Re: Questions and Impressions of Basque

On 31 aug 2004 Philippe Caquant <herodote92@YA..> wrote:

> It's really a mistery to, how such different sounds as
> 'i' and 'o' can be used alternatively in similar words
> between Russian and Ukrainian. [...] I wonder why the
> Ukrainian changed that 'o' into 'i'.
  It is a parallelism with Polish. When the weak yers (reduced
vowels) were dropped out, the vowel in the previous syllable had a
compensatory lengthening (except if it was a vocalized strong yer).
This lengthening caused also a change in quality: the vowel became
closer, i.e. /e/ > /e:/ > /i:/ and /o/ > /o:/ > /u:/.

  These vowels are called "pochyl/one" 'inclined' in Polish, and
they are marked by an acute accent in the current orthography. This
is why 'o' with acute is pronounced as /u/ in Polish (In common
Polish only 'o' was inclined, 'e' not.)

  In Ukrainian these "inclined" long vowels became opening
diphthongs, /i:/ > /ji/, /u:/ > /ju/ and their palatal glide
palatalized the previous consonant. Due to the syllable harmony,
palatalized consonant + back vowel sequence is often unstable,
therefore back vowel is assimilated to a front vowel, i.e /ju/ >
/ji/. The same happened in Czech, cf. Czech _lid_ 'people' ~
Russian _l'ud_.

  That is why original 'e' and 'o' became 'i' in Ukrainian in
_closed_ syllables (i.e. before a former weak yer). Note that
Slavic yat developed also into 'i' in Ukrainian in both open and
closed syllables because it is an original long vowel and had a
common development with the lengthened "inclined" 'e' /e:/. The old
yat results in the Russian 'e' ~ Ukrainian 'i' alternation in
_open_ syllables, e.g. Ru. _mes'ac_ ~ Ukr. _mis'ac'_ 'moon, month'.