Slot: 29A-6 Dec.
29, 8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Panel: Phonology and Accentology
Chair: David Birnbaum, University of Pittsburgh
Title: Three Accentual Changes in Lithuanian
Author: Alan Timberlake, University of
California, Berkeley
Lithuanian underwent
three important changes in accent:
(i) intrasyllabic metatony,
or reversal of the phonetic contour of long accents; (ii) intersyllabic metatony, or advancement
of accent (short or circumflex) from penultimate to final syllables; and
(iii) Leskien’s Law, or
shortening of ultimate acutes.
This paper describes the phonetic mechanisms involved in the changes and
their relative chronology. In
reverse chronological order:
(iii) Leskien’s Law is late: 2nd
sg *vèdê > vedì shows
intersyllabic metatony (cf. inf vèsti) and then Leskien’s shortening; *jỗktê-si >
juokíe-s(i) (cf. inf juõktis) shows univerbation of enclitics before Leskien’s
Law.
(ii) Intersyllabic metatony advances
accent from a penultimate short or circumflex to become final acute in certain
forms—for example, in the accusative plural of nouns. A serious stumbling block is defining what conditioned
advancement—length of the final syllable?
what kind of length? If we
take it on faith that there was a coherent environment, then the change is a
banal advancement: the peak moves
from the last mora of the penultimate to the first mora of the ultima, becoming
a first-mora peak, or acute.
(i) Intrasyllabic metatony: Using a strict moraic analysis, we would have to say that
the peak switched places: acute *x > x while circumflex *x > x, an improbable or at least incomplete mechanism. The process was no doubt more
complicated. Arguably the acute
was a concave or single-peak accent (low-high-low), whose high peak moved
towards the beginning of a long syllable to give high-low, or first-mora (“falling”)
accent. The circumflex was a
convex or two-peak accent (high-low-high). By suppressing the first peak and exaggerating the second, a
new second-mora accent (low-high, or “rising”) resulted. If so, intersyllabic metatony
(advancement) can be viewed as an extreme case of intrasyllabic metatony: the second peak of the circumflex is
delayed to the first mora of the final syllable.
Slovene (Greenberg, Historical
Phonology of Slovene)
offers a parallel, in that circumflexes (short or long) move to the following
syllable, resulting in a new circumflex, or first-mora peak on the second
syllable.
Title: Plural Accentuation of Masculine Nouns in
Pskov Dialects
Author: Miriam Shrager, Indiana University
This paper examines in detail the plural
accentuation of masculine nouns in central Pskov (C-Pskov) dialects. These
dialects were already noted for having an archaic type of accentuation in the
singular system, such as oxytone accentuation in the oblique cases of accentual
paradigm D (AP-D) nouns (Shrager 2005A, 2005B). Likewise, many oxytone forms
are found in the
nominative plural (Nom pl.) in C-Pskov dialects which are irregular compared to
Common Standard Russian (CSR). Similar irregularity in the plural system was
noticed by Stang (1957: 77) who could not explain why in old Russian texts
certain masculine nouns of the mobile paradigm had oxytone accentuation in the
Nom pl. These irregular oxytone forms are explained by the theory of AP-D (Dybo et al. 1990,
1993), according to which, oxytone in the Nom pl. is the regular accentuation
for AP-D nouns. Although in CSR oxytone plural forms also sometimes exist among
nouns of AP-D, in C-Pskov dialects they are strongly
prevail. However, different plural forms are often found in C-Pskov dialects,
which must be due to the numerous levelling processes of the Russian plural
system.
The current
paper examines the different plural forms in six C-Pskov dialects. Forms with
five types of ending are examined: -ý, -y,
-á, -ja, and -já.
Several factors are found which influence the ending distribution in the
plural noun system and which obscure the association of nouns to the original
accentual paradigms. One of these factors is a correlation of certain endings
to certain semantic categories. When these categories are identified and put
aside, a more archaic system of the plural is revealed, in which AP-D nouns
have a distinct accentuation pattern and can be differentiated on one hand from
nouns of AP-B and on the other hand from nouns of AP-C.
References
Dybo, V.A., Zamjatina G.I., Nikolaev S.L.
1990. Osnovy slavjanskoj akcentologii.
Moscow:
Nauka.
_______ . 1993. Osnovy slavjanskoj akcentologii. Slovar. Moscow: Nauka.
Shrager, Miriam. 2005A.
"Reflexes of AP-D in Northwest Russian Dialects," AATSEEL,
Washington, December 2005.
_______ . 2005B. "Accentuation of Masculine Nouns in
Northwest Russian
Dialects," International Workshop on
Balto-Slavic Accentology (IWoBA), Zagreb, Croatia, July 2005.
Stang, Christian. 1957. Slavonic
Accentuation. Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget.
Title: Vowel Neutralization in Belarusian and
Russian Okan′e/Akan′e Dialects
Author: Christina Y. Bethin, Stony Brook
University
Both
Standard Belarusian and Standard
Russian as well as many of their dialects are characterized by a neutralization
of the contrast between /o/ and /a/ in unstressed syllables, known as akan'e.
To the south of the akan'e dialects in Belarus and to the north of akan'e
dialects in Russia are the so-called okan'e dialects in which the contrast is
generally preserved. Between the two types lie various transitional dialects in
which akan'e has begun to spread into okan'e systems (Avanesov and Orlova 1965,
Vajtovič 1968). The paper focuses on some of these transitional dialects and on
possible motivations for patterns of akan'e spread in them.
Recent approaches to vowel
neutralization and reduction in Slavic have implicated abbreviated duration in
unstressed syllables as functioning in the neutralization of the contrast
between /o/ and /a/ (Crosswhite 1999, Barnes 2002). This position has a long
history in Slavic and is often referred to as the "reductionist
theory" (Šaxmatov 1915,
Avanesov 1952 and many others). This paper looks at five types of transitional
okan′e/akan′e dialects in Belarus and Russia
and argues that while abbreviated duration may account for some patterns of
akan'e spread in these dialects, it cannot account for several other systematic
okan′e/akan′e
patterns. The proposal is that the latter may be perceptually motivated in that
perceptual salience (increased vowel duration, higher pitch, vowel identity
across syllables/ assimilation) favors the spread of akan'e in certain
well-defined positions. Some experimental evidence is cited in support of this
hypothesis from work on Russian and Belarusian (Čekmonas 2001, Vysotskij 1973,
Kasatkina 2005, and others). The proposal potentially bears on discussions
about the historical development of akan'e and its motivation (Vajtovič 1968
1968, 1974, Čekmonas 1975, 1987, and the many references therein) and suggests
directions for future research.
References
Avanesov, R. I. 1952. "Lingvističeskaja geografija i istorija
russkogo akan′ja." Voprosy Jazykoznanija 6:25-47.
Avanesov, R. I. and V. G Orlova. 1965. Russkaja dialektologija. Moscow: Nauka.
Barnes, J. 2002. Positional neutralization: A phonologization
approach to typological patterns. UC Berkeley Ph.D thesis.
Čekmonas V. N. [Czekman] 1975. "Akan'e. Istota zjawiska i
jego pochodzenie." Slavia Orientalis 3.283-305.
_______
. 1987. "Territorija zaroždenija i etapy
razvitija vostočnoslavjanskogo akan′ja v svete
dannyx lingvogeografii." Russian Linguistics 11.335-49.
_______
. 2001. "K izučeniju vokalizma govorov
Pskovščiny." Voprosy russkogo jazykoznanija 9.43-85.
Crosswhite, K. 1999. Vowel reduction in Optimality Theory. UCLA Ph.D thesis. Published
2001 Routledge.
Kasatkina, R. F. 2005. "Moskovskoe akan′e v svete
nekotoryx dialektnyx dannyx." Voprosy Jazykoznanija 53.2:29-45.
Šaxmatov, A. A. 1915. Očerk drevnejšego perioda istorii
russkogo jazyka. Petrograd: Imper. Akademija Nauk.
Vajtovič,
N. T. 1968. Nenaciskny vakalizm narodnyx havorak Belarusi. Minsk: Navuka i texnika.
Vajtovič,
N. T. 1974. "K voprosu o putjax razvitija akan′ja v vostočnoslavjanskix
jazykax." In Obščeslavjanskij lingvističeskij atlas. Materialy i
issledovanija, 1971, ed.
by R. I. Avanesov. pp. 32-41. Moscow: Nauka.
Title: Polish trot Reflexes and the Segmental Properties of
Metathesis
Author: Ronald F. Feldstein, Indiana University
Many proposals exist on the derivation of
the Polish trot
reflexes. Proceeding from Common Slavic *tăt (both vowel
and liquid one-mora long), this paper considers whether the vowel quality is
long or short o or a. In Jakobson (1952), modern Polish o of trot is derived from a short, but a of South Slavic trat from a long. This does not account for
Polish o in trot historically behaving as a long (i.e., as *trōt). If so, how would this fit in with a
possible mora to the left of the liquid (e.g., we proch, Rozwadowski (1909))? Timberlake (1985)
proposed gradual change, using fractional mora sizes. The present paper proposes
that if short ă>ŏ
preceded the loss of the liquid’s moraicity in *tŏt, the liquid’s loss of a mora and leftward compensation
yielded the sequence *tŏŏrt.
Liquid metathesis specifies the liquid’s retraction by one segment, so
everything depends on whether ŏŏ was
one segment or two, yielding either trōt or pleophonic tŏrŏt. Since the shortening of accentual paradigms A/C was the
major factor phonologizing /ō/ (creating long and short mid and low vowel
phonemes /ă, ā, ŏ, ō/, etc.), the
paper concludes that metathesis prior to prosodic shortening (when /ō/ was not
yet phonemic) would result in pleophonic reflexes. This could explain East
Slavic pleophony, where quantity was lost. Polish trōt is explained by assuming that metathesis
occurred after /ō/ became phonemic, guaranteeing retraction of the liquid to
the left of /ō/, analogous to South Slavic/Czecho-Slovak trāt, where the phonemic status of /ā/ was
never in doubt.
References
Jakobson, Roman 1952.
"On Slavic diphthongs ending in a liquid", Word, 8(4), pp. 306-310.
Rozwadowski, Jan 1909.
(Review) Кульбакин С., "К вопросу о польском ro",
Rocznik sławistyczny
II, pp. 186–89.
Timberlake, Alan 1985.
"The metathesis of liquid diphthongs in Upper Sorbian", International
Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, 31–32, pp. 417–3.