Re: German loans in Polish

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> > > Well, obviously we have a problem here, because in neither
> > > OHG missa, mëssa nor
> > > Latin missa
> > > is the final -a stressed. The stress has been moved in the loan
> > > process.
> >
> > I don't see any problem with that. Either the short vowel could
> > not receive the stress, or it lost the ability to hold it as it
> > became a jer. There's some mention of it in
> > http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/47177 ,
> > but I can't find much relevant discussion.
>
> These oldest loans are pan-Slavic, Kästner places them before
> Havlík's rule. According to him /i/ was replaced by /ь/ which then
> had the fate of other jers.
>
> The idea that Havlík's rule triggered stress movement seems to me to
> be putting the cart before the horse. It works on paper, but I can't
> get my head around how that would have worked in practice. I would
> be much happier with a formulation that did it the other way round.
> Japanese has a similar system (as Proto-Slavic) of open syllables
> and loss of /i/ and /u/; how are the formulated there, is /i/ and
> /u/ - loss independent of stress?

*First* Havlík's rule makes a stressed vowel go away, *then* stress is moved away from that now non-existing vowel. I think that's an odd way of explaining things. I would much rather see stress move *before* the then unstressed vowel disappears. That can be done by letting stress be indeterminate at first (like Japanese?), then alternately deleting and expanding jers, leaving two versions of the word, then let Havlík's rule (last jer should disappear) weed out the undesirable outcome.


Torsten