Balto-Slavic accentology

This paper discusses several Slavic and Baltic dialects which have undergone stress shifts as a result of language contact. Two types of change are discussed: (1) stress retractions from the final syllable onto the initial syllable of a prosodic word, and (2) the rise of fixed stress replacing earlier free stress. It is argued that in all cases discussed in the paper, contact with a language with fixed initial stress caused a stress shift. Examples from Croatian and Lithuanian demonstrate that pitch contours played an important role in these shifts. The results of the shifts are not always identical, but the underlying mechanism is the same in each of these cases: the lexical pitch contour of the donor language was imposed on the target language, thereby introducing constraints on the position of stress in the target language. It is argued that a similar mechanism operated in West Slavic, where languages with free stress introduced fixed stress on the initial or penultimate syllable due to contact with German and possibly Hungarian.

The first part of the article deals with the ablaut pattern(s) that may be reconstructed on the basis of Slavic comparatives. It is claimed that three separate morphological categories (including comparatives) support the interpretation of the vowel o in some suppletive roots as derived from the ∅-grade, possibly within the amphikinetic pattern; thus a new sound law is suggested for Proto-Slavic. In the second part, it is illustrated how the remodeling of the Proto-Slavic comparative formative supports the interpretation of Proto-Indo-European comparatives as quasi-primary derivatives of change-of-state verbs; a parallel phenomenon is also described for Kashubian. Finally, accentual matters are briefly referred to. The paper includes some remarks on the vestiges of the Caland system in Slavic, too.

The paper discusses the reflexes of the Proto-Slavic i-verbs accentual paradigms in Croatian (Štokavian/Čakavian/Kajkavian) dialects, with special regards to the reflexes of the a. p. b1 and b2, as well as to a Štokavian/Čakavian a. p. c > B: transfer. The paper provides a great amount of accentological data for the reconstruction of Proto-Slavic, Balto-Slavic and Indo-European accent.

In diesem Beitrag werden die Silbenintonationen des den Texten Križanićs zugrunde liegenden Dialekts rekonstruiert. Das wichtigste Ergebnis der Rekonstruktion ist, dass in seinem Akzentsystem zwei kurzen Intonationen vorkommen, von denen eine vermutlich aus dem urslavischen kurzen Neoakut stammt. Bisher wurde angenommen, dass dieser keine direkten Spuren in den Folgesprachen hinterlassen hat.

Križanić, Serbokroatisch, Čakavisch, Akzentologie, Neoakut

В статье реконструируются слоговые интонации диалекта, на котором осно-ваны тексты Крижанича. Главным выводом является наличие в его акцентной системе двух кратких интонаций, одна из которых скорее всего восходит к праславянскому краткому новому акуту, который, как считалось до сих пор, прямо не отразился ни в одном славянском языке.

Крижанич, сербохорватский язык, чакавское наречие, акцентология, новый акут"

U radu se obrađuje povijest glagolske akcentuacije u štokavskom, tj. njezin razvoj od praslavenskoga do suvremenih dijalekata. Uz nešto manje detaljâ govori se i o glagolskoj akcentuaciji u čakavskom i kajkavskom. Naglasak je na rekonstrukciji i razvoju naglasnih paradigama u njihovu međuodnosu s kompleksnom glagolskom morfologijom. Glagoli su podijeljeni po prezentsko-infinitivnim vrstama i razredima te su unutar njih obrađeni svi glagolski oblici.

All South Slavic languages, from Bulgaria in the SouthEast to Slovenia in the NorthWest , are part of a dialect continuum. This paper outlines the position of what is traditionally called Kajkavian in that continuum in light of old accentual isoglosses. Kajkavian shares several old prosodic-phonological iso-glosses with Slovene (such as the rise of the neocircumflex), while on the other hand it is connected with Western Štokavian and Čakavian through some morphological categorial accentual isoglosses (like the innovative accent of the infinitive and l-participle).

In diesem Artikel werden die Besonderheiten des Osijeker Akzentsystems
dargestellt. Er beginnt mit einer relativ ausführlichen Einleitung über die
slawischen Akzentparadigmen, auf die im gesamten Artikel immer wieder
Bezug genommen wird, und behandelt dann die Osijeker Prosodie im Allgemeinen, die Betonung der Substantive, Adjektive und Verben, das Verhalten des Akzents bei Proklise und die Akzentuierung mancher Wörter mit fremden Suffixen und entlehnter Komposita. Den Schluss bildet eine Liste von Substantiven, Adjektiven und Verben mit Angabe ihrer Osijeker Betonung.

Slovak is not generally thought of as a rich and informative source for the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic accentual system. In addition to the well-known fact that Slovak, unlike Czech, exhibits no traces of the Proto-Slavic acute, this view is also due to at least two peculiarities of its development: 1. quantity is often neutralised by many later phonological processes, such as the Rhythmic Law and the shortening of front diphthongs after j; 2. Slovak is more prone to analogical levelling and generalisation than any other West Slavic language, affecting, among other things, the development of quantity, whether through the generalisation of length in a particular grammatical category (such as in the genitive plural) or through analogical intrusion of quantitative patterns in derivation. Nevertheless, Slovak does offer some valuable data for the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic accentual system, such as consistent length in the nominative singular of short root vowel nouns belonging to the b accentual paradigm (bôb, kôl, stôl...). Still more valuable data is contained in the rich Slovak dialectal material, which is neither sufficiently well-known nor sufficiently accessible to international scholarship. This paper offers guidelines for researching quantity in the Slovak dialectal material, as well as shows how the Slovak dialectal material can contribute to the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic accentual system.

This PhD thesis examines a phenomenon known as Monosyllabic Circumflexion (MC, hereafter) from a historical linguistics / phonological point of view. MC denotes a Lithuanian or Balto-Slavic phenomenon according to which long vowels and diphthongs in monosyllabic words exhibit a circumflex tone instead of the expected acute tone. It is observed in the following four categories:

Examines the conversion of Common Slavic accentual paradigms into quantitative paradigms of West Slavic. New restrictions on prosodic mobility are indicated, showing why morphological, and not phonological rules, determine many quantitative reflexes of the modern languages. Quantitative alternations generally had to be linked to new vowel~zero alternations.

While L2 acquisition by Brazilians has been studied for different languages, the acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese by foreigners has been poorly explored. Recent studies of non-native accented speech in other languages have shown that a foreign accent could largely influence the perception of personal qualities of speakers, and this issue presents a large interest for intercultural research projects. Our research project is focused on Russophone immigrants living in Brazil, bilingual speakers of Russian and Portuguese. The specific aim of the current work is to describe a database containing information about 40 native Russian speakers living in São Paulo for at least six months. Their linguistic and sociocultural profiles are presented, and the experimental protocol of the data collection is described. The protocol included recording speech samples in Russian and in Portuguese and video recordings for further facial expression analysis of bilinguals by the program FaceReader 7.0. The analysis of the sociocultural profiles of the Russophones, presented in the current work, provides a strong basis for the enrichment of the phonetic, sociolinguistic, and nonverbal behavior analysis of these speakers.

This article summarizes and critically discusses Jerzy Kuryłowicz’s views on the origin of the Polish (Slavic, Indo-European) comparative. First of all, the hypothesis concerning the emergence of the Proto-Indo-European suffix *-i̯os- (Slavic *-’ьš-, Polish -sz-) has been challenged. Furthermore, the source of the extension within the Slavic suffix *-ě-jьš- (Polish -ejsz-) and accentological issues (with particular emphasis on the Polish material) have been discussed. The question of originality of the hypotheses presented in Kuryłowicz’s works has also been addressed.

This paper deals with certain aspects of accentuation of the Čakavian dialect of Blato on the island of Korčula from a historical and wider dialectological perspective. The material in the paper is based completely on a recently published dictionary – Milat Panža ([2014]). The topics discussed are posstonic acute length, locative plural in *-axъ (and the accent of *nasъ, *vasъ), one archaic length alternation in the verb "činiti", the accentuation of the "za me" type and some minor issues.

This paper deals with *-VRHi̯- sequences in Proto-Slavic. Under certain conditions they probably yielded *-V̀R’- sequences, thus introducing a new type of intonation – the so-called short neo-acute tone. If so, the evidence for Pinault’s law requires re-examination.

Padajoči naglas, ki mu rečemo “neocirkumfleks”, se je premikal za en zlog proti začetku v kajkavščini in v panonskih in koroških slovenskih narečjih. V večjem delu kajkavške narečne skupine je ta premik omejen na besede z dolgim vokalom v predtoničnem zlogu. Dejstvo, da najdemo tudi premaknjen neocirkumfleks v besedah s kratkim predtoničnim vokalom, ni posledica tega premika, temveč je akcent posplošen iz besed s podobnim prefiksom ali suffiksom. Temeljit pogled na gradivo panonskih in koroških narečij dokazuje, da je tudi v teh slovenskih narečjih premik izvršen samo v besedah z dolgim vokalom v predtoničnem zlogu. V koroščini se to kaže iz gradiv o ziljskem, rožanskem, podjunskem in obirskem narečju. Premik moramo
datirati med 12 in 15 stoletjem, mogoče še malo prej.

The paper discusses the accent of kako ‘how’, tako ‘thus’, ovako ‘this way’, onako ‘that way’ and some other related words (like nikako ‘no way’, nekako ‘somehow’) primarily in Štokavian and Čakavian from a dialectological (including standard-dialect sources) and historical perspective (going back to Common Slavic). The alternation kȁko ‘how’ — kàko ̮ je < kakȍ ̮ je ‘how is’ is discussed in some detail.

The paper deals with synchrony and diachrony of phonetics, phonology and prosody of the Čakavian dialect of Susak (Croatia) based on the author's fieldwork in 2018. The data is compared to previous studies of the Susak dialect. The local dialect exhibits a number of interesting phonological features-e. g. a complex ("Tsakavian") opposition of postalveolars (/č, ž, š/) to dentals/alveolars (/c, z, s/), centralization of short /i/ and /o/ (in connection to vowel quantity opposition), complex allophonic realizations of the diphthong /i̯e/, etc.-which may be interesting from the perspective of wider phonological theory.

In this paper I will try to present some features of local Neo-Štokavian Ijekavian dialects of the villages Vidonje and Dobranje, situated east of Metković, some 80 km to the west of Dubrovnik and I will try to compare them with the neighboring Štokavian and Čakavian dialects. In the first part of this paper I will concentrate on specific general phonological, morphological and syntactic features of these dialects, while in the second part I will focus  on the prosodic system in general and accent shift to proclitics.

The article deals with Vaillant’s rule, which describes the distribution of allomorphs of the Proto-Slavic comparative suffix. As indicated by an analysis of the Old Church Slavic corpus (compared to other old Slavic languages), Vladimir Dybo’s modern formulation of the rule requires certain corrections. In addition, this article develops Pavel S. Sigalov’s idea that the rule in question could also concern intransitive change-of-state verbs.
[NOTE: Due to a mistake, without my knowledge and against my will, some diacritics in the table on p. 155 have been changed. All forms in a single column should reflect the same prosodic type, thus <ě> in  PSl. *blě(d)nǫti should bear a double acute accent and <ǫ> in Sln. -gǫstnem - an inverted breve.]

In dieser Arbeit werde ich den Akzent sowie die Akzent- und Längenwechsel bei den Verben der Mundart der Ortschaft Kukljica auf der Insel Ugljan beschreiben. Am Anfang sind manche Angaben über das Phonemsystem der genannten Mundart, über die verschiedenen Entwicklung dieser Mundart von der kroatischen Standardsprache im Bereich der Lautwandel und eine Beschreibung ihrer Prosodie. Am Ende steht eine Liste der akzentuierten Verben der Mundart von Kukljica verteilt in 3 Akzentparadigmen.
Fast alles, was ich hier uber betreffende Mundart vortragen werde, habe ich
erfahren, indem ich meine Mutter Nevena Benić, meine Tante Ratka Vojvodić und andere Muttersprachler befragte und ihnen zuhörte. Die Mundart von Kukljica werde ich hauptsächlich mit der kroatischen Standardsprache vergleichen und seltener mit den Mundarten benachbarter Ortschaften, weil ich sie nicht genügend kenne. In dieser Arbeit wird selbstverständlich sowohl die synchronische als auch die diachronische Betrachtung berücksichtigt.

The following work explains the influence of the discourse of Slavic accentology on Slovak linguistics in its development. The prosodic features of Slovak – especially the syllabic quantity – were explained first as an inherited ablaut-system, and since 1930s by the theory of Common Slavic metatony. Nevertheless, a parallel discourse in Leiden school of accentology developed, concerning some language changes in (especially Central) Slovak dialects, e.g. the rhythmic law and the compensatory lengthening. The text asks, in how far we can productively explain historical changes by using synchrone dialectal data, as well as the methods employed by Slovak linguists in this matter. The text concludes with a model of relative chronology of prosodic changes in the dialect of Liptau, which was used as a model for standard Slovak language.

Original English version of a paper published in Slovak, "Praslovanské prozodické pozadie vzniku rytmického zákona v slovenčine," in Slavica Slovaca 25:1 (1990), pp. 41‑49. Attempts to explain the Rhythmic Law in terms of separate stress retractions.

The article discusses a number of cases in which Proto-Indo-European word-initial sequences of the type *Hi- and *Hu- yield an acute vowel in Baltic and in Slavic. It is argued that this is a regular development and that the acute accent was frequently transferred analogically to the corresponding full grade forms *Hei- and *Heu-.

III prūsų katekizmo rašyba liudija šią priesagą buvus kirčiuotą, pozicinį dvigarsio in pirmojo dėmens pailgėjimą žymintis brūkšnelis rodo prūsų kalboje priesagai buvus būdingą cirkumfleksinę priegaidę, plg. pr. wertīngs. Rytų baltų kalbose ši priesaga, kaip žinoma, akūtinė, plg. lie. vertngas, la. vẽrtîgs. Į šią problemą dėmesį atkreipė, nors plačiau ir nekomentavo, jau F. Fortunatovas ir E. Bernekeris, pirmąsyk prūsistikos istorijoje išnagrinėję brūkšnelio vartojimo dėsningumus III katekizme ir pastebėję prūsų ir lietuvių kalbų kirčio vietos bei priegaidžių atitikimus (žr. Ф о р т у н а т о в ъ 1895, 261t.; B e r n e k e r 1896, 114t.).

This is a term paper, written at the time when I was graduate student at the University of Chicago and took a seminar in the History of Phonological Theory taught by Prof. John Goldsmith. The paper does not pretend to offer new solutions to the problems treated therein, but rather represents a historiographic essay,  which may be useful for those who a immersed in a particular paradigm of the study of Russian accentology and need a wider perspective.