Re: Origin of Russian Free Accent

Rob Haden wrote:
> I've been working on a new conlang in addition to Thalassan (which I plan
> to submit a grammar sketch to this list and Langmaker soon).  It has a
> free-accent system similar to Russian's.  Since Russian is (so far) the
> primary basis for this language's accentuation, I'm curious to know the
> origin of its free accent.  Can anyone help me here? :)
>
There has been a lengthy thread on Cybalist (yahoogroups) about this, highly
technical and quite mysterious to this non-IEist :-((

It seems Russ. accent patterns correlate with those of Lithuanian and other
Baltic langs. in various ways (hence they derive at least from the
Balto-Slavic level), which in turn can be related to supposed IE accent
patterns. Plus some analogical levelling in both Balt. and Slav. So unless
you're creating an IE conlang, it's probably OK to devise your own
development and rules..........