Lecture | Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars
Length alternation in the Slovak substantives of the Proto-Slavic *(CV)CoCъ/ь-type
- Michal Vácval
- Date
- Friday 19 June 2026
- Time
- Serie
- Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 2.27
Abstract
The Proto-Slavic phoneme *o is a historically short vowel that continues pre-Proto-Slavic *a. In late Proto-Slavic, several accent retractions have yielded a long rising tone on a previously short unaccented *o. This long rising variant is generally reflected in Slovak by the rising diphthong ô (i.e. /u̯o/) from Proto-Slovak long *ō. Somewhat unexpected is the presence of length in the Ø-ending forms of some lexemes, such as kôň ‘horse’, where no accent retraction should have taken place, according to some scholars, because the accent would have always been on the root. This type of lengthening is the main focus of this talk, which examines the distribution of different quantity paradigms in the Slovak dialectal reflexes of the Proto-Slavic vocabulary of the *(CV)CoCъ/ь-type, and especially their correspondence to the original Proto-Slavic accent paradigms.