Pseudo-epenthetic /l/ in Slavic

[Alexandre Vaxman]

Dear SEELANGers,

Reading Rajko Nahtigal's "Slavic languages" (Ljubljana, 1952; Moscow, 1963),
I found the following statement:
"The soft l' (also) developed from non-syllabic i after labial conso-
nants: i.-e. * (s)pieu [non-syllabic i and u] , lat. spuo, lith. spiauju,
slovene pl'ujo [open o]. The traditionnal label "l-epentheticum" (inserted
l) is not correct for the soft l'".
I have four questions pertaining to this quotation:

1)Where does the difference between a non-syllabic i and the consonantal j 
lie? Slavists have always used this notion of non-syllabic i, e.g.
Reformatskij (1975) "O foneme j i "i" v russkom jazyke" (in: Fonolo-
gicheskie etjudy) speaks of three different phonetic realizations of /j/:
as a [j], as a zero, and, third, precisely as "non-syllabic i".
Is there any phonological and/or phonetic criteria justifying the existence 
of such phoneme? As far as I know, it is not much used in the generative 
framework with wich I am more acquainted .

2)What could cause the deletion of a non-syllabic i in latin "spuo" and its 
deglidification in lithuanian "spiauju";

3)Could you cite examples from other Slavic languages, especially with 
pseudo-epenthetic consonants other then /l/? 

4)What is in your thought the reason of this sound change? 
Would it be appropriate to explain in by a positional factor like 
fortition i --> l'/ C.___ where . is a syllabic boundary?

Finall, what literature could you recommend on these topics?

Best,

Alex Vaxman, 
PhD student,
Laboratoire Parole et Langage, 
Aix en Provence, France

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