Re: Question about Latin E and Slavic yat'

 --- Roger Mills skrzypszy:

> Unless I'm mistaken, long e diphthongized in certain envs. in
> French-- the pronouns me/te/se, words like lege-, rege-, credere,
> debere etc. (C-loss may have something to do with those; I don't
> recall the rules offhand.)
That's true. I don't recall the rules offhand either, but I do know
that it only happens when the syllable is stressed. I was indeed
thinking about French. However, in all Romance languages were
diphthongisation occurs, diphthongisation of [E] occurred much
earlier than diphthongisation of [e].

> Substratum perhaps? The universal panacea for perplexed linguists
> :-)))
Yes. Although I don't know much about substratum, unfortunately. As
far as I know, the region was almost uninhabitated when the Romans
came. The Slavs arrived a good deal later.

> It seems a little contradictory (to me) that low vowels would
> raise, while high vowels would lower.
Agreed. The best I can do is merging them altogether (although a
slight distinction must remain; otherwise /e/ wouldn't become /o/ and
/e^/ wouldn't become /a/ before a hard dental consonant.

Jan

=====
"If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed
room with a mosquito."

Relay 10: http://steen.free.fr/relay10/


	
	
		
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