Rule Ordering in Baltic and Slavic Nominal Accentuation

Abstract

There are obvious similarities in Baltic and Slavic nominal accentuation. Although the modern languages have undergone considerable changes, both can be reconstructed as having three types of accented syllables: a short accented vowel, a long vowel with rising intonation termed acute, and a long vowel with falling (nonrising) intonation termed circumflex. In modem Lithuanian the original circumflex is now a rising accent, as in va~nas 'raven,' while the original acute is a falling accent, as in vdrna 'crow.' In Slavic, which went through a stage where neither accent was rising, original intonation was recoded as length. In Serbo-Croatian, which will be used for most of the examples in this paper, length was preserved under circumflex accent, e.g., vrdn 'raven' (long falling accent), while the acute was shortened, e.g., vratna (short falling accent). In Russian the original acute accent is reflected in polnoglasie groups as stress on the second vowel (vor6na 'crow'), and the original circumflex is reflected as stress on the first (v6ron 'raven'). Both Baltic and Slavic had fixed and mobile accentual paradigms. In Slavic the accent could be fixed on any syllable of the word, although a fixed accent on the theme vowel (oxytonic accent) was in general limited to derived stems. In late Baltic the accent could be fixed on any vowel of the stem except the theme vowel. Kurylowicz suggests that at one time Baltic also had theme-vowel accent but that the accent in this class was retracted one syllable.- As evidence he cites cognate suffixes which have suffixal accent in Lithuanian but had theme-vowel accent in Slavic: Lith. -ic-as, -tk-as, -im-as, -at-4 (from *-dt-a); Slavic *-sc*, *-.k, *-smd, *-otd. Exact cognates are Lith. siuvikas, R Xvec 'tailor'; Lith. piesimas 'writing,' R pis'm6 'letter'; Lith. nuogat~, R nagotd 'nakedness. In the mobile paradigm the alternation in both Baltic and Slavic is basically between the first syllable of the stem and the last syllable of the desinence. Following Roman Jakobson,3 we represent stems of this paradigm as morphophonemically unaccented. Desinences are either accented or unaccented, and it is the co-occurrence of an accented desinence with an unaccented stem which accounts for desinential accent.4 In the case of the co-occurrence of an accented desinence with an accented stem, the accent