eng. pássive Da. pássiv Ger. passív
> Eng. mássive Da. massív Ger. massív
>
> This illustrates how stress moves out of the semantically

unsatisfying

> final position (where the contrast of the various -íves will be
> minimal) to the secondmost-stressed position two syllables away even
> though this position removes this adjective from the verb álternate,
> itself from alternáte. The process is in various stages in the
> sequence German -> Danish -> English, with German being the most
> conservative and English the most activist. Once the two-syllable
> jumps are completed, the rest of the -ives move stress on an
> individual, semantic basis, áctive/pássive for maximal contrast when
> they are mentioned in one utterance (cf Danish infanterí/artillerí,
> but in professional use ínfanteri/ártilleri for contrast), and

finally

> the stragglers get the same treatrment for conformance.
>
> That's why I don't believe in not otherwise motivated one-syllable
> stress jumps.
>
>
> I assume this was what you meant by your question on the stress-

losing

> jers, or?
>
>
> Torsten

There were lots of words with accented word-final short vowels, but
the stress was retracted only from yers. If yers were
equally 'strong' (in duration or anything similar) as other short
vowels (i.e. 'e' and 'o'), why didn't other short vowels lose stress?
I think that high vowels are for some reason prone to losing prosodic
prominence to a greater extent than other vowels. However, I may be
wrong.

I agree with what you've written above about stress retraction to the
word stem because of semantic reasons. But there are loads of words
in Slavic stressed on the grammatical ending and seemingly no one
bothers about that.

Yes. The skipping the nearest syllable is more likely to happen, but
still in Slavic the stress shifted to the immediately preceding one:
stol'U > stólU 'table', konop'U > konópU ('rope').

David