著者

神山 孝夫

出版者

大阪外国語大学

雑誌

ロシア・東欧研究 (ISSN:13431382)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.5, pp.1-43, 2001-03

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The aim of the present paper is to propose a new view on the development which the Proto-Indo-European (IE) so-called syllabic liquid is assumed to have gone through in the Slavic branch. It challenges the widely accepted one, originated from Miklosich and having been authorized since Leskien's Handbuch. In the last stage of the IE linguistic unity its phonological system contained the syllabic liquid, which was not preserved principally in any branch of the linguistic family in question, and which, as a rule, developed a secondary anaptyctic vowel so that the syllabicity of the liquid could be avoided. The earliest stage of the Slavic prehistory (Proto-Slavic: PS) employed a close vowel, i or u, before the ex-syllabic liquid, which process is basically common to Baltic and Germanic as well. Just before the break-up of the Slavic linguistic unity (Common Slavic: CS) the sequence developed into "reduced vowel jer (b/b)+liquid (r/l)" in the traditional notation. Old Church Slavic (OCS) reflex of the sequence, when it is situated between consonants, is spelt "r/l+b/b", which was supposed to be realized phonetically as a syllabic liquid again. This idea was first uttered by Miklosich in 1850, but seems to be generally misunderstood and attributed to the leading Junggrammatiker Leskien, under whose authority it has been accepted by the absolute majority of scholars since his influential work Handbuch came out. But, we dare say, the generally accepted phonetic realization of the OCS sequence is far from probable, in that, above all, it must presuppose an ad hoc loss of jers exclusively in this position, and, furthermore, OCS has another set of sequences which are equally noted as "r/l+b/b", but directly continue the IE sequences "r/l+i/u", thus must be read just as they are written, i.e. "liquid+vowel". It is by no means imaginable that such a strict orthographic system of OCS should have permitted the same notational sequence to correspond to two completely different phonetic realizations. Occam's razor would tell us here that it is far more probable to posit that OCS applied metathesis, triggered by the law of the open syllable, in the sequence in question, which thus must have been pronounced as it is written. And, what is more, it holds true regardless of its origin: stemming from the IE syllabic liquid or not. This development is assumed to be common not only to all of the south Slavic languages, but also to Slovak and, to some extent, Czech, whereas the others to the north (Russian, Polish, etc.) did not experience this process and finally lived with the closed syllable in "jer+liquid" which was left behind in the earlier syllable opening processes. The author has come to this conclusion independently, but feels encouraged because it turns out that this view is also shared virtually with such brilliant scholars as Schleicher, Sakhmatov, Martinet, Brauer and Cekman. Provided that the above mentioned reasoning is plausible, we can conclude in addition that the law of the open syllable expired considerably earlier than the loss of jers in Slavic linguistic history.