Baltica & Balto-Slavica

Frederik Herman Henri Kortlandt

Rodopi, 2009 - Foreign Language Study - 440 pages

This volume offers a discussion of the phonological, accentological and morphological development of the Baltic languages and their Indo-European origins. The first half of this book is about Baltic historical phonology and morphology and the second half is about Prussian. The emphasis is on the relative chronology of sound changes and on the development of the flexional and derivational categories of nouns, pronouns and verbs. It is argued that the Balto-Slavic acute tone was a glottal stop which developed from the Indo-European laryngeals and from Winter's law and that the original circumflex continues other vocalic sequences. Special points of attention are the gen.pl. endings, ē and ī/jā stems, and thematic and athematic present endings. The second half of the book contains a comparative analysis of the three Prussian catechisms, resulting in the conclusion that they represent three consecutive stages of a real linguistic system. It includes a discussion of the Prussian accent shift, initial vowels, diphthongs, infinitives, verb classes, participles and traces of ablauting paradigms. The final part of the book offers a full linguistic interpretation of the three Prussian catechisms on the basis of the preceding chapters, followed by a list of references and a word index. The book is of interest to Balticists, Slavicists, Indo-Europeanists, and other historical linguists.

Contents

• Innovations which betray archaisms: 13
• Shortening and metatony in the Lithuanian future: 19
• IndoEuropean palatovelars before resonants in BaltoSlavic: 27
• Three problems of BaltoSlavic phonology: 33
• The development of the IndoEuropean syllabic resonants in Balto: 39
• Long vowels in BaltoSlavic: 51
• PIE lengthened grade in BaltoSlavic: 61
• Winters law again: 73
• Some news travels slowly: 81
• Miscellaneous remarks on BaltoSlavic accentuation: 87
• BaltoSlavic accentual mobility: 93
• Accent retraction and tonogenesis: 103
• MORPHOLOGY: 112
• Gothic gen pl e: 125
• Old Prussian snā Lithuanian sena Latvian šana: 137
• Tokie šalti rytai: 147
• Slavic imamo: 167
• The etymology of Latvian nākt to come: 181
• PHILOLOGY: 189
• The development of the Prussian language in the 16th century: 195
• Two Old Prussian fragments: 215
• Paragogic e in the Old Prussian epigram: 221
• An analysis of the Prussian First Catechism: 229
• The linguistic position of the Prussian Second Catechism: 237
• Double consonants in Old Prussian: 247
• Initial a and ein Old Prussian: 255
• Old Prussian diphthongs: 265
• The formation of the Old Prussian present tense: 275
• The Old Prussian preterit: 283
• Old Prussian verb classes: 287
• Old Prussian numerals: 301
• The Prussian Enchiridion 1561: 317
• REFERENCES: 371
• On the history of the genitive plural in Slavic Baltic Germanic: 380
• INDEX: 399

About the author

Frederik Kortlandt is Professor of descriptive and comparative linguistics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He has published widely on Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, Armenian and other languages and on linguistic theory. His publications include Modelling the phoneme (1972), Slavic accentuation (1975), Armeniaca (2003), Italo-Celtic origins and prehistoric development of the Irish language (2007), and numerous articles in Baltistica, Res Balticae, Linguistica Baltica, Baltu Filoloģija, Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics, Historische Sprachforschung, Journal of Indo-European Studies, Lingua, and other journals and edited volumes.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Baltica & Balto-Slavica; Volume 16 of Leiden studies in Indo-European, ISSN 0926-5856; Rodopi Language and Linguistics Special E-Book Collection, 2007-2014, ISBN: 9789004357983
• Author: Frederik Herman Henri Kortlandt
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Rodopi, 2009
• ISBN: 9042026529, 9789042026520
• Length: 440 pages
• Subjects: Foreign Language Study / Baltic Languages; Foreign Language Study / Slavic Languages (Other); Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Etymology; Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General