Paul B. Gallagher - Bulgarian verbal morphology (theme vowel and jotation)

[Sitzmann]

Paul B. Gallagher wrote:

>>From the historical and PIE point of view, of course you're right. But
> from the Slavic point of view, "theme vowels," and ablaut in general,
> become less and less clear, and it becomes easier in the later languages
> to analyze them as /e/ present ~ absent rather than as /o/ ~ /e/. What
> late Common Slav child, inventing the grammar as s/he grew up, would see
> that /o/ in /-oN/, /-oNt#/ alternates with the /-e^si/, /-et#/...?

Of course you're right in a way: The late Common Slav child never thought
about thematic vowels like we do in historical linguistics - but this is a
question of Language acquisition research. I myself have two mother tongues
(German and Bulgarian), and of course when I was a child I knew rules like
bg. sg. nebe pl. nebesa but sg. tele pl. teleta (without thinking about the
fact, that nebe was a s-stem [OCS nebo], while tele was a (n)t-stem [OCS
tele] ). Or let's take an English example: he was, you were - is there
anyone who is aware of the fact, that this alternation i due to Verner's
law?
But in Historical linguistics we often have to work with these rather
unclear relations, because in fact we're working with models, e.g. in Old
Icelandic gestr you'll hardly find the i that caused i-umlaut, but obviously
it has been there before (Proto Nordic gastiR, Proto Germanic gastiz) and
got lost by syncope. Therefore in historical grammar it's better to talk
about thematic vowels e/o (with ablaut), because this helps us to explain
languages as a system.


> These phonological changes are not very easy to explain because it is
> hard to see the path from beginning to endpoint. Why, for example,
> should -kti- become -tji-? Because the typist is dyslexic and "j" is
> next to "k" on the keyboard???
> (certainly you would not propose such a ludicrous scenario; I don't mean
> to suggest it :-) ...)

Excuse me, this was probably my fault - of course there's no sound change
like kti > tji. In fact we're talking about three (3) sound changes! First
of all we have jotation: e.g. tj > t' (dental + j > dental'). Then there's
kt + palatal vowel > t'. And then the individual sound changes using these
inputs: Bulgarian t' > sht, Russian t' > ^c, Czech/Polish t' > c ... . As we
(in German) don't have a special name for these individual sound changes, I
did not mention them in my first contribution (on the assumption that it was
clear what I meant to say).
[By the way, t' is also the result of 3rd and 2nd palatalization of k (and
afterwards with assibilaton t' > c, like in Polish/Czech also for the
products of jotation). The waves of jotation and assibilation meet somewhere
in Austria.]

I hope this made things clearer for you,
best wishes,
Alexander


Mag.phil. Alexander Sitzmann
Margaretengürtel 8
A - 1050 Wien

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