Re: [tied] Some accentological thoughts...

On Sun, 4 Mar 2007 16:52:49 +0100 (CET), Mate Kapović
<mkapovic@...> wrote:

>On Ned, ožujak 4, 2007 1:48 pm, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal reče:
>
>>>> I don't think the etymology is
>>>> relevant. The reduction of the 4 morae to 3 (*-u:m), then 2
>>>> (*-uN), then 1 (*-U) was a thing of the distant past
>>>
>>>And also problematic of course since that kind of shortening is pretty
>>>strange.
>
>> I don't think so: the reduction of 3-moraic "long
>> diphthongs" occurred independently almost everywhere in the
>> Indo-European languages.
>
>I find the idea that -U < *-o:m strange. There is no other example where
>originally long vowel in final position yields a short one. *-o:ns yields
>-y, *-e:r yields -i, *-eh2m > *-a:m yields -oN, *-o:y yields -u, *-o:ys
>yields -y etc. The exact details are perhaps disputable but it is a clear
>fact that the reflex of a long vowel is a long vowel. Thus, -U < *-o:m is
>impossible.

The short reflex in Slavic is accidental: it should be long
(i.e. diphthongal) -uN (as in Lithuanian), but in the
Auslaut the high vowels lost the nasalization (in itself of
course a natural process). There is only one other "long"
ending where we would expect the same to have happened, the
acc. sg. of the devi:-feminines, which should have developed
*-ih2m > *-i:m > *-iN > -I. Unfortunately, this accusative
has mostly been replaced by the ja:-stem accusative -joN.
But we do have the pronoun OCS f. <si> (< *k^ih2), acc.
<sIjoN> (< *k^ih2m + -joN) (hmm, maybe zimoN-sI is not so
ungrammatical after all!).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...