Folia Linguistica Historica IX/2 pp. 3-12 © Societas Linguisticü Europium ON METHODS OF DEALING WTTH FACTS AND OPINIONS IN A TREATMENT OF THE PROGRESSIVE PALATALIZATION OF SLAVIC FREDERIK KORTLANDT 1. In 1981 Horace Lunt published an odd little book on the progressive palatalization of Slavic. The author discussed the pertinent facts and a number of relevant opinions about them on the basis of the assumption that the progressive palatalization was an early Slavic development. Since several colleagues, including myself, were dissatisfied with bis treatment of the problem, I decided to write a short critique, which was published in this Journal (1984). The gist of my objections was twofold. My first concern was Lunt's way of handling the counter-evidence to bis basic assumption that the progressive palatalization was an early development. As I pointed out, bis chronology forced him "to posit an arbitrary phonetic development of the diphthongs and an arbitrary morphological replacement in the imperative, to reformulate the progressive palatalization äs a subphonemic development, to dismiss the counter-evidence of petrified forms by questioning the material without offering a solution, and to exclude pronominal forms from consideration because they may have been subject to unknown developments" (1984:217). My second concern was Lunt's way of dealing with the earlier scholarly literature in terms of "prejudice" and "error", or worse, e.g. "Wukasch's ingenious discussion of rule ordering is completely vitiated by bis failure to recognize that the 'historical order* of changes he Starts with is purely a construct of Shevelov's reasoning (which I consider blatantly faulty äs well äs internally inconsistent), and therefore the proposed 'reorderings' — Wukas[c]h's own constnicts — can make no contribution to linguistic theory" (Lunt 1981:62), tt seems to me that this way of discussing one's predecessors does not contribute to a better understanding of the issues involved. Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/18/15 11:31 AM When I circulated my little article among a small group of colleagues before submitting it for publication, I received various reactions. On the one band, I was advised that Lunt would probably answer my criticism by launching a personal attack or by looking for a way of taking revenge rather than by entering into a scholarly debate. I thought that this should not keep me from Publishing my criticism. On the other band» I was asked why I did not discuss other objectionable aspects of Lunt's work, such äs the curious organization of bis little book. Since I was rather interested in bis methodology of dealing with facts and opinions, I preferred to leave such aspects out of consideration. It was not to be expected that Lunt would welcome my criticism, He did not As a matter of fact, he was so enraged that he needed forty pages and more than a hundred footnotes in order to vent bis gall in this Journal (1987). The result is a curtain of offensive language which largely serves to conceal the substantial issues from the reader's view. It is ä perfect exemplification ot the second point I was concerned with in my criticism. His reaction will stand äs a monument of bad taste and bad manners. In the following I shall limit myself to reviewing what can be gathered from bis text with respect to the specific issues mentioned aboye. 2. Lunt clearly recognizes that bis formulation of the progressive palatalization "implies that the older diphthongs *ai and *ei no longer ended in *i, and I suggest that the System had evolved modified diphthongs, +ie < *ei and *af < *aT (1987:270). The only reason for bis ad hoc assumption of "modified diphthongs" is that he wants to avoid the straightforward solution that-the palatalization was posterior to the monophthongization of the diphthongs, which yielded long monophthongs of the timbre *d, V* (Kortlandt 1984:214). In bis earlier treatment Lunt assumed that *ei yielded *e? in early Slavic (1981:19f.), but this possibility apparently looks too much like a monophthongization to him now. He thcrefore returas to an oral Suggestion by bis teacher Roman Jakobson and proposes "that the Baltic development suggests a plausible solution: * has remained (cf. Uth atlaikas 'remainder', OCS otoUkb) but *ei often has metathesized (cf. Lith. mielas cdear\ OCSmili»). Therefore I now suggest that in early Slavic *oi > *af but *ei > *ie" (1987:260). Unfortunately, Lunt is not sufficientiy familiär with the Baltic Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/18/15 11:31 AM material. Not only *ei, but also *ai yielded ie in the East Baltic languages, e.g. Lith. dieveris 'brother-in-law', piemud 'shepherd*, Gr. doli, poimin. Moreover, this is not the result of a metathesis, but of an early monophthongization followed by a much later diphthongization (cf. Stang 1966: 52-68 and Kortlandt 1977: 323-328). The monophthongization was limited to the stressed syllable, äs Lunt might have detected if he had written accent marks on ätlaikas and mielas. The original distribution was obscured by later developments, such äs the retraction of the stress from antevocalic i which gave rise to metatony. The Lithuanian diphthongization to ie was limited to the Aukstaitian dialects (cf. Zinkeviöius 1966:503). The Latvian diphthongization was probably posterior to the elimination of the nasal vowels, which shared the development, e.g. pieci *five*. The available evidence actually points to the 17th Century for the Latvian diphthongization, and the raised diphthong ie does not appear before the 19th Century (cf. McKenzie 1918:156-161). It turns out that he Baltic parallel can only be adduced in support of a monophthongization of *ei to *e and later raising to * Slavic. Similarly, *au was monophthongized to *ö and later raised to *fi, äs is clear from the loanwords which have uo in Latvian but ü in Lithuanian, e.g. Latv. bfuoda, puösts, Lith. bliüdas, pustas, RUSS. bljudo *dish*, pustoj *empty*. These words were apparently borrowed at a time when *ö had already been diphthongized to wo in Lithuanian, but not yet in Latvian, so that Slavic *ö from *au was best rendered by *ö in Latvian and *ü in Lithuanian (cf. McKenzie 1918:168*171). When Lunt changed bis mind about the development of *ei in Slavic, he evidently did not calculate the consequences for the vowel System äs a whole. Apart from the developments *#' > *fe > *Fand *ai > * ^ > *e he now assumes «' > *a$ > *e? > * after *j (1987:272) and *ai > *a? > *ei > *Fafter progressively palatalized *fe (1987:284). This requires an additional rule for „not only a fronting but a raising of the original a between the /-hhigh/ glide or consonant and /-low/ vowelw (fn. 59). Pure hand-waving, äs they would say at MIT. 3. Concerning the other points mentioned above, Lunt only repeats bis earlier views and does not offer anything new in bis reaction. For plural imperatives such äs rbcite 'say* Lunt is "inclined to beiieve that the - - in these verbs is a morphologjcal Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/18/15 11:31 AM replacement" (fn. 30). The point is that the only reason to assume a morphological replacement is Lunt's postulate that the progressive palatalization was an early Slavic development. Moreover, this postulate can only be maintained if the progressive palatalization is defmed äs a subphonemic development. In distinctive terms, the progressively palatalized */c remains a variant of /k/ not only after the first regressive palatalization (Lunt 1981:27f.), but may have remained so until it merged with the outcome of the second regressive palatalization after the monophthongization, äs appears from Lunt's table II (1987:284). If Lunt would not insist on "vowel adjustment" after this subphonemic variant of /k/, the form rbcäte would be regulär. However, this possibility is complicated by bis a priori assumption that the root vowel of igo < *yugom 'yoke' was delabialized before the "vowel adjustment", a factor which he evidently did not take into account when he drew up bis table II. The root of the problem is that Lunt desperately wants the locative forms otbd "father" and otbdxb 'fathers' to be phonetically regulär and goes out of bis way to accommodate the contrary evidence in order to save bis cherished idea. Apart from the imperative rbcite and the Russian gen.sg. form *stbgy 'path', which "should be *stbzf* (Lunt 1981:31), he has to explain away such form äs hzi 'permitted', which is usually considered to be a petrified dative-locative (cf. Vaillant 1950:55, 1977:84), and inst.sg. masc. vbslmb 'all', sicemb 'such*, gen.-loc. pl. vbsixb, sicexb. He hypothesizes that Ibzi represents a nominative *lbdza which was eliminated from the language and then reintroduced by Cyril and Methodius in its Moravian form *lbza, written Ibzi because of "confusion in spelling" (1981:35). This is sheer fantasy. Lunt dismisses the pronominal forms because "pronouns are far more likely to develop peculiar innovations along with haphazard rearrangements of old materials" (1981:36, similarly 1987:280). He ignores Van Wijk's observation that "in der nominalen Flexion sind die Kasus mit i-Vokalismus weniger zahlreich als in der pronominalen1* and therefore more liable to analogical replacement (1931:68, similarly but more explicitly 1950:306f.). Lunt's dismissive attitude is at variance with the principle that facts and opinions must be taken seriously. After dismissing vbSb äs evidence because it may have been subject to unknown developments, Lunt announces that the Novgorod birch-bark documents, where we find both vbx- instead of vbs- Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/18/15 11:31 AM and absence of the second regressive palatalization, support his assumption that the progressive palatalization "was a process completed before the rise of *x" (1987:283). This is indeed a remarkable way of handling the evidence. The best explanation for the distribution of palatalization in the available material has been proposed by Willem Vermeer: "The most striking properties of the North Russian consonant System can be attributed to two otherwise general Common Slavic innovations which, however, reached the Slavic dialects of the Novgorod/Pskov area in the reverse order" (1986:512). His thesis is that the monopthongization of diphthongs reached the area later than the progressive and second regressive palatalization, so that the conditions for the rise of new palatal consonants were different from those we find elsewhere. As a result, the regressive palatalization did not operate ajt all and the progressive palatalization gave rise to a marginal series of new palatal consonants in stem-final position. After the monophthongization of diphthongs, the new alternation between velars and palatals could easily be eliminated by restoration of the velars, except for the fact that "/c/ occurred in several productive suffiixes" and therefore "was much more firmly entrenched in the System" than the palatal alternants of g and (Vermeer 1986:510). This theory offers a possibility of accounting for the absence of palatalization in such forms äs dial. (Rjazan') otek 'father' and ORuss. varjagb 'Varangian' in a straightforwärd way (cf. Shevelov 1964:346-350). 4. As I said above, I will not go into the kaleidoscope of personal insults which constitutes the larger part of Lunt's article. It may nevertheless be useful that I briefly comment on a number of points where Lunt's misrepresentation can easily confuse the unsuspecting reader. "The remarkably different environments of the progressive and the second regressive palatalizations are strong reasons for assuming different chronology until that possibility can be definitely ruled out" (fn. 19). I would hold that "since they produce the same outcome it seems most rational simply to identify them" until we find evidence to the contrary (Vermeer 1986:506). Otherwise it must be explained why two distinct innovations yielded the same outcome. According to Lunt, I "firmly assert" that the raising of *o to *u in acc.sg. masc. and gen.pl. *-om must be dated to the Balto-Slavic period (fn. 21). He does not inform his readers that in the very sentence he quotes I refer to two articles which I have written on the subject. Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/18/15 11:31 AM 8 According to Lunt, I assume "an intermediate long-vowel System with three front vowels, T? e and, floating unnoticed in the background, the reflex of *oT (fh. 25). Since * yielded +e when *ei yielded *£ the floating background is limited to Lunt's creative rhetoric. "Kortlandt's formulation of Mono saddles him with a merger of *ai and *e" (fn. 37). This is correct for the position after dentals and labials, where both are reflected äs OCS. . It is incorrect for the position after velars and palatals, where the distinction is reflected äs /i versus (cf. Kortlandt 1979:266). "MareS chose to specify delabialization; I did not" (p. 266) and "MareS explicitly posits phonetic delabialization*1 (fn. 42). I quote: "Rounding was not distinctive from the beginning of Slavic (äs opposed to Baltic where some contrast between *ä and *ö was retained), äs MareS 13 recognized" (Lunt 1981:6Qf), and: "Wir glauben aber, dass auch hier der phonologische Funktions- und nicht der Detailwert der entscheidende Faktor bei den Artikulationsverhältnissen ist** (Mareä 1969:14). Lunt's "emphasis added" (1987:265) does not change the basic fact that both authors assume an early Slavic phonological delabialization. The main difierence is that Mares' formulations are more careful and less equivocal. "Surely the reference to other languages — a reference Kortlandt did not teil bis readers about — is incompatible with the notion of synchronic underlying forms" (fn. 46). Correct. I was commenting on Lunt's claim that "internal reconstruction alone suffices to establish a stage where every desinence in the OCS twofold declension begins with *a or *ö" (1981:16). Lunt confuses internal and comparative reconstruction. Lunt writes about bis failure to rite bis predecessors that "if Mares* originated , the notion, I am glad to give him credit", but finds Ebeling "culpable" of the same negligence (fn. 50). He does not consider the possibility that Ebeling may have "originated the notion" independently, or earlier than Mare§. "A question not even suggested by Kortlandt is the loss of the formant *f (fn. 56). As a matter of fact, the loss of */' plays a central role in my account of the historical phonology of Slavic (e.g., 1975:30, 1979:270, 1982:186, cf. now Venneer 1984:362 and passim). Lunt is simply unaware of the problems involved because he disregards the prosodic evidence. "Kortlandt posits a Tirst palatalization' change whereby /ke ke/ *were rephonemicized äs* /ca ca/ (1979:266), a manoeuver effected by means of the presupposition of 'the existence of the archiphonemes' /ä a/. Telescoping several articulatory changes into a single move relieves him of the responsibility of establishing a chronological sequence" (fn. 58), and: "Kortlandt in bis 'second palatalization' again avoids discrete chronological Steps" (fn. 60). The rephonemicization of /ke/ äs /ca/ is the transfer of the distinctive palatal feature from the vowel to the preceding consonant, which is the essence of a phonemic palatalization. As a result, we now have a phoneme /£/, after which the distinction between /e/ and /a/ is neutralized in the archiphoneme /ä/. There is no "telescoping of several articulatory changes" because there are no articulatory changes. Jakobson's 1947 theory to which Lunt adheres does not account for the transfer of a distinctive feature from one segment to another, äs in the case of a palatalization. Lunt's theoretical framework prevents him from seeing the facts in their proper perspective. M Kortlandt*s source" and "the scholar who proposed this" (fn. 67) refer to Torbiörnsson and Rozwadowski, whose names Lunt does not mention. Treating Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/18/15 11:31 AM one's predecessors äs non-persons has at times been fashionable in some couotries but is at variance with thc prindple that earlicr scholarship musf be examjned respectfully. Lunt writes about OCS. rodosb, narodoto, to estK This is no longer 'Common Slavic* but westera (Bulgare-) Macedonian dialect (or etse Hast Slavic dialect, äs in the Dobrilo Gospel of 1164)**. Rozwadowski argued that we find this o in texts which otherwise preserve the jers unchanged, 'and that we also find it in Polish, Czech, and Hast Bulgarien, where o cannot have developed from a jer, e.g. OCz. veteros: "Nie moze to byo zatem nie innego jak resztka starego < OS" (1914:16). Lunt orates about "credibility äs a Slavic historical linguisT but does not bother to look. *J at phonetic and morphojogtcal levels" (m. 70): this does not preclude the absence of phonemic /j/. The laryngeals, Kortlandt's major original daim of 1975, are not even mentioned in 1979" (m. 72). The reason is that I tried to make my article accessiblc to those colleagues who, like Lunt, are not sufficienüy famüiar with the prehistory of Slavic accentuation and may thcrefore have difficulty in interpreting the prosodic evidence. Those who are familiär with the subject will have no difficulty in adding tones and quantities. I reconstruct a high nasal front vowel *fN which yielded South Slavic -eN and North Slavic - in the acc. pi endings of the Jo- and ;ä-stems, adding in a footnote: "This conclusion was first drawn by N. van Wijr (1979:259). Lunt comments: "Quite the contrary" (m. 73). Van Wijk actually proposed Mdass -£ und -f, beide lautg^setzlich auf eine ältere Gestalt zurückgehen" (1916:461). I dcsignatc this "ältere destalt** äs *-f?N, which is the outcome of earlicr *~jons and *-;ans after the loss of *-5 and the delabialization of high rounded vowels (1979:267f.). Similarly, I reconstruct "an unrounded nasal back vowel, which I shall write *aN and which yielded South Slavic ~y and North Slavic -a" in the participial cnding which developed from PIE. *-onts (1979:260). Van Wijk comparcd the <lifferent developments of *-onts and *-ons with those of *~jonts and *-jons and conduded: "dann lasst sich aber das Verhältnis nprdslav. bera : sudslav. bery auf einen ursprünglich unbedeutenden dialektischen Unterschied in der Färbung des o zurükfuhren" (1925:284). After the loss of *-s, the ending *-aN yielded -a in the north and -y in the south (et also Kortlandt 1983:180). Lunt asserts that my Mchange 12 yields eight nasals, while change 13 reduces it [sie] to stx" (p. 277). Since these are pairs of nasal vowels in complementary distribution, the reader should substitute tour" and uthreev*. **What is the relationsnip of acuti^intonation to a larynged vocalic featureT (m. 79). This is the subject of my Slavic Accentuation (1975). For the back quality of OCS. s*>to *hundred' beside Lith. Sirhtas which seems to bother Lunt, I may refer to Trautmann (1923:4), äs I did in my article (1979:264, fe. 19). This is well äfter the establishment of complementary distribution of front/back vowels by the action of VA (change 6), and I am puzzled that Kortlandt lists three what look very much like front/back nasal vowel pairs in the sysfems of change 13 and 14" (p. 277 .). This is all wrong. There is no complementary distribution between front and back vowels at stage 6, which cannot be identified with Lunt's "vowel adjustment* (which I reject, 1984:214f.X and there is nothing like front/back nasal vowel pairs at stages 13 and 14, äs will be clear to anyone who cares to have a look at the relevant pages of my article (1979:269f). Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/18/15 11:31 AM 10 Lunt grossly misrepresents my views in a deliberate attempt to avoid a real discussion. He misinforms his readers about the relevant issues and refuses to tace the problems which arise from his own ill-considered assumptions. 5. Thus, it seems to me that Lunt's performance does not warrant the pompous haughtiness of his authoritarian rhetoric. His treatment is at variance with the four principles of scholarly behavior which he conveniently lists in a footnote (1987:261), kindly though rather surprisingly attributing them to the present author. "Adequate knowledge of the material is a prerequisite for any useful scholarly activity": Lunt does not show adequate knowledge (let alone "mastery", fn. 82) of the material in the case of the East Baltic developtnent of *ai and *ei into ie, the prosodic consequences of the loss of */, and the traces of *-os in Slavic. "The factual data must be carefully analyzed": Lunt introduces ad hoc assumptions in order to dismiss unwelcome counter-evidence in such cases äs rbcete, Ibze, vbsext». "Verifiable fact must be kept distinct from hypothetical constructs": Lunt exercises no restraint in mixing fact and fiction when he states that "nothing changes the major fact:xall desinences begin with a low back vowel" (1981:16). And last but not least: "Opinions set forth in earlier scholarship must be examined seriously and respectfully". Lunt violates this principle when he deals with Rozwadowski, Torbiörnsson, Ebeling, Shevelov, Birnbaum, Wukasch, or anyone with whom he happens to disagree. He fmds it difficult even to restrain his pretensiqns when assenting to the views of his greatest predecessors: "Meillet and Van Wijk intuitively grasped the morphophonemic relationships seven decades ago, although the specific concepts of phoneme and morphophoneme had not yet emerged" (1987:277, fn. 76). It is unclear how this attitude can be tolerated in a "teaching and research milieu, where investigation takes for granted free and open discussion about data, assurrjptions, procedures, speculations, theories", and where it is "a matter of course that arguments and conclusions are subject to critical evaluations" (fn. 82). FRED ERIK KORT L AN DT Cobetstraat 24 NL-2313 KC LEIDEN HOLLAND Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/18/15 11:31 AM 11 REFERENCES Kortlandt, Frederik 1975 Slavic accentuation: A study in relative chronology (Lisse: Peter de Ridder). 1977 Historical laws of Baltic accentuation, Baltistica 13/2, 319-330. 1979 On the history of the Slavic nasal vowels, Indogermanische Forschungen 54, 259-272. Early dialectal diversity in South Slavic, Studies in Slavic and General 1982 Linguistics 2, 177-191 1983 On final syllables in Slavic, Journal of indo-European Studies / / , 167-185. The progressive palatalization of Slavic, Folia Linguistica Historica 1984 5/2, 211-219. Lunt, Horace G. 1981 The progressive palatalization ofCommon Slavic (Skopje: Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts). The progressive palatalization of early Slavic: Opinions, facts, methods, 1987 Folia Linguistica Historica 7/2, 251-290. Mares, Frantisek V. 1969 Diachronische Phonologie des U r- und Frühslavischen (München: Otto Sagner). McKenzie, Roderick 1918 Notes sur Fhistoire des diphtongues ie et uo dans les langues baltiques, Bulletin de la Societe de Linguistique de Paris 21, 156-174. Rozwadowski, Jan 1914 Przyczynki do historycznej fonetyki jezykow stowianskich, Rocznik Slawistyczny 7, 9-21. Shevelov, George Y. 1964 A prehistory of Slavic: The historical phonology of Common Slavic (Heidelberg: Carl Winter). Stang, Christian S. 1966 Vergleichende Grammatik der baltischen Sprachen (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget). Trautmann, Reinhold Ein Kapitel aus der Lautlehre der baltisch-slavischen Sprachen, Slavia 2, 1923 1-4. Vaillant, Andre Grammaire comparee des langues slaves l: Phonetique (Lyon: IAC). 1950 1977 Grammaire comparee des langues slaves 5: La syntaxe (Paris: Klincksieck). Vermeer, Willem R. 1984 On clarifying some points of Slavonic accentology: The quantity of the thematic vowel in the present tense and related issues, Folia Linguistica Historica 5/2, 331-395. 1986 The rise of the North Russian dialect of Common Slavic, Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 8, 503-515. Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/18/15 11:31 AM 12 Van Wijk, Nicolaas 1916 -f und ~ im Akk.Plur, der jo-Stämme und im Gen.Sing., Nom.Akk.Plur.der jä-Stämme, Archiv für statische Philologie 36, 460-464. Zur Entwicklung der partizipialen Nominativendung -onts in den 1925 slavischen Sprachen, Zeitschrift Jur statische Philologie l, 279-286. 1931 Geschichte der altkirchenslavischen Sprache 1: Laut- und Formenlehre (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter). 1950 K istorii fonologi£eskoj sistemy v obS2eslayjanskom jazyke pozdnego perioda, Slavia 19, 293-313. Zinkevi&us, Zigmas t 1966 Uetuviy, dialektologija: Lyginamoji tarmiv, fonetika ir morfologija (Vilnius: Minus). Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/18/15 11:31 AM