1. The Baltic transitive ia-presents and their paired preterits in the ē- or *iyā-stem : Between a conditioned allomorph and an independent morpheme
- Author
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Yamazaki, Yoko and Yamazaki, Yoko
- Abstract
There are two preterit-stem formations in Baltic: ā-preterit and ē-preterit. While the ā-preterit can be equated with the Slavic ā-aorist and therefore suggests the Balto-Slavic å-aorist, the ē-preterit does not correspond to a particular category in Slavic and is sometimes assumed to be a Baltic creation (cf. Villanueva Svensson 2005). As for the origin of the é-suffix, one of the most interesting hypotheses is that the suffix is a result of the contraction of *-iyā- (Schleicher 1856: 224f., Larsson 2010: 71ff.), which is in fact a Sievers' disyllabic variant of *-yā-, i.e., a postvocalic variant of the Baltic preterit marker *-ā- (cf. Barton 1980: 269). The disyllabic *-iyā-, according to Sievers' Law, appears when the suffix itself is not accented and is preceded by a heavy syllable. Therefore, *-iyā- is expected to appear in a barytone ē-preterit form (3sg./pl. *gēr-iyā > Lith. gėrė 'drank' [with the accent on the root syllable]), or in an oxytone form with the accent on the ending (2p1. *pōs-iyā-té → 3sg./pl. *pōs-ìyā > puõšė [beside púošė] 'adorned'). However, the monosyllabic variant *-yā- never occurs in the postconsonantal position (mirė, not **mirio < *mir-yā 'died'). Also interestingly, Sievers' disyllabic variants never seem to occur in their paired present stems in -ia. Thus we do not find forms like **puošija (< *pōš-iya) but puošia (< *pōš-ya). We find a clear distribution where the preterit stem has Sievers' disyllabic variant *-iyā-, while the present stem has the monosyllabic variant *-ya-., The prehistory of the Baltic preterit system － diachronic changes and morpho-semantics
- Published
- 2022