Pseudo-epenthetic /l/ in Slavic

[colkitto]

Some more thoughts .......


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

The reflexes of Indo-European ablaut in the respective languages.

The forms above show IE ablaut series often denoted as *eu/ou/u.  In Slavic,
this is regularly reflected as *ju/u/ъ(back jer).  This is in fact the
origin of Slavic *ju which is one of the origins of epenthetic *l', e.g.,

*bljud- (<*b(h)eud(h)-)/*bud- (<*b(h)oud(h)-)/bъd-(b(h)ud(h)-)

The problem here is that very often the development of IE *eu is irregular,
and what ought to be from *eu turns up as *u.  Shevelov;'s Prehistory of
Slavic (I forget the page) has a discussion of this very problem.

Germanic has a similar irregularity, which adds difficulty to the
reconstruction of  Class Two strong verbs.

I seem to recall that in Latin (I think) and Celtic the development of  IE 
*eu was
identical to that of  *ou (to *u and *long o respectively, which might 
account
for spuo/spiauti (and as if we needed any further complications the Latin
and Lithuanian forms show IE *s- mobile, whereas the Slavic forms don't).

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