In the beginning was the lengthened grade: on the continuity of Proto-Indo-European vowel quantity in Slavic

W.R. Vermeer

[Note on the 2014 version. This article originally appeared in: Robert Beekes, Alexander Lubotsky and Jos Weitenberg (eds.), Rekonstruktion und relative Chronologie: Akten der VIII. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Leiden, 31. August - 4. September 1987, Innsbruck (= Innsbrucker Bei-träge zur Sprachwissenschaft 65), 115-136. Layout apart, this version is virtually identical to the printed version. In one case a word that seemed necessary to avoid ambiguity has been added in square brackets (section 2.7). One minor infelicity has been removed. The page numbers of the original edition have been added as follows: “that |118| had”. (Where words were originally printed partly on one and partly on an-other page, page numbers have been put after them, as in “udarenija |133|” instead of *“udar-|133|enija”.)

General notes: − This is an introductory text. − In hindsight I’m dismayed by the triumphalist tone adopted here, for which I apologize to the reader.]

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1. Introduction

The impact of Stang’s Slavonic Accentuation (1957) has not yet been absorbed. On the one hand the task of rebuilding Slavic accentology with the help of the insights provid-ed by Stang has not been completed. On the other it has proved strikingly difficult to tackle the vital task of criticizing Stang’s work and (even more) work that has been constructed on the basis of Stang’s; scholars have tended not to realize the extent of the modifications Stang forced upon accentology; all too often they have tacitly assumed the correctness of traditional practices or insights Stang showed to be indefensible; as a consequence they have tended to misrepresent the ideas to be criticized.1 This is obvi-ously regrettable, all the more so because it has been realized at least since Bopp that the facts of Slavic prosody have a Proto-Indo-European background, so that changes in the interpretation of Slavic prosodic facts have potential implications for Indo-Euro-pean studies. As a consequence introductory texts intended to clarify the present state of Slavic accentology seem called for. In this article I shall try to make things clearer by showing how vowel quantity has fared from Proto-Indo-European times till now in the variety of post-Stangian accentology devised by Kortlandt. The purpose is to make

1 For an example I refer to Johnson (1980, 1981), on which see Vermeer (1984: 384-385 and passim). Misunderstandings and misrepresentations have turned the reception of “Winter’s law” into an embar-rassing farce.

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this approach more accessible and in so doing to create better conditions for a critical evaluation.2

The modifications introduced by Stang involve different aspects of Slavic accentology, ranging from the brute facts to be explained, to the general attitude to be adopted when approaching a theory. |116|

1.1. Stang and the brute facts

Classical Slavic accentology tended to rely heavily on the facts of a restricted number of living forms of Slavic, in particular modern standard Russian, archaic Russian dia-lects described by Broch (1907) and Šaxmatov (1914), modern standard Serbo-Croat as codified by Vuk Karadžić (1852) and Daničić (1925, originally 1851-1872), archaic Serbo-Croat dialects described by Belić (1909: “Čakavian”) and Ivšić (1913: “Posavian Štokavian”), and standard Slovene as codified by Pleteršnik (1894-95), Valjavec (1897) and Breznik (1916).3 Without in any way downplaying the importance of these sources Stang revived a tradition of taking seriously the indications provided by old written sources, such as (in his case) the 14th-century Russian Church Slavonic Čudovo New Testament or the 1647 Učenie i xitrost’ ratnago stroenija pěxotnyx ljudej, the earliest printed book in Russian (as distinct from Church Slavonic).4 This had important conse-quences for the evaluation of certain forms. I would like to give an example of this.

In Modern Russian (and the other East Slavic languages) we find a type of present tense which is stressed on the ending in all forms, e.g. nesú, nesëš’, nesët, nesëm, nesëte, nesút ‘carry’, govorjú, govoríš’, govorít, govorím, govoríte, govorját ‘speak’. According to the traditional view this pattern is Proto-Slavic. However, numerous Old Russian and Middle Bulgarian accented texts provide examples of initial stress in the first person singular, in other words, forms that in modern Russian would look like *nësu, *góvorju, a phenomenon first documented by Vasil’ev (1929: 47-52), see also Stang (1957: 109), Dybo (1969a, 1969b), Zaliznjak (1985: 322-324). Subsequently this accentuation has turned out to be widely represented outside East Slavic and Bulgarian. To give an example, the archaic Neoštokavian dialects of Montenegro have retained it to this very day in the only verb that reflects “final stress” in the present tense and that has not analogically replaced the ending -u (< *-ǫ) with -em or -im in the first person singular: vȅlju (with a falling tone reflecting Proto-Slavic initial stress) ‘I say’ vs. vèlīš (with a rising tone reflecting Proto-Slavic stress on the ending) ‘you (sg.) say’; the phe-nomenon was first attested by Vušović in his description of the Neoštokavian dialect

2 This purpose, together with the complexity of the subject (which precludes anything even approaching exhaustiveness), has had certain consequences for the form of this contribution. Discussion has been kept to the barest minimum and so has the presentation of concrete examples. I have concentrated on the gen-eral lines of the evolution of the system as a whole, because it is my impression that it is primarily the general lines that have proved difficult to grasp. 3 Not all representatives of classical accentology limited their attention to a small subset of the available data. In particular van Wijk and Bulaxovskij ranged widely. 4 With very few exceptions earlier attempts to deal with the accentuation of old texts (e.g. Daničić 1872, Rešetar 1927, Vasil’ev 1929), tended not to penetrate to the mainstream of Slavic accentology.

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spoken around Nikšić in Montenegro (1927: 59).5 Now since (on the one hand) intro-duction of initial stress in the 1st person singular (replacement of govorjú by góvorju) cannot be explained as a secondary development and since (on the other) replacement of góvorju by govorjú is easily understandable as a straightforward example of analogi-cal levelling, it is quite clear which is the older formation, in other words: which is the formation Slavic accentology has to deal with.

Owing to a large amount of subsequent work on old texts a return to pre-Stangian |117| practices has become quite unrealistic. Dybo investigated a large number of ac-cented texts, most of them in the cyrillic traditions of Old Russian (e.g. 1969b, 1975) and Middle Bulgarian (e.g. 1969a, 1973, 1977a). Study of the Old Russian material was vigorously continued by Zaliznjak (1978a, 1978b, 1979, 1981) and recently (1985) culminated in a synthetic treatment in which the regional differentiation of Old Russian accentuation is investigated on the basis of a very large number of accented texts. Mid-dle Bulgarian accentology was advanced by Hinrichs’s investigation of two 14th centu-ry manuscripts which differ from the texts that were accessible to Dybo by being con-sistently (rather than sporadically) accented (1985). As for Serbo-Croat, although most of the numerous older texts that contain information about the prosodic system have not been the subject of serious research, Bulatova’s investigations of texts in the cyrillic tradition (e.g. 1972, 1975) and Dybo’s study of the language of Križanić (see, e.g., the relevant passages of Dybo (1968) cannot be ignored with impunity.6

1.2. Stang’s three accent paradigms

Stang reduced the attested variety of accentual alternations to three “accent paradigms”, reminiscent of the four familiar accent paradigms of Lithuanian. The three paradigms are each characterized by a distinct movement of the place of the stress:

(a) Fixed stress on a stem syllable. (b) Stress alternating between the final syllable of the stem and (the first syllable of)

the ending. (c) Stress alternating between the initial syllable of the stem and the ending (in most

cases the final syllable); forms that otherwise have initial stress are completely un-stressed under certain conditions. Such potentially unstressed forms have come to be referred to as “enclinomena”.

Several things are new about this, in particular Stang’s insistence that the prosodic phe-nomena found in the verb are fundamentally the same as those found in nouns. I shall be returning to Stang’s accent paradigms in section 2.6.

5 The pattern is widely attested and its existence is not open to doubt. For further examples and refer-ences to sources see Vermeer (1984: 347n.). 6 Cf. also Kortlandt’s notes on the accentuation of two of the oldest Slavic texts: the Freising Fragments (1975b) and the Kiev Leaflets (1980a); on the latter text see now also Schaeken (1987: 43-78).

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1.3. An aspect of Stang’s general approach

Taken as a whole Stang’s approach is characterized by scepticism. Following Kuryło-wicz he rejects the hypothesis that de Saussure’s law operated in Slavic.7 He also re-jects the assumption that Proto-Slavic had a separate tone generally referred to as “neocircumflex”. The reason is that on reexamining the evidence he finds these main-stays of traditional accentology wanting (1957: 15-20; 23-35). Stang is not bothered overmuch by the consequences: now those phenomena that |118| had been thought to be explained by, say, de Saussure’s law or the assumption of a separate neocircumflex are left hanging in the air. This illustrates an important characteristic of Stang’s approach: he tends to prefer the absence of any explanation to the presence of an explanation that is clearly flawed. This had an almost magical influence on the field: it was suddenly realized that there was a lot of work to do.

2. Late Proto-Slavic

Before tackling the chronology from the Indo-European end (section 3), it is necessary to look at some facts of the late Proto-Slavic stage that can be reached by comparing the modern Slavic dialects.

2.1. The prosodic system

At present no serious controversy exists about the following synchronic facts of late Proto-Slavic (with a few reservations that I shall be returning to below, sections 2.2 and 2.4):

(1) The stress could fall on any syllable, more or less as in Modern Russian. (2) In stressed initial syllables there was a contrastive difference between two tones,

usually designated as “rising” and “falling”; in non-initial syllables there was no tone contrast: there all stressed vowels were predictably “rising”.

(3) Contrastive vowel length could occur in any position, except in the pre-pretonic syllable (and earlier syllables), where any vowel was predictably short.

By way of illustration I would like to give a few examples of word forms with the re-constructed accentuation of the final stage of Proto-Slavic:

‶ short falling vȍza ‘cart’ (Gsg.), dȍ voza ‘up to the cart’, gȍvoŕǫ, ‘I speak’, nȅ govoŕǫ ‘I do not speak’;

⁀ long falling synъ ‘son’ (NAsg.), synu ‘son’ (Gsg); ` short rising dvòrъ ‘courtyard’, dvorà ‘courtyard’ (Gsg.), bràtra ‘brother’

(Gsg.), pьsàti ‘write’ (inf.), govoŕǫ žè ‘I speak (as you realize)’; ´ long rising píšešь ‘you (sg.) write’;

7 Dybo (1977b: 586) drily remarks that accentologists, while importing de Saussure’s law into Slavic (where it was called upon to explain virtually all existing stress alternations), quite forgot about Saus-sure’s exacting methodology, which would have made them aware of the limited value of a law capable of explaining everything (cf. also o.c.: 593).

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¯ long unstressed vìdīšь ‘you (sg.) see’, dȍ sȳnu ‘up to the son’; [˘] short unstressed píšĕšь; usually, however, unstressed brevity is merely implied

by the absence of any diacritic: píšešь.

2.2. The tone distinction

Forms containing the falling tone (vȍza, gȍvoŕǫ, synъ, synu), are known to have been unstressed under certain conditions: dȍ voza, nȅ govoŕǫ, govoŕǫ žè, dȍ sȳnu. At the same time the falling tone was restricted to initial syllables: stressed vowels in non-initial syllables were predictably rising. These facts have led some investigators, begin-ning with Jakobson and Trubetzkoy, to assume that the falling tone and absence of stress were automatic alternants of each other. In this interpretation of the facts (which I shall refer to as the “Prague interpretation”) “stress” and the |119| “rising tone” are dif-ferent words for referring to the same phonological object. The Prague interpretation is more economical because it operates with a mere two units (“stress/rising tone” vs. “lack of stress/falling tone”), where the tradition distinguishes three: “lack of stress” and two types of stressed syllables, referred to as “falling” and “rising”. However, it gives rise to the problem as to what happens when an unstressed word form receives the stress, e.g. because it is the only word in a sentence and therefore has to carry sen-tence stress. What the Prague interpretation predicts is that enclinomena if stressed fell together (prosodically speaking) with other types of stressed word forms: it predicts that stressed voza was prosodically identical to bratra. Unfortunately the comparative evidence shows that stressed enclinomena remained prosodically distinct from other stressed word forms by carrying a falling tone: *vȍza (falling) vs. *bràtra (rising). It follows that the Prague interpretation is not observationally adequate.8 |120|

8 Kortlandt (1978a: 73, 1983: 37). There is a further angle to this which has to be touched upon if mis-understandings are to be avoided. Jakobson and Trubetzkoy thought that Neoštokavian (= standard Serbo-Croat) offers a typological parallel to the reconstructed Proto-Slavic system: “Das Vuksche Sys-tem der prosodischen Korrelationen ist seiner Struktur nach mit dem spät-urslavischen System vollkommen identisch” (Jakobson 1931: 178). It was Jakobson’s opinion that the distinction between tone and stress could be eliminated from a description of Neoštokavian prosody: “Die Betonung ist in diesen Mundarten gebunden: sie fällt mit dem merkmalhaltigen Tonverlauf zusammen; falls dieser im Worte fehlt, liegt die Betonung auf der ersten Wortsilbe (wenn aber an ein Wort ein Proklitikon angelehnt wird, so geht sie auf das letztere über). Die vom Standpunkte der Wortphonologie außerphonologische Betonung wird durch eine unvollsilbige (das Ende der Silbe nicht erreichende) Erhöhung gekennzeichnet; die unbetonten Silben besitzen einen ähnlichen fallenden Tonverlauf” (o.c. 175-176), cf. also Trubetzkoy’s formulation: “Somit ist der “fallende” Akzent der serbokroatischen Schriftsprache (und zwar sowohl der kurze als auch der lange) nur eine kombinatorische Variante der Tonlosigkeit mit abgrenzender Funktion: er gibt an, daß das betreffende Wort, auf dessen erste Silbe er ruht, mit dem vorhergehenden Wort keine engere Einheit bildet” (1967: 190-191). Unfortunately, contra-ry to what Jakobson and Trubetzkoy believed, living Neoštokavian systems do not limit the occurrence of the falling tone in the way that is absolutely vital for their interpretation to be observationally ade-quate, nor is the stress retraction from falling vowels onto proclitics as automatic as they would like it to be and as it is generally assumed to have been in Proto-Slavic. Jakobson and Trubetzkoy would doubt-lessly have realized this, had they known more about Serbo-Croat. It so happens that in one essential respect all living forms of Neoštokavian differ from the artificial system that is propagated by prescrip-

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2.3. “Acute”, “circumflex”, “neoacute”

In talking about the synchronic properties of the late Proto-Slavic prosodic system I have so far refrained from using the terms that are traditionally used for referring to Proto-Slavic accentuation, terms like “acute”, “circumflex”, “neoacute”, “neocircum-flex” etc. This is because these words do not designate synchronically identifiable ele-ments of the Proto-Slavic prosodic system. Instead they refer to etymologically defined vowels carrying certain prosodic properties.

(1) The term “acute” usually means: any short rising vowel reflecting a Proto-Indo-European heavy syllable nucleus.9 In paradigms with fixed stem-stress these vowels correspond etymologically to the acute in Baltic, e.g. Serbo-Croat brȁt, Gsg. brȁta, Slovene bràt, Gsg. bráta, pointing to Proto-Slavic *bràt(r)ъ, *bràt(r)a, cf. Lith. bró-, or Serbo-Croat ȕtva, Slovene ȏtva pointing to Proto-Slavic *ǫt-ъv-, Lith. ánt-is ‘duck’. Short rising vowels that reflect a PIE light syllable nucleus (o, e, ь, ъ) are referred to as “neoacute”, e.g. Lpl. *dvòrěxъ. In other words: a short stressed vowel with a rising tone is referred to as “acute” if it reflects a PIE heavy syllabic nucleus, but as “neoacute” if it does not; synchronically speaking the terms “acute” and “neoacute” make no sense.

(2) The term “neo-acute” always designates stressed rising vowels that are not “acute”, in other words: long rising vowels (without restrictions) and those short rising vow-els that do not come under the heading of “acute”. Usually the term is limited to those cases where long rising vowels and short non-acute rising vowels have be-come stressed as a consequence of the late Proto-Slavic retraction known as “Stang’s law” (on which see below, section 2.7).

(3) Whereas the terms “acute” and “neoacute”, though synchronically inappropriate, at least designate something definite, the term “circumflex” has referred to so many different objects in work by different investigators that its further use positively in-

tive grammarians: in living systems the falling tone is not limited to initial syllables. Purely Neoštokavian forms with internal falling tones can be found in considerable numbers in Karadžić (1852, e.g. pp. 33, 212, 221, 250, 283, 407, 482, 515, 550, 632, 666, 673, 766) and are widely attested in descriptions of Neoštokavian dialects, in particular in descriptions made by native carriers of the systems involved (see the examples in Vermeer 1984-85). The fact that the literary norm (which is in several respects an ab-straction not attested as a linguistic reality carried by living speakers) differs from the attested systems on which it is allegedly based is readily admitted nowadays (cf. the remark by the editors of the third edition of Maretić’s normative grammar, 1963: 133n.). The fact that the stress retraction onto proclitics does not have the regularity one expects in the case of a phenomenon rooted in the phonemic system has been clear since it was described by Daničić (1925: 58, originally published in 1856); consistency is not re-quired even by some of the strictest of prescriptive grammarians (e.g. Maretić 1899: 129). I think Pollok (1957: 284-292) was the first to point out that the Prague interpretation of Neoštokavian prosody is in conflict with the linguistic facts; other serious difficulties to which it gives rise have been adduced by others, e.g. Pavle Ivić (1958: 104), cf. also Lehiste & Ivić (1986: 238-241, 292) with references to the extensive literature criticizing the Prague interpretation. 9 Light syllabic nuclei: short vowels (*e/o) or syllabic resonants not followed by a laryngeal or a tauto-syllabic resonant. Heavy syllabic nuclei: long vowels (*ē/ō); short vowels or syllabic resonants followed by laryngeals or tautosyllabic resonants.

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vites misunderstandings. The common element underlying the meaning of the term “circumflex” is “non-acute”. However, more often than not it has been used to refer to some subset or other of non-acute vowels: in particular it has referred to all in-stances of the falling tone (to the exclusion of rising non-acute vowels), to all in-stances of long non-acute vowels (to the exclusion of all short non-acute vowels) or to all instances of long falling vowels (to the exclusion of everything else).

(4) As regards the term “neocircumflex”, it refers to an entity that can be identified only in Slovene and adjacent areas of Serbo-Croat (in particular Kajkavian) |121| and that Stang assumed to be the outcome of a relatively recent local development (cf. above, section 1.3).

2.4. The reflex of the Balto-Slavic acute: short or long?

One of the most straightforward correspondences between Baltic and Slavic concerns the Baltic “acute” in stem-stressed paradigms (Stang’s (a)). The evidence of the daugh-ter languages points overwhelmingly to a short rising tone in Slavic: *bràtrъ. Some daughter languages, however, have evidence of length in at least part of the cases. The problem has been how to interpret this: is length to be interpreted as evidence of an earlier system with consistent length, as in Baltic? Or is length everywhere secondary? The principal cases are the following:

(1) Slovene has (rising) length in non-final syllables, e.g. bráta ‘brother’ (Gsg.), op-posed to a short vowel in bràt (Nsg.). However, this means nothing, because in Slovene “short vowels are also lengthened when stressed, while unstressed vowels are always short. We are here confronted therefore with the principle that all stressed vowels not in the final syllable are long, and acute old long vowels may have been shortened, as in Serbo-Croatian, and subsequently lengthened” (Stang 1957: 35). Moreover, in order to account for the properties of the vowel systems of the Slovene dialects it has proved necessary to assume that in early Slovene the re-flex of the acute was distinctively short and that it was lengthened at a relatively re-cent stage (see, in particular, Rigler 1963: 34-35, 38-39, 1976: 441-442).

(2) Czech has often length in the first syllable of disyllabic forms with initial stress in Proto-Slavic, e.g. kráva ‘cow’. However, exactly the same holds for vowels that were originally short, e.g. může ‘he/she can’ < Proto-Slavic *mòže(tъ). Hence the situation is not basically different from the one we find in Slovene.10

(3) Early Slavic borrowings into Lithuanian, Latvian and Baltic Finnish regularly have length corresponding to the Slavic acute, e.g. Finnish määrä ‘quantity, measure, degree’, borrowed from Slavic *měra, which has an acute (see further Stang 1957: 52-55, for the evidence see Kiparsky 1948). Since the phonological shape of the relevant words suggests that they must have been borrowed at a stage before all Common Slavic innovations had taken effect, the length we find in exampes like määrä has been taken as proof that the reflex of the acute was long in Proto-Slavic. However, this argumentation has proved to be inconclusive for reasons that have to

10 Kortlandt (1975a: 19, 1978a: 79-80, 84, 1978b: 284, 1978d : 278n.).

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do with the place of the emerging North Russian dialect area of late Proto-Slavic: it has turned out that North Russian must have started to drift away from other forms of Slavic well before all Common Slavic innovations had taken place. The Soviet dialectologist Gluskina discovered more than twenty years ago (1966) that the orig-inal North Russian dialect area must have failed to carry through the Second Pala-talization of velars, a development that is otherwise general in Slavic. Her discov-ery, which was primarily based on dialectal facts, was later confirmed by textual evidence (Zaliznjak 1986: 114). Now if North Russian differed from the remainder of Slavic at the early stage at which the Second Palatalization took place, there is absolutely no guarantee that the long reflex of the |122| acute observed in early bor-rowings is not due to an early local innovation, the more so because there are rea-sons for supposing that in the north of the East Slavic area short rising vowels were lengthened, too, so that again we are faced with a situation that is not basically dif-ferent from the one we find in Slovene.11

2.5. A central problem: too many distinctions

One of the central problems posed by the Proto-Slavic facts has to do with vowel quan-tity. In traditional (pre-laryngealist) terms the problem can be formulated thus: Proto-Indo-European length has been rephonologized as vowel timbre: we find ě as the reflex of long *ē and e as the reflex of short *e (etcetera, the facts are familiar); nevertheless Slavic has contrastive vowel length. Embarrassingly enough, both the long and the short syllabic nuclei of Proto-Indo-European have both long and short reflexes in Slav-ic, cf. the short and long *ě in Serbo-Croat mjȅra (short) ‘measure’, vs. dònijeh (long) ‘I brought’, or short and long *a in Serbo-Croat brȁt, Gsg. brȁta (short) ‘brother’ vs. jáje or (dial.) jȃje (long) ‘egg’, (dial.) vrimenã (long) ‘times’ vs. rešetȁ (short) ‘sieves’ or short and long reflex of the thematic vowel found in the ending of Slovak vedieš (long) ‘you lead’ vs. meleš (short) ‘you grind’.

The problem is: how to account for the fact that vowel length was replaced with timbre distinctions (thereby becoming redundant) and was still retained and/or reintro-duced? Classical Slavic accentology managed to isolate several types of cases where shortening of long or lengthening of short vowels seemed to have taken place in ac-cordance with definable rules. However, most of these rules seemed quite unmotivated and several major types of cases defied analysis altogether, leaving the central problem a mystery: why length at all if it was redundant?

2.6. Accent paradigms and vowel quantity

At this point it is perhaps useful to take another look at Stang’s three accent paradigms (see above, section 1.2). All three types have definite rules determining vowel quantity:

(a) The stem vowel is acute, which is, as we have seen, another way of saying that it is contrastively short (rising) while reflecting a heavy syllable nucleus (section 2.3).

11 Kortlandt (1975a: 33, 1978a: 76). On the North Russian dialect of Proto-Slavic see Vermeer (1986).

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There is an exceptional group of jā-stem nouns which, though consistently stem-stressed, behave in other respects as if they go with type (b), e.g. *vòļa ‘will’, * súša ‘drought’ (Stang 1957: 57).12

(b) The distribution of vowel length betrays a clear link with Proto-Indo-European: vowels reflecting heavy syllabic nuclei are long (and rising if stressed), while those reflecting light syllabic nuclei are short, e.g. *dvòrъ, Gsg. *dvorà, Lpl. *dvòrěxъ, 1sg. *pīšǫ ‘I write’, 2sg. *píšešь. |123|

(c) In case of stem stress the tone is always falling. Quantity is predictable on the basis of language-specific rules. West-Slavic has brevity throughout, e.g. Czech Nsg. syn, Gsg. syna ‘son’; Serbo-Croat has length alternating with brevity according to the following rules: stressed vowels reflecting light syllabic nuclei are always short ex-cept in monosyllabic forms, e.g. Nsg. vȏz, Gsg. vȍza; stressed vowels reflecting heavy syllabic nuclei are also long in disyllabic forms, e.g. sȋn, Gsg. sȋna, Npl. sȉnovi. In unstressed syllables rather similar rules seem to hold.

In other words: there are two types of cases in which the difference between Proto-Indo-European light and heavy syllabic nuclei is continued not only as vowel timbre, but also as length: accent type (b) throughout (including the type voļa/suša, which is now seen to be a special variety of type (b), cf. below, section 2.7) and accent type (c) in the case of disyllabic word forms in the Proto-Slavic dialect area continued by to-day’s Serbo-Croat. All this suggests that with respect to quantity there is a significant measure of continuity between Proto-Indo-European on the one hand and Proto-Slavic on the other.

2.7. The rise of accent type (b): Stang’s law; Dybo’s law

Accentual paradigm (a) is to be identified with Lithuanian (1); (c) is to be identified with Lithuanian (3) and (4). As is well-known, (3) and (4) are identical except for the intonation of the stem: in (3) the stem is acute whereas in (4) it is non-acute; otherwise the two paradigms are in complementary distribution and it has been evident for a long time that they reflect a single, “mobile” type. Slavic differs from Baltic in that in case of mobility it does not differentiate between acute and non-acute stems. This fact was discovered long ago by Meillet (1902) as a property of the nominal system; later Dybo’s analysis of verbal accentuation showed it to be a general phenomenon (1958).

But what about (b)? One’s first impulse would be to identify it with Lithuanian (2). However, the movement of the stress in (b) is quite different from the one found in Lithuanian (2) and Stang shrank back from identifying the two paradigms. Instead he derived (b) from a [hypothetical] paradigm with fixed stress on the ending (1957: 66f., 116). He argued that stem-stressed forms can be interpreted as reflexes of earlier end-stressed forms on the assumption that at an earlier stage the long falling tone was not limited to initial syllables, and that it subsequently lost the stress to the preceding sylla-

12 In di- and polysyllabic stems there are more possibilities. In order to keep things manageable (see note 2) this article concentrates on monosyllabic stems.

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ble. In that way forms like Lpl. *dvòrěxъ, 2sg. *píšešь are to be derived from *dvorěxъ, *pīšȇšь (Stang 1957: 157-173).

This stress retraction, which has subsequently come to be called “Stang’s law”, ex-plains a number of things, but the earlier end-stressed paradigm it presupposes only deepens the mystery of accentual paradigm (b). What is the connection, if any, between Stang’s (proto-)(b) and Lithuanian (2)? If there is no connection, what did Slavic do with its equivalent of Lithuanian (2) (non-acute words with consistent stem-stress)? And what about the Baltic equivalent, if any, of the consistently end-stressed paradigm reflected by the Slavic paradigm (b)? The sheer number of loose ends here is disturb-ing.

The problem was splendidly solved by the two Soviet scholars Dybo (1962a, 1962b: 225) and Illič-Svityč (1963 = 1979). The simplicity of their solution and |124| the enor-mous amount of additional problems it clarifies are so striking that Slavic accentology has never been the same since. Dybo and Illič-Svityč saw that the final stress of Stang’s (b) at the stage prior to his stress retraction, rather than reflecting an ancient Balto-Slavic paradigm (as Stang had assumed), was itself the outcome of a shift of the stress, this time a progressive shift (a shift towards the end of the word form), so Stang’s Gsg. *dvorà, Lpl. *dvorěxъ, 1sg. *pīšǫ, 2sg. *pīšȇšь presuppose earlier *dvòra, *dvòrěxъ, *píšǫ, *píšēšь.13

The progressive stress shift proposed by Dybo and Illi č-Svityč (I shall be referring to it as “Dybo’s law” in the sequel) casts interesting light on the prosodic inventory of Slavic in the period preceding the shift. Since both “acute” and “falling” vowels kept the stress, at the stage immediately preceding the shift there must have been at least three kinds of stressed vowels in Proto-Slavic:

(1) Acute. (2) Non-acute non-falling. (And about to lose the stress to the following syllable), see

further Dybo (1962a: 8f, cf. Kortlandt 1983d: 34-35). (3) Falling.

Dybo’s law permits an identification of Slavic (b) with Lithuanian (2): both types re-flect a non-acute paradigm with consistent stress on the stem. The conspicuous differ-ences with respect to stress placement that exist between Lithuanian (2) and Slavic (b) are due to the difference between the effects produced by Saussure’s law in Lithuanian and by Dybo’s and Stang’s laws in Slavic. All this leads to a unified picture of a Balto-Slavic system of two accentual paradigms:

A. Fixed stress on the stem. B. Stress alternating between the stem and the ending.

13 It follows from Dybo’s law that during part of the history of Proto-Slavic all words belonging to accent type (b) were stem-stressed and that end-stressed forms were restricted to words with mobile stress (type (c)). Another consequence consists in the insight that a number of disyllabic stems with fixed stress on the second stem syllable had initial stress at an earlier stage. For some examples of developments that become understandable as a consequence of Dybo’s law see Dybo (1958: 57n., 1961, 1972), Kortlandt (1982, 1984-85); for some further discussion see Vermeer (1984: 339-340, 350-351, 357, 367-369).

11

This two-way system played a role in Dybo’s thinking right from the very start, even in the period before he had exchanged de Saussure’s law for the stress shift that later came to be called Dybo’s law.

It was soon realized that the Balto-Slavic rules of stress assignment can be reduced to a single rule which operates in terms of “dominant” and “recessive” morphemes: it is the left-most dominant morpheme that receives the stress and in the absence of a domi-nant morpheme we find initial stress. In turn this leads to the hypothesis that at some stage Balto-Slavic morphemes were characterized by either a high (dominant) or a low (recessive) tone. In the remainder of this contribution I shall stick to the words “stressed” and “unstressed”.14 |125|

3. The evolution of vowel quantity

In this section we start from the other end. How did the Proto-Indo-European length opposition fare, first in Balto-Slavic and then in Slavic? As we shall see, during the entire complex chain of innovations there was not a single stage at which the inherited vowel length was eliminated from the system.

3.1. In the beginning was the lengthened grade

The evidence of the separate branches of Indo-European bears ample testimony to the fact that before the break-up of Proto-Indo-European a contrastive opposition existed between short and long vowels. There is every reason to believe that the distinction was recent in Proto-Indo-European, a fact Wackernagel expressed by saying that the length-ened grade is “Eine Spielart des Guṇa” (1896: 67). The phonetic conditions under which length arose can still be determined.15 And whatever the exact conditions for the rise of vowel length in Proto-Indo-European, few scholars would disagree with the as-sumption that by the time of the final break-up of Proto-Indo-European contrastive vowel length had emerged as a linguistic fact.

According to the classical view the long vowels of Proto-Indo-European constitute the origin of the Balto-Slavic acute intonation, according to the following chronology: first sequences of vowel and laryngeal yielded plain long vowels (merging with the lengthened grade); then vowel length developed a special type of tonal movement which could occur in both stressed and unstressed syllables; this was the Balto-Slavic acute, which in the course of time was treated very differently in different branches of Balto-Slavic: in Latvian and Lithuanian it developed into a long rising (Latvian) or fall-ing (Lithuanian) tonal movement; under certain conditions it developed into a glottal catch in Latvian and (dialectally) in Lithuanian; when unstressed it attracted the stress from a preceding non-acute syllable in Lithuanian; in Slavic it yielded a distinctively short rising tone in stressed syllables.

This approach gives rise to several difficulties:

14 Dybo (1968, 1980: 147, 1981: 260-262), Dybo, Nikolayev & Starostin (1978), Kortlandt (1986: 157-158). 15 Kortlandt (1975a: 20-22, 1987).

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(1) As we have seen (2.5), late Proto-Slavic had an uncomfortably large number of contrastive oppositions. Faced with the problem of how to explain this abundance any normal historical linguist’s first impulse would be to assume that the existing contrasts somehow continue Proto-Indo-European oppositions. It would be dis-tinctly odd instead to assume without compelling reasons (as was traditionally done) that Proto-Indo-European contrasts were first lost, after which a whole series of new oppositions arose in Slavic under conditions that defy understanding. This curious reversal of normal priorities is a natural consequence of the fact that it took laryngeal theory so long to become salonfähig.

(2) Although it is a fact that sequences of vowel and laryngeal regularly have an acute intonation in Balto-Slavic (with certain well-defined exceptions, such as those caused by Meillet’s law in Slavic), I would know of no good example of a |126| lengthened grade that is continued as an acute.16 It is rather the case that in both Baltic and Slavic such instances of lengthened grade as can be found persistently refuse to have an acute.17 Within the framework of traditional accentology several mechanisms were proposed to deal with this fact. However, the necessity for taking such steps disappears if one abandons the assumption that in Balto-Slavic, sequenc-es of vowel and laryngeal merged with regular long vowels in the first place.

(3) The phonetic characteristics of the acute remain mysterious. The very least one would like to know is how it was possible that it yielded such divergent reflexes and what it was that made it phonetically different from the circumflex (in the Bal-tic sense of “non-acute”) even in unstressed syllables.

3.2. Loss of laryngeals after lengthened grade

At a very early stage laryngeals were lost after the lengthened grade, giving rise to the familiar alternation in Lithuanian duõs ‘he/she/it/they will give’ vs. dúosiu ‘I shall give’ (< *dēH3-s- vs. *deH3-s-). If no lengthened grade was present, nothing changed, cf. the different alternation in Lithuanian bùs ‘he/she/it/they will be’ (with regular shortening of the acute in accordance with Leskien’s law) vs. būsiu ‘I shall be’ (< *buH-s- throughout).18

Although the Balto-Slavic period was a quiet time as far as vowel quantity was con-cerned, several innovations involving other parts of the prosodic system took place, e.g. the stress retraction known as Hirt’s law. It follows from Illič-Svityč’s formulation of

16 Unless one insists on seeing a lengthened grade in the Slavic word for ‘mouse’: *mỳšь. But why would anyone want to do such an extraordinary thing? 17 Kortlandt (1975a: 72-75. 1985a). The long vowel in the s-aorist of reći ‘say’, which is implied in the Dubrovnik infinitive rȉjet (Kortlandt 1985a: 113), is in fact amply attested in those numerous old Serbo-Croat texts which provide indications about vowel length, e.g. by the acute accent in 1sg. ríh (8x), 1pl. rísmo (1x) in Hektorović (1568). There are indications that the form *rȉjeh has survived to this very day in some of the archaic Neoštokavian dialects of Montenegro. 18 Kortlandt (1975a: 85-86, 1985a: 115, 118-119).

13

Hirt’s law (1963: 80-81 = 1979: 63) that at the stage when the retraction took place the reflex(es) of the laryngeals was/were still (an) ordinary (segmental) phoneme(s).19

The regularity known as “Winter’s law” is also due to an innovation that took place during the Balto-Slavic period: the reflexes of the “plain voiced” stops of Proto-Indo-European imparted to the preceding vowel a feature that made them (the vowels) sur-face as acute in the attested material. The idea according to which the relevant feature was vowel length fails to account for the properties of the acute (see in particular Kortlandt 1985a: 122-123). However, within Haudricourt’s, Swadesh’s and Martinet’s glottalic hypothesis of the Proto-Indo-European consonant system (a hypothesis which until the discovery of Winter’s law had been based exclusively on typological consid-erations) a different interpretation |127| becomes possible: if it was a fact that the Proto-Indo-European plain voiced stops were in reality (pre-)glottalized, Winter’s law can be assumed to have consisted in the transference of the glottalic feature from “plain voiced” consonants to the immediately preceding vowels and its merger with the reflex of the laryngeals.20

3.3. The earliest specifically Slavic loss of laryngeals

At some relatively early stage in the period of separate development of Slavic, the re-flex of the laryngeals was lost while doing to adjacent vowels the same thing we find in so many other Indo-European languages: causing them to be lengthened. This assump-tion is part and parcel of classical accentology (see above, section 3.1). The only differ-ence is that in Kortlandt’s view the development failed to take place under the stress and in the first posttonic syllable. In these positions the distinction between long vow-els and sequences of vowel and laryngeal persisted until a much later stage and was ultimately converted into a length contrast (see further below, sections 3.4, 3.7).

The first loss of laryngeals gave rise to alternations in paradigms with mobile stress, where sequences of vowel and laryngeal in stem-stressed forms now alternated with plain vowels in end-stressed forms, e.g. Asg. *'suˀnu (sequences of vowel and laryngeal will be written as Vˀ in the examples) or Npl. *'suˀnaves vs. vowel length in Gpl. *sūna'vu, Dpl. *sūnavu'mus. In stems length was analogically generalized: *'sūnu, * 'sūnaves. In this way Meillet’s and Dybo’s observation that mobile words are never acute in Slavic is accounted for.21

No levelling similar to Meillet’s law took place in endings. As a consequence end-ings originally containing a sequence of vowel and laryngeal were split into alternants, one of which had a long vowel and one of which had a sequence of vowel and larynge-al, e.g. ā-stem Nsg. or neuter NApl. *-aˀ (< PIE *-eH-) yielded *-ā in examples like * 'seˀmenā ‘seeds’ (because it was in post-posttonic position) while persisting un-changed in, say, *pa'ljaˀ ‘fields’. Since at a later stage the laryngealized vowels were to 19 On Hirt’s law see also Ebeling (1967: 582), Kortlandt (1980b: 351). On Balto-Slavic see further Kortlandt (1977: 320-323). 20 Winter (1978). Kortlandt (1977: 319-320, 322-323; 1978c, 1978d: 279-280, 1979a: 60-61, 1985a 120-121, 1985b, 1988). 21 Kortlandt (1975a: 10-11, 27-28).

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turn into distinctively short plain vowels, the alternants were ultimately to differ with respect to vowel length. This is the earliest of a whole series of developments that were to give rise to length alternations in endings, see further below, sections 3.4 (3 I,III), 3.8.

As far as the system as a whole is concerned, the first loss of laryngeals and Meillet’s law resulted in a considerable rise in the number and frequency of long vow-els. At this point it is perhaps useful to take a look at the vowel system of Slavic as it must have been at this stage (System A).22 The laryngealized vowels /iˀ, eˀ, aˀ, uˀ /, which were neutral as to vowel length, were at this point limited to stressed and imme-diately posttonic syllables. |128|

System A. The vowel system just after the earliest Slavic loss of laryngeals

high i, ī, iˀ u, ū, uˀ low e, ē, eˀ a, ā, aˀ

3.4. Loss of laryngeals in the first posttonic syllable: the rise of the new timbre distinctions

Before the next development involving quantity and laryngealized vowels took place, the vowel system underwent several radical innovations, most importantly: mono-phthongization of diphthongs (e.g. *ai > *ē) and unrounding of rounded vowels (e.g. *ū > *y). The outcome was System B, in which the unrounded back vowels /y-ȳ-yˀ/ reflect earlier /u-ū-uˀ/ and new /ū-uˀ/ have developed out of the diphthong /au-auˀ/, which is why there is no short *u. In addition there were several nasal vowels; like the laryngealized vowels, the nasals were neutral as to quantity.23

System B: the vowel system just prior to the loss of laryngeals in the first posttonic syllable

high i, ī, iˀ y, ȳ, yˀ -, ū, uˀ low e, ē, eˀ a, ā, aˀ

Now the laryngealized vowels of System B turned into plain vowels in the first posttonic syllable, yielding distinctively short /i, y, u, ě, a/. It is essential to note that the new short vowels did not merge with the short vowels which had existed already since time immemorial. Hence the outcome was a system containing nine short vowels: /ь, ъ, e, o/ reflecting earlier short /i, u, e, a/, and /i, y, u, ě, a/ reflecting the earlier laryngealized vowels /iˀ, yˀ , uˀ , eˀ, aˀ/. Note also that it was the new short vowels that became the short counterparts of the existing long vowels /ī, ȳ, ū, ě <*ē, ā/, whereas the old short vowels became isolated in the sense that they now lacked long and laryngealized counterparts. The outcome is shown in System C. At this stage the laryngealized vowels were limited to stressed syllables.24

22 On the development of the vowel system see Kortlandt (1979b). 23 For these developments see Kortlandt (1979b: 266-270, on System B cf. p. 269). By this time a tonal distinction was in existence (Kortlandt 1975a: 13-14). 24 Kortlandt (1975a: 29-30). On System C cf. Kortlandt (1979b: 269).

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System C: the vowel system just after the loss of laryngeals in the first posttonic syllable

high i, ī, iˀ y, ȳ, yˀ u, ū, uˀ high-mid ь ъ low-mid e o low ě, ě, ěˀ a, ā, aˀ

System C was uneconomical and several of its members had a rather defective distribu-tion. However, things moved fast and almost everything that happened from this point on served to enhance the economy of the system. Examples:

(1) In pretonic syllables the laryngealized vowels had been eliminated at an earlier stage (see above, section 3.3). So in that position either quantity was |129| redundant or the new timbre contrasts were. Something was bound to happen. What happened was that length was lost. In other words: in pretonic syllables the long vowels /ī, ȳ, ū, ě, ā/ were reinterpreted as their new short equivalents /i, y, u, ě, a/. This consider-ably enhanced the functional yield of the new short vowels, which now occurred in pretonic position and in the first posttonic syllable. They did not yet occur under the stress and in posttonic syllables further removed from the stress. These remaining gaps in the distribution of the new short vowels were not slow to be filled.25

(2) Under the falling tone things were similar: either vowel quantity was redundant or the new timbre distinctions were. This constitutes the structural background of sev-eral later developments which neutralized quantity under the falling tone (lengthen-ing of short vowels or shortening of long ones), see below, sections 3.6, 3.8.

(3) The new short vowels e/o/ь/ъ lacked long counterparts. Three developments that now took place gave rise to long instances of these vowels:

(3 I) Loss of /j/ as the final element of a consonant cluster lengthened the following vowel, e.g. *písje > *píšē, *vòlja > *vòļā. This innovation is known as “van Wijk’s law”.26

(3 II) Loss of intervocalic /j/ was followed by contractions of adjacent vowels in posttonic syllables, but not in other positions, e.g. *nòvaja, nòvoje, nòvajego ‘new’ (Nsg. fem. and neut. resp. Gsg. msc./neut., definite form) > *nòvā, nòvē, nòvēgo, contrasting with absence of contraction in the mobile paradigm: *bosaˀja, bosojè, bosajegò.27

(3 III) Jers (*ь/ъ) in absolute final position lost the stress, lengthening a preceding vowel if it was not already long to begin with, e.g. gorъ > górъ, dьnъ > dьnъ.28

(4) In endings which had no stressed alternants long vowels were shortened. This ex-plains the consistent brevity of the vowel in such endings as o-stem Gsg. -a, Dsg.

25 Ebeling (1967: 590), Kortlandt (1975a: 30, 33, 1987a: 79). 26 Kortlandt (1975a: 30, 1978d: 275n.). 27 Kortlandt (1975a: 39, 1982: 99). 28 Kortlandt (1975a: 14-16).

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-u, i-stem Dsg. -i. Nasals were similarly shortened, cf. o-stem/ā-stem Apl. -ę, ā-stem Asg. -ǫ, 1sg. pres. -ǫ.29

The developments mentioned under (3) had consequences for the inflexional morphol-ogy of Proto-Slavic. Like the first loss of laryngeals, (I) and (III) gave rise to length alternations in endings, e.g. o-stem Dpl. *-omъ with brevity in stem-stressed nouns, but * -ómъ with length in case of mobility. As a consequence of (II) quite conspicuous dif-ferences arose between the accent types with respect to the endings of the definite form of the adjective and -Vje-presents. In addition |130| (3 III) is to be regarded as the princi-pal cause of the length alternations found in the Gpl. in several Slavic languages.30

3.5. Dybo’s law: the progressive stress shift from non-falling non-laryngealized vowels

Now the stress was shifted to the next syllable unless the stressed vowel was either fall-ing or laryngealized, in which case the stress remained in its original place: the stress moved rightward in *dvòra > *dvorà, but did not budge in *vȍza (because of the falling tone) and *braˀtra (because of the laryngealized vowel). The stress was not shifted ei-ther to a final jer (*dvòrъ) because these vowels could no longer be stressed, cf. above, section 3.4(3III). If the vowel that became stressed as a consequence of Dybo’s law was long, it received a falling tone, e.g. *píšēšь > *pīšȇšь, *nòvēgo > *novȇgo.

The progressive stress shift, which was simple enough in itself, had important con-sequences for the distribution of vowel length (and tone). If the vowel that originally bore the stress was long, it remained so: *píšēšь > *pīšȇšь. In other words: Dybo’s law caused reintroduction of contrastive vowel length in the first pretonic syllable. Earlier long vowels that had lost distinctive length at the rise of the new timbre distinctions (see above, section 3.4) now became distinctively short, e.g. Gpl. *synóvъ, giving rise to quantitative alternations in the stem of mobile words, cf. the NAsg. *synъ. Nasal vowels were treated similarly: if they were stressed prior to Dybo’s law they now be-came distinctively long, if they were pretonic they became short.31

3.6. Lengthening of short falling vowels in monosyllabic forms

Dybo’s law, which had given rise to long falling tones in non-initial position, had elim-inated short rising vowels from initial syllables except in the case of monosyllabic forms (not counting final jers), e.g. *dvòrъ opposed to *vȍzъ. The imbalance was elim-inated by lengthening of short falling vowels, e.g. *vȍzъ > *vȏzъ (on the redundant character of quantity under the falling tone cf. above, section 3.4(2)).32

29 Kortlandt (1975a: 32). 30 On the Gpl. see Kortlandt (1978b: 282-285). 31 Kortlandt (1975a: 32). On Garde’s view that Dybo’s law did not reach West Slavic see Kortlandt (1975a: 34-37, 1978a: 76-80). 32 Kortlandt (1975a: 16-17, 33).

17

3.7. The loss of the laryngeal feature in stressed syllables

At this point the remaining laryngealized vowels lost their laryngeal feature and be-came distinctively short rising instead, e.g. *braˀtrъ > *bràtrъ. This amounted to rein-troduction of short rising vowels in the first syllable of di- and polysyllabic forms, e.g. Gsg. *bràtra.33|131|

3.8. Shortening of long falling vowels and Stang’s law

Now all long falling vowels (the length of which was still redundant) became subject to a tendency towards shortening. From final syllables (not counting final jers) containing a long falling vowel the stress was retracted to the preceding syllable, e.g. *pīšȇšь > *píšešь. This is Stang’s law. The insight that Stang’s law was limited to final syllables (a limitation that is very natural in the case of a stress retraction) is due to Ebeling (1967: 592). Stang’s law gave rise to the accentual alternations characteristic of the Proto-Slavic accentual paradigm (b), cf. above, section 2.7.34

The shortening of length caused long vowels in endings to become short in accent type (b) in cases where (a) (and usually (c), too) had length, cf. the short vowel in o-stem Ipl. *dvòry (b), contrasting with length in the same ending in other accentual paradigms, cf. *bràtrȳ (a), *vozý (c). This is another one of the sources of the fact that in Slavic so many endings are reliably attested both long and short.35

In all other positions long falling vowels were consistently shortened. This devel-opment was late to reach the dialect area nowadays represented by Slovene and Serbo-Croat, where it was never carried to its natural conclusion: long falling vowels re-mained long in monosyllabic forms (e.g. *vȏzъ, *synъ) and in Serbo-Croat also in di-syllabic forms (Gsg. *synu opposed to Slovene *synu).36 The later loss of the tone dis-tinction on short vowels in Serbo-Croat obliterated the difference between barytone forms of accent type (c) and forms with initial stress belonging to accent type (a) in the case of di- and polysyllabic forms, e.g. *synove ‘sons’ Npl. vs. *màtere ‘mother’ Gsg., Serbo-Croat sȉnovi, mȁterē.

Stang’s retraction was the last innovation common to all of Slavic. As far as vowel length is concerned, the system that came into being as a consequence of the shortening of long falling vowels and Stang’s law is continued without major changes by modern Czech and Serbo-Croat. The only thing that happened in Czech was the lengthening in kráva < kràva (see note 10). In Serbo-Croat short vowels were lengthened before sylla-ble-final resonants, with locally varying details. In both languages analogical levellings

33 Kortlandt (1975a: 33-34). 34 Kortlandt (1975a: 17) assumes that an *o which became stressed as a consequence of Stang’s law was distinct from other kinds of rising *ò by being diphthongal. It seems to be the case that the diphthong is everywhere treated as if it were a normal short rising *ò, except in Kajkavian Serbo-Croat, where it merged with the long rising *ó (Vermeer 1979: 359-360). The subject needs further study. 35 Kortlandt (1975a: 18). On length alternations in endings see further Vermeer (1984: 361-383). 36 Kortlandt (1975a: 33). The hypothesis that in Slovene long falling vowels were shortened in disyllabic forms is confirmed by the evidence of the northwestern dialects (Vermeer 1987).

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obliterated alternations or obscured their distribution. In Slovene more innovations took place, the most important of which are:

(1) A rightward stress shift from falling vowels obliterated quantity in syllables imme-diately following a falling tone because all newly stressed vowels became long, e.g. *ȍko ‘eye’ > *okȏ. Somewhat paradoxically, this stress shift enabled Slovene to re-tain precious information about the distribution of the Proto-Slavic tones. |132|

(2) Posttonic length was lost with compensatory lengthening of the stressed vowel, e.g. *vìdīšь ‘you see’ > *vȋdišь.

(3) In stressed non-final syllables distinctive quantity was lost as a consequence of a general lengthening of short vowels: *bràta > *bráta (cf. above, section 2.4(1)).37

As a consequence of these and a few other innovations, distinctive vowel length is lim-ited to stressed final syllables. In view of this distribution it is understandable that some Slovene dialects have lost quantity altogether, thereby finally eliminating a phonemic contrast that had been present in the language ever since the rise of the Proto-Indo-European lengthened grade.

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37 On Slovene see further Kortlandt (1976).

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224. 1969a “Srednjebolgarskie teksty kak istočnik dlja rekonstrukcii praslavjanskogo udarenija.

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(Praesens)”, Voprosy jazykoznanija [18]/6, 114-122. 1972 “Akcentnye tipy prezensa glagolov s ъ, ь v korne v praslavjanskom”, Voprosy jazyko-

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