On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:22:42 +0100 (CET), Mate Kapović
<
mkapovic@...> wrote:
>Miguel:
>
>>>> It's also attested in Old Polish. It's attested in Modern
>>>> Polish, if you count ja biorę, oni biorą...
>>>
>>>That's different, I think.
>>
>> How is it different? What I'm saying is that
>> "a.p.c-stressed" endings were lengthened (if not already
>> long), and that "a.p.c-unstressed" endings were shortened
>> (if not already short). Biorę :: biorą is exactly that.
>
>No. This is the same thing wee see in archaic Croatian ve``lju - ve`le:.
>The length in the 3rd person pl. (always there!) is due to a former *-t6
>which was there, thus *be``roN > biorę (the length is shortened in final
>open syllable), but *bero~Nt6 > biorą (the length from the neo-acute is
>preserved and then the final *-t6 drops of).
Yes, that works for a.p. c forms with final -tI. The
neo-acute length could have been analogically transferred to
a.p.'s a and b . But I don't believe that -tI just dropped
off. Novgorodian Russian uses forms with and without -tI in
the 3rd. person, with a distinction in meaning (the tI-less
carrying modal senses), which should go back to the PIE
present (*-e-ti) and the subjunctive or injunctive (*-e-t).
In my theory, the tI-less 3rd. person sg. -e: and pl. -oN:
also acquire length naturally (also through an analogical
development originating in a.p. c).
>Besides, your theory is not really convincing. In Čakavian, there is only
>živete``, roni:te``, pečemo`` etc. There is no **-te:, *-mo: anywhere.
Actually, according to my theory we wouldn't expect any
length there. It was the length of 3sg. -e: (and 3pl. -oN:)
that was transferred to the thematic vowel. So instead of
original
*-oN
*-es^I:
*-e:
*-emU:
*-ete:
*-oN:
we got "transposed":
-oN
-e:s^I
-e:
-e:mU
-e:te
-oN:
You said Slovene has neo-circumflex in the 1/2pl. and dual,
but I can only find it in the imperative, not in the
present. What am I missing?
>And
>there is no convincing analogy there since a. p. b does not have final
>accent in those forms. There is no *-té, *-mé in Czech as well.
But there was -éme, -éte in Old Czech, and -ieme, -iete etc.
in modern Slovak.
Since posttonic length is lost or unstable in West Slavic,
the distribution makes sense: Old Czech and Slovak have the
length only in a.p. c, where it was tonic or pre-tonic, but
not in a.p. a/b, where the length was posttonic. The
(sporadic?) cases of length in Old Polish a.p. a verbs fit
into this pattern, although it's hard to explain why the
lengthened thematic vowel is not found in Old Polish a.p. c
verbs.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...