Collins: Slavic Reflexes
The Slavic Reflexes of the PIE Syllabic Sonorants
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Speaker
Daniel Collins
Abstract
Henning Andersen has produced a number of major studies (e.g., 1968, 1969, 1996, 1998, 2003, 2009) that have significantly reshaped our understanding of Pre-Slavic and Common Slavic sound changes. Among the problems that he has investigated is the diphthongization of the Proto-Indo-European syllabic sonorants *r̩, *l̩, *m̩, and *n̩, which were reflected in Proto-Slavic (cf. Andersen 1985) as sequences of either *ĭ or *ŭ plus sonorant (see Vaillant 1950; Browning 1989; Schenker 1995). These diphthongizations undoubtedly occurred during the period of shared Baltic-Slavic developments, since the Baltic languages show the same dual outcomes, often in the same roots. While the diphthongization of syllabic consonants is a well-attested type of change (cf. Andersen 1972; Fougeron and Ridouane 2008; Toft 2002; Weise 1995), the Balto-Slavic case has provoked controversy for over a century because no regular phonetic conditioning has been identified for the bifurcating reflexes, despite numerous attempts (see, e.g., Shevelov 1964; Moszyński 1969; Kortlandt 2007, 2008; Matasović 2004). Some of the cases of *ŭ plus sonorant have been explained as onomatopoetic formations. Others have been treated as back-formations from full-grade ablaut alternations, given that the syllabic sonorants were typically zero-grades. Andersen (2003), building on Stang (1966), has plausibly proposed that many of the *ŭ outcomes are the result of prehistoric language contact. My goal in this paper is to offer a complementary explanation that, without negating the contact scenario (see also Andersen 1996, 2009), allows for the possibility that some of the dual outcomes arose by phonological reinterpretation during ordinary language acquisition. The alternative explanation utilizes the principles of Abductive and Deductive change and follows the approach to language change that Andersen has defined in a series of seminal articles (1972, 1973, 1978, 1989).
References
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