From: tgpedersen
Message: 61642
Date: 2008-11-15
>Is it possible to split up early Slavic into 'high' and 'low'
> On 2008-11-14 20:09, Rick McCallister wrote:
>
> > > How do we explain that Russian Ovin "cereal drying
> > > shed" does not have
> > > an initial j- yod as should be expected ?
> > > It seems Baltic and other Slavic languages have the
> > > expectec j-.
> > > Is it from *yewo "cereal" ?
> > >
> > > A.
> >
> > Hmmm, if it's from *yewo-, then it may a taboo-induced change in
> > that **yevin sounds too much like **yeben or, conversely, maybe
> > it's derived from a Low German or Scandinavian "oven" word that
> > on a specialized meaning
>
> There are two related 'granary' words in Slavic, *jevIja and *ovinU
> (no *j- anywhere in Slavic), both from PIE *jewo- (Lith. javai~
> 'grain'). Andersen (1996, Reconstructing Prehistorical Dialects:
> Initial Vowels in Slavic and Baltic) regards them both as early
> loans from SE Baltic (*jawí:nas ~ *jáuja: < *jawi`ja:),
> representing two alternative treatments of *ja- in a borrowed word.
> PSl. *j- was basically a non-phonemic prothetic glide appearing
> before front vowels, so from the point of view of the early Slavic
> phonotactic patterns the choice was between recognising the back
> quality of the vowel (and dropping the glide accordingly: *ja- -->
> *o-, actually realised as something close to [a] at that stage) and
> recognising the glide and adjusting the vowel (*ja- --> *je-). It's
> however also possible that *ovinU at least is native in Slavic and
> simply shows the confusion and partial merger of *o- and *(j)e- in
> Slavic dialects, as in *(j)ezero ~ *ozero 'lake' (cf. a similar
> convergent tendency in Baltic). The complete non-attestation of
> *jevinU in any dialect is a difficulty for this explanation, but
> hardly a fatal one, as Derksen points out. Nor does the
> non-attestation of *ob- for *jeb- 'fuck' prove beyond all doubt
> that etymological *j- was invariable in Common Slavic; at any rate
> we have *jo- > late Common Slavic *je- ~ *o- in grammatical words
> (pronouns, conjunctions), and *jew- > PBSl. > *jaw- > PSl. jow- may
> have behaved similarly.
>
> As for the structure of *ovinU, I'd reconstruct *jewi-h3n-o-, with
> the Hoffmann element, which frequently appears in derivatives
> meaning 'the place for keeping/storing X'.