Re: Lithuanian diphthongs

Hello,

It's not so simple since the change was sporadic and nobody
understands its conditions. There are still many /ai/ and /ei/
diphtongs left in both the languages. However, the change seems to
have been Proto East Baltic, since there are only slght differences in
the results between Latvian and Lituanian. It's either not simply the
stress that matters.

Best wishes
Santeri


Lainaus "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>:

> W dniu 2011-06-09 22:35, stlatos pisze:
>
>> I know oi>ai, it's ai>ie that has no expl.
>
> It's actually a pretty simple story. In East Baltic, _stressed_ *ai (<
> *ai, *oi) and *ei fell together as *e.: (a mid-high monophthong), which
> was subsequently diphthongised to /ie/ independently in Auks^taitian
> Lithuanian and in Latvian.
>
> Piotr
>
>