Re: [tied] Some accentological thoughts...

On Čet, ožujak 1, 2007 10:27 pm, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal reče:

> 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).

Sure, but you have no proof that Polish was tI-less there... For 3. sg. it
makes no difference, since -e is short anyway (length is easily analogical
to -i:-, other forms etc.).

>>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.

Why, those are *accented a. p. c endings*, am I right?

> 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:

Very strange. You're just adding like 2 or 3 totally unnecessary
sound-laws. The length of -e:- could simply be due to the length of -i:-,
-a:- < -aje-.

> 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?

Nothing. Infinitive had the acute, present tense had the neo-acute, so no
neo-circumflex there.

>>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.

Yeah, but it's -éte, not -eté, that's my point. So your theory doesn't
work. Why attribute -éte to -é (*and* you have to reconstruct *-e only,
not *-etI), when you can get the length easily from i-verbs?

> 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,

I think that -é- occurs in a. p. a and a. p. b in Old Czech as well.

> 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.

Of course, the same thing is in Croatian. Typical Western Štokavian has
bu``de:š (A), me``lje:š (B) but pe`češ (C). Thus, no length *only* in a.
p. C (and in mo``žeš, ho``ćeš which preserve old a. p. B paradigm and in
-je- a. p. a verbs like vje``rujem). Old this points to length on -e-
being secondary since the one place you got length in Slovak is the one
place you don't have in Croatian etc.

Mate