The Main Features of South Slavic Accentology

Abstract

In this paper I explore the gross features of accentological development in Serbo-Croatian [SC], Slovene [Sn] and Bulgarian [Bg]. This survey will perforce be just a special case of the general history of Slavic accentology, but with particular South Slavic features manifesting themselves, especially in the later developmental stages. I begin my account in late Common Slavic [CS] at a point when the three main accentological paradigms for nouns, adjectives and verbs have been established: the barytonic (root-stressed) pattern; the final-columnar [FC] pattern (stress on the first syllable of the desinence); and the mobile pattern, where the stress alternates in a fixed pattern between the first and final syllables of the inflectional forms. Just how these three basic paradigms evolved is a fascinating and critical part of the complete story, but, unfortunateIy, lies for the most part beyond the scope of this discussion. I need say only that barytonic and FC words contain derived roots or stems, while mobile words are essentially nonderived forms without any obvious suffixes. As derived forms, barytonic and FC words are found with lengthened-grade roots and normal-grade roots, respectively; and may represent chronologically different levels of derivation. In Table I are displayed the late CS paradigms for typical South Slavic words, and the paradigms for the same words in the modem languages. For Late CS, note particularly the position of stress and the length of the accented syllable; and note that at the stage chosen here there are no syllables with rising intonation-all accented syllables, both long and short, have unmarked falling intonation. For the modem languages, note the degree of agreement with the CS paradigms: J The most spectacular phonological event in the history of the Slavic languages, with far-reaching side-effects on the prosodic system, was the loss of the jers, producing the neo-acute accents. It is reasonable to assume that the jers were lost in three stages: I) internally, 2) final when unstressed, 3) final when stressed. Weak internal jers appeared among a few fern. compound postverbals, collective nouns, and derived adjectives. The first category is nicely exemplified by *0 = SUp +a ~ Sn 6spa, SC ospa, 2 where the jer was lost and the stress drawn back to the resulting long syllable. Collective nouns with (joccurred among fern. and neut. nouns: *soux + iJ +a ~ Sn susa, SC susa, Bg sits a ; *storg +iJ+a ~ Sn strata, SC strata, Bg strata; *trrn +iJ+e ~ Sn tfnje, SC tfnje, Bg trane. In a more advanced stage of the original formula we have, e.g., *susiJa, where the jer disappeared and the stress was retracted to yield the neo-acute (rising) accent on the resulting long syllable. The falling accent in the SC forms was due to a later shift from a marked rising to an unmarked falling stress. The same suffix, -iJ-, was used with neut. o-stems to form verbal nouns on the past pass. pcpJe -t-/-nstem. Here we frequently observe the same kind of retraction: SC pietenje tresenje Sn pletcnje trescnje, Bg pletene tresene; but such formations must have arisen over a considerable time span, because we have final stress in most disyllabic forms and a few others: SC branje bdenje b(ce uzece, Sn branje bedcnje bftje vzitje. Much leveling has occurred in Bg: brane bdene cetene plene krlene. It is very likely that we find the same retraction among the pronominalized forms of derived adjectives with FC stress. A good case in point here is the adjective *kort-ii +k-J-jl, in all its inflected forms. Here the pretonic medial jer was lost, and the stress retracted to produce neo-acute accents on the preceding long syllable: Sn kratki, SC kratk f, Bg