Consonants[]
Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops lost their aspiration in Proto-Balto-Slavic. Stops were no longer distinguished between fortis and aspirated but were voiceless and voiced.[1] However, several new palatal (postalveolar) consonants had developed: *ś and *ź from earlier palatovelar plosives and *š from *s as a result of the Ruki sound law.
| Labial | Coronal | Palatal | Velar | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | c | /ɟ/ ⟨f⟩ |
k | g |
| Fricative | /f/ ⟨h⟩ |
v | s | z | /ç/ ⟨ś, š⟩ |
/ʝ/ ⟨ź⟩ |
x | ɣ |
| Trill | /ʙ/ ⟨ʋ⟩ |
r | ||||||
| Lateral | l | /ʟ/ ⟨ł⟩ | ||||||
| Approximant | w | j | /ɰ/ ⟨q⟩ | |||||
- [z] surfaced as an allophone of /s/ before a voiced consonant in Proto-Balto-Slavic.
Vowels[]
Proto-Balto-Slavic preserved much of the late Proto-Indo-European vowel system. One noticeable difference between the two was the merging of earlier short /o/ and /a/ into /a/. Earlier syllabic sonorants in PIE had been converted into liquid diphthongs by inserting *i or *u before the sonorant in Proto-Balto-Slavic.
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Diphthongs[]
Proto-Balto-Slavic preserved most PIE diphthongs intact except for the short /o/ and /a/ merger. The merger of short /o/ and /a/ carried into the production of Proto-Balto-Slavic diphthongs. The diphthongs that contained the onglide /o/ in PIE consequently became diphthongs with the onglide /a/ in Proto-Balto-Slavic. Former /eu/ had become /jau/, so that no /eu/ diphthong existed anymore.
Proto-Balto-Slavic also possessed sequences of a close vowel, followed by *l, *r, *m or *n: the "sonorant diphthongs". Their accents behaved like the other diphthongs rather than like vowel-consonant sequences.
| -i | -u | -l | -r | -m | -n | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a- | ai | au | al | ar | am | an |
| e- | ei | el | er | em | en | |
| i- | il | ir | im | in | ||
| u- | ul | ur | um | un |
Accent and the acute register[]
The accent of Balto-Slavic and its descendants is still a topic of active research, and there is still disagreement over the developments in many cases. The following gives only a general overview of the points for which a general consensus has been reached among linguists. Differing opinions are noted when necessary.
Most Proto-Balto-Slavic words could be accented on any syllable, as in Proto-Indo-European. The placement of the accent was changed significantly relative to PIE, with much paradigmatic leveling of the mobile PIE accent, along with leftward and rightward shifts conditioned by the surrounding phonemes.
In the early Balto-Slavic period, an additional articulatory feature, the acute register, had developed on certain syllables, particularly those that ended in a PIE laryngeal consonant (detailed further below). It was a suprasegmental feature whose exact phonetic nature is not quite clear. It likely involved glottalization at some stage, as a similar articulatory feature is found in the Latvian "broken tone", which is a reflex of it. It is denoted variously with a superscript glottalization symbol ˀ, a glottal stop symbol ʔ, or simply as the laryngeal cover symbol H.
Only the presence or absence of the feature, called "acute" and "circumflex" respectively, was phonemic. Furthermore, the distinction applied only to "long" syllables. The following syllable types were "long" and thus could have this distinction:
- Syllables with long vowels: they could be original PIE long vowels or vowels that were lengthened by a following laryngeal.
- Syllables with vocalic diphthongs (*ei, *ai, *au).
- Syllables with sonorant diphthongs, which consisted of a vowel, followed by *l, *r, *m or *n.
Thus, any syllable was either long with acute register, long with circumflex (nonacute) register or short (with no register distinction).
Alternations[]
Proto-Balto-Slavic retained the system of ablaut from its parent language, but it was far less productive and had been significantly reworked. Vowel alternations were often leveled, but it is not always easy to determine how far this leveling had progressed by the time the Balto-Slavic dialects began to diverge, as the leveling progressed along the same lines in all of them to some degree.
The lengthened grade remained productive in word derivation and was used in many innovative formations that were not present in Proto-Indo-European. After the merger of *o and *a, the resulting phoneme *a could lengthen to both *ā and *ō.
Pre-Proto-Slavic retained many such uses of lengthened grades in morphology. The length distinctions are reflected as vowel quality distinctions in Late Common Slavic (LCS) and the later Slavic languages:
- Early Slavic *slāwā "fame, glory" > LCS *slava (OCS slava) vs. Early Slavic *slawa "word" > LCS *slovo (OCS slovo)
- Early Slavic *twāri "substance" > LCS *tvarь (OCS tvarь) vs. Early Slavic *twarītei "to form, create" > *tvoriti (OCS tvoriti)
These are similar examples in Lithuanian:
- Lithuanian prõtas "intellect, mind" (< *prāt-) vs. pràsti "to understand"
- Lithuanian gė̃ris "goodness" (< *gēr-) vs. gẽras "good"
On the basis of the existing length alternations inherited from Proto-Indo-European, new alternations arose between the long *ī, *ū and the short *i, *u. This latter type of apophony was not productive in PIE. Compare:
- Lithuanian mū̃šis "battle" versus mùšti "to kill, hit"
- Lithuanian lỹkis "remainder" versus lìkti "to stay, keep"
The new type of apophonic length was especially used in Pre-Proto-Slavic in the formation of durative, iterative and imperfective verbs. Compare:
- Early Slavic *dirātei "to tear (perfective)" > LCS *dьrati (OCS dьrati) vs. Early Slavic *arz-dīrātei ("to tear (imperfective)") > LCS *orzdirati (OCS razdirati)
- Early Slavic *birātei "to pick" > LCS *bьrati (OCS bьrati) vs. Early Slavic *bīrātei "to choose" > LCS *birati (OCS birati)
Certain pairs of words show a change of older initial *a- (from PIE *(H)a-, *(H)o-, *h₂e-, *h₃e-) to *e-, which is sometimes called "Rozwadowski's rule". The exact conditioning of this change is currently not well understood, but led to alternations between *e- and *a- in related words or even as alternative forms of the same word. The alternations often gave rise to different initial vowels in different languages. Several words retained the alternation into Proto-Slavic times as well, which became an alternation between *(j)e- and *o-:
- Proto-Balto-Slavic *elawa- / *alawa- "lead" > Bulgarian (dial.) élavo, Polish ołów, Russian ólovo, Old Prussian elwas ~ alwis.
- Proto-Balto-Slavic *eźera- / *aźera- "lake" > Serbo-Croatian jȅzero, Polish jezioro, Russian ózero, Old Prussian assaran, Latvian ezers, Lithuanian ẽžeras, Latgalian azars.
References[]
- ↑ Kortlandt (2002:3)