HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

UKRAINIAN-RUSSIAN COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR 533stage from the other o (since it did not become i in the new closed syllable inUkrainian), the use of the symbol i. leads one to wonder why the genitive singular*gorbda did not become, following the usual treatment of jers, *gorda.Secondary mobile vowels (e.g., 3eMenb, pp. 68-69) are explained as follows:"Weaki>,b transferred their force ("cmia") to the sonorant, which became syllabic.Syllabic sonorants are not natural ("BJiacTHBi") to the East Slavic languages. . .,"which led to syllabicity being transferred to an inserted vowel. While the generalprinciple here seems reasonable, the description is not consistent with it; how coulda syllabic sonorant have developed at all if such sounds are unnatural to East Slavic?The explanation of Ukrainian ipata (p. 70) similarly depends on the development of asyllabic sonorant, but Russian pata, which is not cited, is evidence that a sonorant inthis position does not have to be syllabic. Incorporating the Russian cognate intothis explanation and offering a definition of what the authors mean by "natural"would have greatly improved their discussion of syllabic sonorants.The attribution of Ukrainian 6'w to an unstressed root (p. 71) is simply wrong.According to comparative and historical data, 2 *biju was originally barytone and thedevelopment of Ukrainian 6'w must be considered secondary.The declaration that the merger of Rusian u and H into Ukrainian H "was completedat various times in the [Ukrainian] language area, since otherwise the sound ifrom old e would also have to have merged withu, similarly to etymological i (H)"(pp. 73-74) is puzzling. As long as the reflex of e was distinct from the reflex ofRusian i, there would have been no confusion, and, in any case, the authors presentno evidence for the order of the merger of u and H and the development of i from e.The declaration that the "hardening of consonants before e in Ukrainian began inconnection with the loss of the jers" (p. 75) also requires explanation: what is theconnection the authors suggest and why should the loss of the jers have affectedconsonants preceding e? Similarly, the authors connect the hardening of labial consonantsto the fall of the jers (p. 81), but they offer no explanation for why the disappearanceof jers should have affected precisely labials. The attribution of the hard vin piBHHii (from *poBbHHH) to the hardening of labials (p. 86) is a serious confusionof two processes: while the Ukrainian sound system lacks an independent soft v\other consonants were also hardened before the adjectival suffix *-i»n- (e.g.,CBo6iflHHH) and Russian, which shows evidence of the hardening of labials only in afew desinences and which retains soft v in most positions (e.g., KpoBb, cf. UkrainianKPOB), also has hard v before *-i>n- (POBHMH, cf. CBO6OHHHH). Furthermore, Brycynnever explains that the Ukrainian development of m'aso —> mjaso is a split, notmerely a "hardening" of m. To state that labials were hardened in Ukrainian beforee andH (p. 86) is also to confuse two processes: all consonants in Ukrainian are hardbefore these two vowels, and labial articulation is irrelevant. (One wonders howBrycyn would account for palatalized n' in nirae; cf. p. 51.) Such use of inappropriatedata leads one to wonder how well the authors understand the processes2N. Van Wijk, "L'accentuation de l'aoriste slave," Revue des etudes slaves 3(1923): 27 -47.