Filozofická Fakulta Masarykovy Univerzity
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FILOZOFICKÁ FAKULTA MASARYKOVY UNIVERZITY ÚSTAV JAZYKOVĚDY A BALTISTIKY Roman Sukač Topics in the Reconstruction and Development of Indo-European, Balto-Slavic and Proto-Slavic Prosodic Patterns (Morphonological Analysis) PhD. Thesis Brno 2010 Dissertation Advisor: Prof. RNDr. Václav Blažek, CSc. Prohlašuji, že jsem disertační práci vypracoval samostatně s použitím literatury uvedené v bibliografii. Opava, 8.4.2010. Roman Sukač 2 Foreword Some occasions are unforgettable and people can view them as a sign of fate, no matter how empirical and rational persons they are. That last August day in 2006, which was sunny and pleasant, I was strolling along a busy Copenhagen street full of cars but almost empty of real people. The day before I came to my first international conference and wanted to spend a day with sightseeing and enjoying the capital of Denmark. It was late in the afternoon and I was really tired because I was going on foot almost without a break. I had blisters because my boots were very unsuitable for such a sport. But I wanted to see the Copenhagen harbour so I was slowly trudging along that busy avenue eager to see big ships which I last saw some twenty years ago at the North Germany coast. On that noisy street full of cars in both directions there was only one man. Leaning against the wall, dressed in a grey coat, the older man with grey beard and glasses was reading a booklet. I spotted him just when I was passing about. Two or three steps later I suddenly stopped because it struck me that although I had never met that man, I knew him from a photograph. I turned back, came to the man and asked him: "Excuse me, sir, aren't you professor Kortlandt"? It seemed a miracle to me that in the unknown town full of unknown people, in the street where there was nobody but me, I met a the Kortlandt the Great, whose puzzling but fascinating papers introduced me to the mystery of Balto-Slavic accentology more than 7 years ago. That time I could not know that two years later I would spend hours in Leiden with Kortlandt discussing his views on accentology and that in 2009 Kortlandt would be in Opava on the conference which I organised. I do not believe in fate but God sometimes play such strange tricks for us to believe that fate exists. I consider my dissertation as the second step in my approach to Balto-Slavic accentology. The first basic level was my master thesis 1 where I concentrated on the history of accentological thinking (mainly in Czech territory but I also wrote on Stang's, MAS 2 and Kortlandt's contribution). My dissertation broadens the ideas that I developed in my Master thesis. I dealt more with the history of accentological thinking, especially post-Stang development. The second part of dissertation deals with some specific topics of the history of Balto-Slavic accentuation - accentual laws and the problem of the distribution of quantity in Czech. All those phenomena have been heavily dealt with scholars. However, final solutions are problematic and there are many conflicting result from different authors. I present the problem in a very detailed way 1 Vývoj názorů na původní přízvuk podstatných jmen v jazycích slovanských. Opava 2003. 2 Moscow accentological school. 3 and try to be explain those accentological topic in the frame of Optimality Theory which I consider one of the excellent and progressive tool of contemporary linguistic thinking. I also consider the third and maybe final level of my scientific interest in Balto-Slavic accentology which should be a general introduction to the problem and covering all contemporary approaches. Nothing like that has ever been done and I would like to fill the gap in future years. During my study I received help from a number of people. I wish to thank my supervisor Václav Blažek for allowing me to come with some revolutionary ideas of combining modern phonology and classical comparative approaches. A great experience for me was a half a year stay at Lehrstuhl für Indogermanistik in Jena, where Rosemarie Lühr showed me that a classical "Indogermanistik" can be combined with Optimality Theory. The same confirmation of "my way" was the excellent Master thesis and further internet discussions with Melissa Frazier (North Carolina). A special pleasure for me was my October 2008 stay in Leiden where I had a great opportunity to discuss things with Frederik Kortlandt who devoted many hours of his time to me. I am very grateful to him. Peter Kosta from Potsdam was eager to listen to my ideas and wholeheartily allowed me to spend some time in that beautiful town to do my research. Extremely important for getting deep into accentological stream were my regular participations at IWoBA (International Workshop on Balto-Slavic accentology). Although I missed IWoBA 1 in Zagreb 2005, in further sessions in Copenhagen 2006, Leiden 2007, Scheibbs 2008 I met the big names of accentology and it was a pleasure for me to discuss with them. Among others I extremely enjoyed the company of the modern accentology founding father Vladimir A. Dybo in Copenhagen and especially the appearance of Paul Garde in Scheibbs, whose cordial behaviour and the extreme intelectual power turned me back to reading his brilliant works. It was an honor to me to organise IWoBA 5 in Opava, where I could meet and enjoy the company of Jay Jasanoff, Steve Young, Rick Derksen and Heiner Eichner, Joe Schallert and Bonifacas Stundžia. I would like to thank to all my scientific colleagues for sharing their knowledge and critical remarks with me, especially Alexey Andronov (Sankt Petersburg), Alexandra Ter- Avanesova (Moscow), Anna Daugaviet (Sankt Petersburg), Vladimir A. Dybo (Moscow), Ronald Feldstein (Indiana), Marc L. Greenberg (Kansas), Yuri Kleiner (Sankt Petersburg), Frederik Kortlandt (Leiden), Peter Kosta (Potsdam), Orsat Ligorio (Zagreb), Tijmen Pronk (Leiden), Tobias Scheer (Nice) and Ondřej Šefčík (Brno). 4 Last but not least, I wish to express my thank to Eva Höflerová who allowed me to enjoy a freedom of a university job and Zbyněk Holub, whose enormous knowledge of dialects and interest in accentology joined us together and promoted a further fruitful cooperation, at least I hope. Also, many thanks to my "rhythmic" girlfriend Kateřina-Káťa-Katka whose intelectual background and our common cultural interests always inspired me in too many ways to be expressed. I devote the dissertation to my parents. I cannot say any more here for reasons that everybody must understand. 5 1. Aim and structure of the dissertation 1.1.1. 1.1.1. The title The subtitle of the dissertation is "morphonological analysis". The term has been first adduced by Trubetzkoy 1929a3 as a borderline branch between phonology and morphology. The morpheme variation like ablaut, connection of morphemes with accent and quantity, syllable structure can be put under a cover term "morphonology". In my opinon, the structuralist term morphonology can still be used although has been eliminated by SPE 4 and is being abandoned in modern approaches. 5 But the interface phonology-morphology interface is still important for the description of the above-mentioned phenomena, although ablaut or prosody has either been put into morphology (e.g. templatic and prosodic morphology) or into phonology (e.g. metrical phonology). Some historical linguists still find it useful to put ablaut, prosodic phenomena and morpheme structure constraints into morphonology, e.g. Szemerényi 1996, Clackson 2007. I would therefore stick to the traditional cover term for the accentual phenomena described in this dissertation although I use OT solution which does not work with morphonology anymore. 1. 2. Complexity of accentology and the need for the generalgeneral overview Indo-European and Balto-Slavic accentology is complex, as Kortland often emphasizes. Apart from the other branches of linguistics, accentology lacks modern and complex overview or a textbook. While each generation faces at least one compendium on Indo-European linguistics, every decade a new massive compendium on phonology, morphology or syntax appears, accentology is still neglected. The last monography on IE accentology is Gercenberg 1981 whose accessibility is limited to non-Russian speaking scholars. The most valuable part is the first chapter concerning history of IE accentology since Böhtlingk. Modern trends are mostly omitted. So the only information about accentology are introductory chapter is either more general compendia (Szemerényi 1996, Clackson 2007). The situation with Balto-Slavic accentology is much puzzling. While historical linguists and Indo-Europeanists basically have a background knowledge of the Indo-European 3 TCLP 1: Prague 85-88, reprinted in Trubetzkoy, N.S.: Opera Slavica minora linguistica, Wien 1988, 231-234. 4 Chomsky, N.; Halle, M.: The Sound patterns on English., New York 1968. 5 Goldsmith 1995; de Lacy 2007. 6 accentology in general (but not in detail), the Balto-Slavic accentology is taken as complex, difficult and hardly to understand. There are several reasons for such prejudice. First , might be difficult to follow the general trends and to distinguish individual schools. Such is the situation of Kuryłowicz and Stang: although both authors published their major works in late fifties, only Stang became a founding father of a further development in BS accentology. Second, different timeline research phases of scholars and schools are not distinguished. For example, the results of Moscow accentological school can broadly be divided into three periods: before 1990s, after 1990s and after 2000. The first part is dominated by Illič-Svityč 1963/1979 monograph on nominal accentuation in Balto-Slavic and its relationship to PIE and Dybo's book on the accentuation of derivates and principles of their accentuation (being itself a culmination of a number of his previous papers).