LÆszl Krist PÆzmÆny PØter Catholic University vernerslaw@gmail.com this handout and more stuff at www.unice.fr/dsl/tobias.htm Tobias Scheer CNRS 6039, UniversitØ de Nice scheer@unice.fr FDSL 6 Potsdam 30 Nov - 2 Dec 2005 The beginning of the word in Slavic (1) purpose a. look at the diachronic evidence from Slavic in order to assess the situation of this language family with respect to a well-known phonological phenomenon, lenition and fortition. Point out its surprising and undue paucity when compared to other families such as Romance and Germanic. b. on the grounds of the scarce evidence, evaluate a prediction made by the Coda Mirror (SØgØral & Scheer 2001): word-initial consonants are strong. This seems to be counterfactual in Slavic. c. insert the Slavic situation in a broader cross-linguistic picture: word-initial consonants may or may not be strong. d. theory makes a prediction: three seemingly unrelated typological features must always co-occur within a given language: 1. 2. 3. initial C weak existence of initial clusters that violate sonority sequencing possibility for the first vowel of a word to alternate with zero. 1. 2. 3. initial C strong non-existence of initial clusters that violate sonority sequencing impossibility for the first vowel of a word to alternate with zero. 1. Strong vs. Weak positions: the "regular" picture (Romance, Germanic) (2) strong vs. weak positions: empirical situation [SØgØral & Scheer 2001,forth, Scheer 2004:§110, §556), SzigetvÆri 1999] a. consonantal strength is a neogrammarian concept Based basically on Germanic and Romance languages, the picture that is resident in the literature is the following b. weak position A: the Coda = __{#,C} "word-finally and before a consonant" this so-called Coda context has played a major role in generative theory in the 70s- early 80s: it was on these grounds that syllable structure (absent from SPE) was reintroduced into the theory. c. weak position B: V__V intervocalic. Weak as well, but crucially weak in a different way than the Coda. E.g. voicing or rhotacism are common in V__V, but unheard of in the Coda. Conversely, l-vocalisation is common the Coda, but does not occur in V__V. d. Strong Position: {#,C}__ "word-initially and after a consonant" Called "position appuyØe" in the Romance literature since the 19 th century and well known there, it was by and large absent from modern theory - SØgØral & Scheer (2001) have called attention to it.