Následující text je shrnutím 3 hlavních vokalických změn ve staré češtině, které se označují jako
přehlásky. Navrhněte, jak popsané změny modelovat v teorii element.
Zdroj textu:
Kosek, Pavel and Ziková, Markéta, “Czech Vowel Fronting (Česká Přehláska) ”, in: Encyclopedia of
Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online, Editor-in-Chief Marc L. Greenberg. Leiden: Brill.
Old Czech Vowel Fronting (Přehláska)
The article provides an overview of conditioned vowel shifts (Cz přehláska) in Old Czech.
The changes consist in the fronting of back vowels of any height, and they distinguish Czech from
other Slavic languages.
Vowel fronting is a process whereby back vowels become
fronted. In Old Czech, the vowel fronting took place between the 12th and the 14th centuries; it is
traditionally called přehláska (calque of the Germanic Umlaut). The přehláska phenomenon
distinguishes Czech from other Slavic languages, as demonstrated by the adjectival
root PSl *l’ub‑ ‘nice, dear’ : it has a front vowel in Czech l[i]b-, but a back vowel elsewhere in
Slavic, e.g., Sk ľ[uː]b-, Ru lʲ[u]b-, and Sn lj[u]b-.
Like the Germanic Umlaut, Old Czech vowel fronting is an assimilatory sound change.
Umlaut and přehláska differ in their triggers: it is the following vowel for the Germanic Umlaut,
but the preceding consonant for the OCz přehláska. Table 1 summarizes vowel‑fronting triggers
(i.e., soft consonants in the 12th c., before depalatalization) shown in two forms: IPA (left) and
the traditional notation in Slavic philology (right).
Table 1: Soft consonants in Old Czech (Lamprecht 1972)
palatalized labials
[p^j b^j v^j m^j]
/pʼ bʼ vʼ mʼ/
palatalized alveolars
[t^j d^j s^j z^j l^j r^j n^j t͡s^j]
/tʼ dʼ sʼ zʼ lʼ rʼ nʼ cʼ/
palato-alveolars
[ʃ ȝ t͡ʃ]
/š ž č/
palatals
[ɲ ^j]
/ň j/
The assimilatory nature of Old Czech vowel fronting is shown in (1): vowels are fronted to share
the feature [+pal(atal)] with the preceding soft consonant:
(1)
V[[-pal]] à V[[+pal] ]/ C[[+pal] ]__
Low vowels
The oldest process is low‑vowel fronting completed presumably by mid-13th century. Furthermore, it
is assumed to have proceeded in two stages and involved changes in both frontness and height of the
vowel. During the first stage, a low vowel [a] became more fronted and raised, yielding [æ]. In the
next stage, the near-low [æ], i.e., /ä/, rose in height. The output of the raising is traditionally
marked as /ě/ (jat), and it corresponds either to a mid-vowel [e] (Lamprecht et al.
1986: 103ff.) or to a mid-rising diphthong [i̯e] (Gebauer 1894: 187ff.). The two stages are
illustrated in (2) for ‘male.gen.sg’, starting with the Proto-Czech (PCz) muž[a].
(2)
(1)
PCz
muž[a] = /a/
↓
stage 1:
fronting + raising
OCz
muž[æ] = /ä/
↓
stage 2:
raising
OCz
muž[e/i̯e] = /ě/
As the rule in (1) illustrates, the process was triggered after soft consonants (shown in table 1),
but it was blocked when a hard consonant (listed in table 2) followed a potential vowel target.
Table 2: Hard consonants in Old Czech
(2)
labials
[p b v m]
/p b v m/
alveolars
[t d s z^ l^ r n ^t͡s]
/t d s z l r n c/
velars
[g x]
/g ch/
The blocking effect of hard consonants, marked as [-pal] below, is illustrated in table 3. The
original low vowel underwent the [a]-to-[æ] fronting and the [æ]-to-[e/i̯e] raising, as shown in
the plural past form of ‘lie’. But in the singular (in the righthand column), the process was
blocked by the hard consonant that followed the vowel, in this case by a nonpalatalized alveolar
[l]. As a result, the theme marker alternates between (the original) [a] in lež-a-l and the derived
[e/i̯e] in lež-ě-l’i.
Table 3: Blocking effect of hard consonants
(3)
C[[+pal]]_
C[[+pal]]_C[[-pal]]
PCz input
lež[a]l’i
lež[a]l
[a] > [æ]
lež[æ]l’i
---
[æ] > [e/i̯e]
lež[e/i̯e]l’i
---
OCz output
lež[e/i̯e]l’i (= /ležěl’i/)
lež[a]l (= /ležal/)
‘lie.3pl.pst’
‘lie.3sg.pst’
The first stage of the přehláska involved fronting and raising the vowel [a] to a near-low vowel
[æ]. However, this vowel had already existed in Proto-Czech: it evolved from a
Proto-Slavic front nasal vowel [ẽ] /ę/; e.g., PSl pʼ[ẽ]t’ь ‘five’ > PCz pʼ[æ]tʼ.
Both [æ]s also underwent raising when preceded by soft consonants (pʼ[æ]tʼ > pʼ[e/i̯e]t) – and,
similarly, also for either [æ], not only was raising stopped before hard consonants, but lowering
(a reverse process) was also triggered, yielding [æ] lowering to [a]. The two options for PCz [æ]
are shown in table 4: the root vowel [æ] either rose to [e/i̯e] (in pʼ[e/i̯e]tʼ ‘five’) or lowered
to [a] (in p[a]tnádste ‘fifteen’), depending on whether the following consonant was soft [t^j] or
hard [t]. (In addition, the lowering is presumably accompanied by labial depalatalization: [p^j] >
[p] before the lowered vowel; see Trávníček 1923, Havránek 1940, Komárek 1969: 54–57 and Lamprecht
et al. 1986: 60ff.)
Table 4: Raising vs. lowering: [æ] > [e/i̯e] vs. [æ] > [a] / _C[[-pal]]
(4)
C[[+pal]]_
C[[+pal]]_C[[-pal]]
PCz input
pʼ[æ]tʼ
PCz input
pʼ[æ]tnádste
[æ] > [e/i̯e]
pʼ[e/i̯e]tʼ
[æ] > [a]
p[a]tnádste
OCz output
pʼ[e/i̯e]tʼ (= /pʼětʼ/)
OCz output
p[a]tnádste (= /patnádste/)
‘five’
‘fifteen’
High vowels
The high‑vowel fronting took place around the mid-1300s. As opposed to the low [a], the high vowel
[u] became fronted even when followed by a hard consonant, as illustrated in the righthand column
in table 5.
Table 5: Contexts of [u] fronting
(5)
C[[+pal]]_C[[+pal]]
C[[+pal]]_C[[-pal]]
PCz input
Jež[uː]š
ješ[u]tný
[u] > [i] (OCz output)
Jež[iː]š
ješ[i]tný
‘Jesus’
‘conceited’
Like the low‑vowel fronting, the high‑vowel fronting, too, is assumed to have proceeded in two
stages, and there are two scenarios illustrated by ‘soul.acc.sg’ in (3), differing in the expected
output of the intermediate stage: it is either a labial front vowel [y] shown in (3a) or a
diphthong with initial iotation [i̯u], as in (3b).
(3)
(1)
a.
[u] > [y] > [i]
(Komárek 1969; Lamprecht et al. 1986)
b.
[u] > [i̯u] > [i]
(Gebauer 1894)
PCz
duš[u]
duš[u]
↓
stage 1:
fronting
↓
stage 1:
fronting + diphthongization
OCz
duš[y] = /ü/
duš[i̯u]
↓
stage 2:
delabialization
↓
stage 2:
monophthongization
OCz
duš[i]
duš[i]
Mid-vowels
The fronting of a mid-vowel [o] yielded the same result as the low‑vowel fronting discussed above:
the output was /ě/, corresponding either to a mid-vowel [e] or to a mid-rising diphthong [i̯e]. The
[o]‑to‑[e/i̯e] change took place under similar conditions to those of the high-vowel fronting: hard
consonants on the right of the targeted vowel did not block the fronting. The results are shown in
the rightmost column in table 6. The přehláska of mid-vowels was completed by the late 14th
century; see Šmilauer (1950).
Table 6: Contexts of [o] fronting
(2)
C[[+pal]]_C[[+pal]]
C[[+pal]]_C[[-pal]]
PCz input
muž[o]v’i
muž[oː]v
[o] > [e] (OCz output)
muž[e/i̯e]v’i
muž[eː/i̯eː]v
‘male.dat.sg’
‘male.poss’
Similarly to the high‑vowel fronting, the mid‑vowel fronting is assumed to involve an intermediate
stage with a front labial vowel, as shown in (4).
(4)
[o] > [ø] > [e] (Komárek 1969; Lamprecht et al. 1986)
PCz
muž[o]v’i
↓
stage 1:
fronting
OCz
muž[ø]v’i = /ö/
↓
stage 2:
delabialization
OCz
muž[e]v’i
The following table summarizes the history of the přehláska sound changes.
Table 7: History of přehláska
1200
1250
1300
1350
1400
’a > ě
’u > i, ’o > ě
Old Czech vowel fronting and morphology
The vowel‑fronting processes affected the morphological system of Old Czech. The přehláska
strengthened the distinction between hard and soft nominal paradigms (see also Inflectional
Systems: the soft paradigms acquired new front-vowel endings, as illustrated in table 8.
There are three paradigm cells in the table, and each of them is realized by two different
vowel‑initial endings in Old Czech, depending on whether they attach to a hard stem (‘town’) or a
soft stem (‘sea’).
Table 8: Hard vs. soft paradigms
PCz
OCz
gen.sg
dat.sg
dat.pl
gen.sg
dat.sg
dat.pl
hard stem ‘town’
měst
-[a]
měst
-[u]
měst
-[oː]m
měst
-[a]
měst
-[u]
měst
-[oː]m
soft stem ‘sea’
moř
moř
moř
moř
-[e/i̯e]
moř
-[i]
moř
-[e/i̯eː]m
The distinction between hard and soft paradigms, caused by OCz přehláska is still present in
contemporary Czech. However, sometimes there were changes in the development of Czech that reversed
přehláska. A prototypical example is the dative singular marker of animate masculine nouns: the
marker was first fronted (muž-ov’i > muž‑ěvi ‘male’), and then the front vowel was replaced
analogically by the original back vowel (muž‑ěvi > muž‑ovi), cf. hard-stem volovi ‘ox.dat.sg’.
Přehláska also gave rise to intra-paradigmatic allomorphy with back‑front vowel alternation. An
example of this are verbal stems such as leža-l – ležě-li ‘lay-pst.ptcp.m.sg – lay-pst.ptcp.m.pl’
or zaja-t – zajě-ti ‘capture-pass.ptcp.m.sg – capture-pass.ptcp.m.pl’ in which the stem vowel
regularly alternates between [a] and a fronted [e]. However, in these cases, the stem-vowel
alternation has been undone, and it is interpreted as an effect of paradigm leveling. To avoid the
allomorphy, the stem vowel became invariably either [e] (lež[a]l > lež[e]l – lež[e]li) or [a]
(zaj[e]ti > zaj[a]ti – zaj[a]t).
Old Czech vowel fronting and contemporary Czech dialects
The contemporary Czech‑language territory is divided along the west–east axis, and the distribution
of front vowels [i] and [e] on the one hand and non-front vowels [u] and [a] on the other in the
eastern (Moravian) dialects is partly similar to that found in Proto‑Czech, i.e.,
before the vowel‑fronting processes (přehláska)were triggered. This is evident, among other things,
in that soft stems combine with back‑vowel endings in these dialects. Thus, there is a synchronic
variation between standard Czech forms such as muž-e ‘male-gen.sg’ and moř-i ‘sea-dat.sg’ and
dialectal forms muž-a and moř‑u. In this respect, the eastern (Moravian) dialects are thus more
similar to other Slavic languages than to standard Czech, precisely by lacking the přehláska
fronting.
Nonstandard abbreviations used in this article
PCz Proto-Czech
References
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Markéta Ziková – Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic)
Pavel Kosek – Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic)
Keywords: phonology; sound change; vowel; Old Czech