Original scientific paper
On the rise of neo-acute *e and *o
Frederik Kortlandt
; Department of comparative linguistics, Leiden University
Abstract
The question is whether the reflex *iè, *uò of Stang’s law is distinct both from the reflex *é, *ó of the early retraction of the stress from final jers, as in Slovene nę́sǝl < *neslъ̀, gen.pl. gọ́r < *gorъ̀, and from *è, *ò that did not receive the stress as a result of an accent retraction, as in bòb < *bòbъ, dnò < *dъnò < *dъ̀no (Dybo’s law). It is clear that *ó and *uò remained distinct in Slovene. In Kajkavian, the reflex *iè, *uò of Stang’s law merged with the reflex *é, *ó of the early retraction of the stress from final jers, not with *è, *ò that had not received the stress as a result of an accent retraction. Here we find a distinction between *è, *ò and *iè, *uò in initial and medial syllables. In Štokavian, *iè and *uò lost their diphthongal element and merged with *è and *ò at an early stage.
In Slovak, the distinction between *ò and *uò is reflected as o versus ô while the distinction between *iè and *é is maintained as e versus ie. The long vowel in Czech kůň, Slovak kôň did not arise phonetically but was adopted from the case forms where the accent had been retracted in accordance with Stang’s law. Slovak ô is also the phonetic reflex of long falling *ȏ after a labial consonant, where it had evidently been shortened to *uò. The late Proto-Slavic shortening of long falling vowels yielded *uò < *ȏ in Czech, later reflected as ů.
The possessive pronouns *mojь, *tvojь, *svojь and the imperatives *(ne) bojь sę ‘(do not) fear’ and *stojь ‘stand’ have the reflex of *ó. Since Lithuanian normally uses uninflected màno, tàvo, sàvo in possessive constructions, I think that the PIE possessive forms were originally uninflected and that Slavic replaced these forms by *mo‑iH, *tuo‑iH, *suo‑iH, with stressed *‑iH, like Latin meī, tuī, suī. At a later stage, these forms became thematicized and adopted the inflection of the pronoun *jь. For the imperatives *stojь and *bojь sę we may reconstruct *stojì and *bojì with final stress, followed by loss of intervocalic *j and resyllabification.
Keywords
neo-acute; Stang’s law; accent retraction; possessive pronouns
Hrčak ID:
177716
URI
Publication date:
23.12.2016.
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