Rise and fall of vowel length in Slavic

Abstract

My observation that Mate Kapović’s ideas about Slavic accentuation lack a chronological perspective has evoked a furious reaction (Kortlandt 2016b: 478f., Kapović 2017). Since his account can easily leave a false impression on an uninitiated reader, I will here try to clarify the major issues in the simplest way possible. I will limit myself to the five topics that Kapović apparently found most difficult to appreciate: pretonic vowel length, the genitive plural, monosyllabic lengthening, length in medial syllables, and length in Czech monosyllables. The numbers of the stages mentioned below refer to the detailed relative chronology of Slavic phonological developments that I have proposed elsewhere (Kortlandt 1989, 2011: 157‑176, 277‑309).

Shortening, lengthening, and reconstruction

“…Unfortunately, this kind of erasure of other accentologists is quite in line with Kortlandt's general suppressing of most modern non-Leiden scholars in most of his works (outside of his usually very scathing reviews of new accentological works that are not written within the framework of the Leiden Accentological School), which I have already mentioned before. 44 It is methodologically incorrect to look at one or a couple of forms without context, as 44 In his new paper (Kortlandt 2018), Kortlandt does the same thing I already noted in Kapović 2017a: 388 17 . The references in his paper (ibid.)…”

“…When talking about my objection on his formulation of "Stang's law" and the lack of non-retracted forms in present 1/2 pl , he (Kortlandt 2018: 293) adduces the following: "Carpathian (Ublja) byváuu, bývaš, bývať, byvá i eme, byvá i ete, byvá u uť". However, this is neither what I was talking about, nor does it prove what Kortlandt wants it to prove.…”

“…Frederik Kortlandt has, in one of his articles (Kortlandt 2016: 478-479), criticized a few random issues out of my recent monograph (Kapović 2015), while misinterpreting some of my stances. I responded to his criticism in Kapović 2017a and he responded back in Kortlandt 2018. In this article, I will respond to him once again, while taking the chance to discuss some issues in historical Slavic accentology, since I have to admit I do not actually believe that there "is simply no viable alternative to the theory of Slavic accentuation that [Kortlandt] proposed 45 years ago" (Kortlandt 2018: 295).…”