Remarques sur la règle de Winter

ACTA LINGUISTICA LITHUANICA LIII (2005), 33-37 Remarques sur la régle de Winter Witotp MANczak Cracovie The author presents a few observations concerning Winter’s Rule, among which the most important are the following: (1) the author knows of no language in which a phonetic change similar to that ascribed to Balto-Slavic by Winter would have occurred; and (2) certain exceptions to Winter’s Rule could be explained by what the author calls irregular phonetic development due to frequency. There is a fundamental difference between the finding that Napoleon died in 1821 4 St. Helena, and the finding that man (or, more generally, every living being) is mortal. The first observation, limited in time and space, applies to a historical event, while the latter, valid always and everywhere, is a biological law. Mutatis mutandis, there are similar differences in linguistics. Roman grammarians knew only one rule of historical phonetics: vocalis ante vocalem corripitur (for example, habere, habemus, habétis, habébat but habed, audire, audimus, auditis, auditum but audid, audiunt, audiébat). The rule in question concerns only one language (Latin), whereas Zipf’s law applies to all languages and all periods of their history. Since there are at least 3000 languages in the world, the difference between the vocalis ante vocalem corripitur rule and Zipf's law is enormous, comparable to the one that exists between 1 and 3000. Since the “Winter’s law” concerns only one language (Balto-Slavic) and therefore resembles the vocalis ante vocalem corripitur rule, and not Zipf’s law, it is more accurate to call it a “rule”. That the vast majority of linguists confuse laws and rules is explained by the fact that they are not interested at all in the quantitative aspect of linguistic facts and see no difference between 1 and 3000. 2. Winter (1978: 444-445) wrote the following: “Is a development of the type VD > V:D a natural one? Or is what we seem to find in Baltic and Slavic languages an unusual phonemenon? Rather than attempt to give a long list of parallels from other languages, I will limit myself to a brief discussion of a well-known development within Polish. Ina very large number of Polish words, we find an alternation of the type dwor, dworu... The change, which from present conditions would have to be called a vowel raising, is interpreted as vowel lengthening... The conditions for the introduction of length seem to have been as follows: a short 0, whether derived from older o or older e, was 34 | WitoLp MaNczak lengthened 1n a position before voiced nonnasal consonant, provided this consonant was followed (in terms of present-- day Polish) by word boundary or morphonic boundary plus stop. It is interesting to note both similarities and differences between the conditions for lengthening in medieval Polish and in Balto-Slavic: For Polish, the decis1ve fact seems to be that a consonant have the feature [+ voiced], for Balto-Slavic, that this feature be a distinctive one —thus lengthening would occur before r in medieval Polish, but not in early Balto-Slavic. In Polish then, the phenomenon has a wider range as far as the immediately following phonemes are concerned; on the other hand, there is no requirement in Balto-Slavic that the phoneme triggering the lengthening process occur in a specific environment. Lengthening in medieval Polish and in early Balto-Slavic are, therefore, similar, but by no meansidentical, processes; there was in medieval Polish no revival, as it were, of an ancient rule but similar conditions merely led to similar results.” There is an essential difference between the elongation of vowels in Old Polish and in Balto-Slavic. In the old Polish language, this was a change similar to what is happening today in fr. ruse in relation to 4 Russian or in engl. dog in relation to dock, i.e. vowels elongate before final sound consonant, whereas in Balto-Slavic an elongation had to occur before non-final sound consonant, cf. lit. ioga or v. slave vinjaga. Personally, we do not know any language where there would have been a change identical to that which Winter postulates for the Balto-Slavic. And this poses a problem: is it possible that in Balto-Slavic there has been a phonetic change that has not occurred in any other language? 3. There are cases where the interpretation seems doubtful. Among the words that J. H. Holst (2003: 164) quotes to support his thesis, there is “Jit. stdgas; pbsl. *stagos < *stdgos- ”. He does not realize that there is a contradiction between Lithuanian and Slavic languages, where there are words like pol. stég, Czech stoh or Russian and Slovene stog, which come from *stogs. An elongation, which occurred in Lithuanian, did not occur in the Slavic languages. Ailleurs, le méme auteur (2003: 149) a écrit: “Werner Winter has made the statement that a short vowel would come before a vowel plosive in Balto-Slavic... whether it is true, however, is highly controversial. In this article, it is shown that a correct statement can be made from it by a modification: The elongation referred to took place only under the word accent. That the word accent plays a role in the sound history is common. The most common example is Verner’s law.” It must be emphasized that the vast majority of Germanists agree with the rule de Verner as Jespersen, who a eu Mariczak 4 uses two fictitious words: > dsasa dsaz(a) and asdsa > azds(a), i.e. the fricatives sound in the middle and final position except when they follow the tonic vowel (Mariczak 1990: 92). Accordingly, all Germanists reconstruct Proto-Germanic words of the type REMARKS SUR LA RULES DE WINTER | 35 *wulfaz. Therefore, there is a il difference between rule la de Winter, which, according to la the amendment proposed by Holst, concerne la position “under the Word accent”, et la Rule de Verner, which applies 4 la position after a protonic syllable et a the one after a posttonic syllable. 4, For many de years we have asserted that in all languages, word form depends on three main factors, not only regular phonetic la development analog development, but also de du et du de ce that we call phonetic development un irregular frequency. di a la In all languages, the morphemes, word groups word often used et undergo de irregular reductions. We have y dedicated three monographs (Maniczak 1969, 1977 et 1987) as well as numerous de articles. En ce concerning rule la de Winter, she suffers from exceptions, which ce makes that opinions her subject are divided a that we undertook several attempts et to modify. a la We do not intend to discuss here whether this de rule is true or not, but would la only like to de draw attention si to the fact that some exceptions to Winter’s rule ou could be explained by irregular phonetic development. le a la un dé a la frequency. V. sl. bogs. A cété du development phonetique irrégulier dfi a la frequency, il there is another irregular evolution that consists of phonetic accidents known for a long time en as assimilations, dissimilations metatheses, hypercorrect forms expressive le forms. ou en ou All this irregular evolution is characterise zed by the fact that it le takes place, in different a languages, in different words. For example, the Latin word le caeruleus presents a dissimilation, but it would be difficult to find, in an Indo-European il language, word meaning de un “caeruleus” which would present a dissimilation. Au Contrary to assimilations, dissimilations, etc., phonetic development irregular le frequency takes place, in various df a la languages, in a a more or less parallel manner, which is explained by the fact that the most frequent words are ou everywhere less the ce memes. ou Le name de God appears in a reduced form in various frequently used expressions: pol., Russian, Slovak bodgj, pol. dial. bdaj, russe spasibo “merci” < svpasi Gods, Inc.. spasybi, czech bohdd (< Biih dd), bodejt, bopomozi, Czech dial. pdnbiéek (tiré du vocatif pdnbiéku < pane na nebicku). The Slovak adjective bohovity is derived un boh vie, de this ho because an 4 irregular reduction takes place in the a eu adjective. En in on addition, can cite le slovak pomajbo “help, God”, pomodaj Stastia, Czech zdarbu < zda¥ Bye, bye, bye, bye, < bye, bye. dial. dalbo < dalibég, pol. dial. helper, bass soprano pomgaj Bog, bass sorabe léc Bog da > because > of the stab, ukr. Try it (= out. przebég) ou bien bozna < God knows. La fricative pronunciation du g in Russian Bog is also explained by irregular phonetic un development da a la frequency (Mariczak 1997). Il y a reduced forms also Lithuaniaen n: dieva% dievazi(gi) < < Dievas Zino(gi), sudie < sudieu < su God, I helped < you God, lit. dial. Sign(s) that < *Sign(s) Oh, my God. En Latin, il y a thousands of words de beginning with but, as far as we d, know, Iuppiter is the only word that has lost le le d initial. Obviously, ce word, designating le most important god Roman du pantheon, was very employed. A in our opinion, divus is a regular form, while English 36 | Witotp MaNnczaKk that deus is explained by an irregular phonetic development dfi the frequency (our paper on divus and deus will appear in the proceedings of a conference that a eu place en 2004 a £6dz). En God with be you became good-bye. In American pronunciation, the word God has a double pronunciation, not only with [a], but also with [9], while all other -od words (nod, rod, trod, etc.), less frequently used than God, have only [a]. This is a reduction in the degree of opening of the vowel, which is characteristic of irregular phonetic development di a frequency (Mariczak 1995). In German, adieu has been reduced to ade, while tschiis is a Walloon abbreviated form adjuus, which is comparable to esp. adids < ad + Deus. That the Slavic word bog” “god” is a loanword is unlikely en if one takes into account the meaning of derivatidu ves, cf. pol. bogaty “riche”, ubogi “pauvre- ”, nieboga “malheureuse”, zboge “blé” ou ukr. bahato ‘beaucoup’. V. sl. Come on. The verb meaning “to go” presents irregular reductions everywhere because it is very used. Suffice it to mention that the number one problem of Romance etymology is the origin of verbs like fr. aller, it. go, esp. andar, prov. ana, rhét. la, ma, na, etc. Since the 16th* century, about sixty etymologies have been proposed to explain these forms, which in reality are nothing more than reduced forms of ambulare (Mariczak 1974 and 1975). Germanic verbs like angl. go or all. gehen also underwent an irregular phonetic development di a the frequency (Mariczak 1987a). With regard to the Polish verb chodzi¢, it is interesting to note that the imperative is chodé, while the form one would have expected is *chddg (cf. ’imperative wédz of wodzi¢ “to drive”). The imperative chodé instead of *chédé is explained by the fact that in the Middle Ages, oi! en Polish il y still had long vowels, le 0 de chod has been abbreviated irregularly. V. sl. water. Ce word very employed also presents irregular un abbreviation. En ancien francais, le lat. aqua ended a regularly aive, while modern a form eau is explained by irregular la phonetic development dfi the frequency. un a Bed. a. La difference between bed. as et v. sl. jazb is also explained by un development of frequency. V. sl. Bride. Au subject de ce mot, Winter (1978: 444) a written ce as follows: “PIE wedd-... probably meant just ‘lead’. If the act of marriage involved not only the transfer bridal presents, but also meant leading the bride of away the husband’s home to (cf. Lat. in matramonium ducere), a confusion the of two roots could easily enough happen: the more commonly used “wedhwas introduced items in where *(E)wed should have been kept, and as a result forms like OInd. vadhiis ‘bride’, Lith. védinti ‘marry off’, etc., could come into existence.” A in our opinion, the most convincing la etymology nevésta is de *newo-wedh-ta “die neu heimgefiihrte” reduction et la de *ove a é is explained by phonetic un development irregular frequency. dé a la COMMENTS ON THE WINTER RULE | 37 REFERENCES Hotst, J. H. 2003. An exception to Winter's law. Journal of Linguistics 116, 149173 Makczax, W. 1969: Phonetic development of Romance languages and frequency. Kraków: Jagiellonian University Press. Maxczax, W. 1974: A controversial Roman etymology: go, go, etc. Revue roumaine de linguistique 19, 89-101. Makczak, W. 1975: Etymology of fr. aller, esp. andar, etc. and calculation of probabilities. Revue roumaine de linguistique 20, 735-739. Masczax, W. 1977: Stowiarska phonetics and frequency. Kraków Jagiellonian University. Makczax, W. 1987: Frequency-related irregular sound changes in Germanic languages. Wrocław: Ossolineum. Makczax, W. 1987a: Etymology of walking and standing. Quarterly Neophilological 34, 3-10. Maxczax, W. 1990: The restriction of Verner's rule A on the median position and the fate of the final s in Germanic. Journal of Linguistics 103, 92-101. Maxiczax, W. 1995: The American pronunciation of God. Quarterly Neophilological 42, 231-237. Maxczax, W. 1997: Frikative g in Russian —alleged Churchism. Stowante East. Between Language and Culture, Krak6w: Grell, 85-89. Winter, W 1978 The distribution of short and long vowels in stems of the type Lith. ésti: vasti: mésti and OCS jast: vesti: mesti in Baltuc and Slavic languages. Recent Developments in Historical Phonology, ‘The Hague: Mouton, 431-446. Witold Mariczak Zakatek 13/59 PL-30-076 Krak6w, Poland