Reconstruction talk:Proto-Slavic/melzti

Serbo-Croatian medial -u- in musti was taken from the present stem where it was regularly vocalized from syllabic -l-. Infinitive stem has been preserved in the dialects (mlisti) and derived terms (ml(j)ez-, mliz-). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:26, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I found this form in Lunt's OCS grammar book. Are you saying that it was an ablauting verb in Proto-Slavic, like *bьrati? The opposite could have happened too, with mljez- being analogous to mlijeko. —CodeCat 19:32, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

You could've written what page number :) If anything is more subject to analogical leveling, that would be forms within the same paradigm, not different words based on phonetically quite different stems. Lunt appears to assume *melz/*milz- ablaut (the latter supposedly reflecting zero-grade?). There was however an ablaut with this root, *melz-/*molz- (SCr. mlaz/млаз, Russian молозиво (molózivo), Polish młodziwo, meaning Pan-Slavic). Lunt's grammar is a bit old (1960s scholarship, really), newer etymological dictionaries (e.g. Derksen, ESSJ, Skok for Serbo-Croatian) all derive this from *melz-ti. ESSJ also lists dual Lithuanian infinitives, melžti/milžti, but I'd rather not speculate regarding the latter variant. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:27, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

If you can properly source and reference the e-grade reconstruction, then I suppose it's ok to move it to *melsti. We include the assimilation in the infinitive, just like -gti > -ťi and -dti > -sti. And derived/related terms would be useful as well. —CodeCat 20:31, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Well I prefer the "etymological" forms with -gti, -kti, -zti etc. where you can see the stem more easily (both ways are used in the literature). That was the standard practice before you unilaterally renamed them all :) --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:58, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

If we include inflection tables, it shouldn't be too much of a problem because that lists all the forms. If you write *melzti then it just begs the question "why was there a z in Proto-Slavic when all the descendants have an s?". So showing the actual form seems more useful as it more closely matches the descendants. You can't really reconstruct *z from the descendants of the infinitives alone, you only get it when you see the paradigm as a whole. It's quite likely that there was no voiced consonant in the infinitive at least since the time of w:Winter's law. —CodeCat 21:04, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't really beg the question because that kind of assimilation is regular. OTOH if you simply list the assimilated form without providing the inflection you cannot guess whether that was the original stem or not. It's the most common citation form in etymological dictionaries AFAIK. I'm really OK with using either though. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:19, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I've added ESSJ as a reference (didn't even know we had that as a templated reference, thanks Vahag!). I've checked several other dictionaries, and all of them reconstruct this as *melzti. *mьlsti form presupposing the reflex of PIE zero-grade or Balto-Slavic ablaut, also presumably visible in Lithuanian milžti, must be some relatively obscure theory. Russian Church Slavonicism mlěsti (obvious borrowing from South Slavic) preserves the original infinitive stem and is very unlikely to represent an analogically corrupted form (faithfulness of sacred texts and all that). ESSJ also lists dialectal Bulgarian and Slovak cognates which makes this verb "Proto-Slavic proper". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:10, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Zero grade

@Benwing2 Given that the infinitive has its origins in an oblique case form of the -ti- noun, you'd expect a zero grade root to have originally occurred there. Lithuanian indeed does reflect this, so that suggests *milźtei as the PBS form instead. It seems that the zero grade is preserved in Slavic too, as Bulgarian, SC and Slovak all preserve it. So maybe this page should be *mьlzti instead? —CodeCat 14:03, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

That is interesting. It's almost like there were two variants *melzti and *mьlzti, just as in Lithuanian. All or almost all other verbs with stems ending in an obstruent have -e- in them, which might argue for forms that appear to be derived from *mьlzti to be secondary, but it could as well be an archaism. Since the sources all have *melzti I'd rather keep the page there but we could create *mьlzti as an alternative form. Benwing2 (talk) 01:55, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@CodeCat Benwing2 (talk) 01:55, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

It's much more likely for the root grade to be levelled out, so any change that makes the infinitive grade different from the grade of the present tense is very suspicious. What present forms are found in these languages? —CodeCat 02:02, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@CodeCat Added. Benwing2 (talk) 14:54, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, that's a bit stranger. They all have the zero grade in the present too. Slovene is especially strange, having a zero grade in the present but not in the infinitive, exactly the opposite distribution that you'd expect. —CodeCat 15:26, 8 February 2017 (UTC)