Milk and the Second Pleophony

Dear Students,

Milk is a sacred commodity to the Russians, ranking with bread and eggs. The Soviets used to boast that the price of milk reflected only the cost of production (no one believed them, but who knows). 

The Russian молоко, with its beautiful Rostovo-Suzdal'/Moscovite akanie, three vowels of different quality, one following the other, alternates with молочный 'dairy', where the stress is on the second syllable. This is so beautiful that a lady I knew from the area used to blush with pleasure when she discussed it with me.

The second pleophony is a late East Slavic liquid metathesis, later than c. 800 karl/korl > король, gard/gord > город. Here there is a svarabhakti vowel, an indistinct doubling of the first vowel, that develops in metathesis. So while Church Slavonic has крал, град, Russian has король, город. 

The second pleophony came somewhat later and involved the sequence CьлC, CьрС. Classic examples are молоня 'lightning', полон 'full', шелом 'helmet'. They were edged out of the literary language by молния, полн, шлем, largely with Slavonic influence. Notice they are groups of jer plus liquid (r or l) between consonants, specifically, two examples with labials m, p  before and n after, the other example, x before (> ш) and m after.

Vasmer posits melk- as the root for pre-Slavic 'milk', but I'd like to think it was a reduced vowel, mьlk-.  It sounded just like 'milk, Milch' in Old Slavic. In the Russian second pleophony, the -l- labiovelarized and the jer changed to a back jer, which became a full vowel as in волк 'wolf'. This word did not undergo second pleophony; it was originally vьлk- > volk.  This involved a labial v before an original front jer which labialized, and the change of a strong jer to a full vowel. But волк was not subject to pleophony. Mьlk-, instead of  becoming molk-, developed a svarabhakti vowel and we got молоко.  If second pleophony had not applied, we would have молко. Instead, we have the beautiful молоко.

Not everyone agrees with this etymology. If the pre-Slavic were мелк–, we have just have the usual labialization, e > o, and metathesis with svarabhakti vowel. But I prefer to think it was with молоня, полон, шлем. Молоко!  Молоко!