Regressive Palatalization of Velars

April 7, 2010

So the Cubs lost their opener in humiliating fashion. What else is new?

I am thinking about the second regressive palatalization of velars in Slavic languages, the one responsible for all kinds of rough edges in the morphology of nouns and verbs that Russian outright got rid of. It is fascinating.

For example, remember the irregular plural of друг, друзья? Two things are irregular about it: it’s an old feminine collective formation in –й–а, and it has the velar shift of g to z (dz), not to zh. This sort of change used to be seen in all the Old Russian nominative plurals of masculines, e.g. чиновникъ ‘civil servant’ had the regular OR plural чиновници. Now, in West Slavic this became a big thing: the development of a new category of ‘virile’ nouns (!) marking masculine people. Macho thing. But the egalitarian Russians made the nominative plural the same as the old accusative plural, so столи ‘tables’ (nom.) became столы (nom. and acc.). Other Slavic languages followed suit. But Russian had its complications: the acc pl of all animates would merge not with the nominative but with the genitive, as we are about to learn now in 102. So while in Czech you have a special nom. pl and the acc. pl. merging with the instrumental pl, in Russian you have nom pl = acc pl if inanimate, and gen pl = acc pl if animate (women included).

Russ столы столы столов столами столах столам
nom acc gen instr loc dat
Czech stoly stoly stolů stoly stolech stolům


Russ братья братьев братьев братьями братьях братьям
nom acc gen instr loc dat
Czech chlapi chlapy chlapů chlapy chlapech chlapům



You can see how the Russian plural has gotten much more unified. The old ам, ами, ах, ям, ями ях fit almost all the nouns. Not so for Czech.

I also miss the good old second regressive in the imperatives of the verbs мочь, печь, речь — мози, мозэте, пьци, пьцэте, рьци, рьцэте (I use the э letter to represent the old jat’).

Here is a sentence from the 11th century Ostromirovo gospel:

молю же вьсэхь почитающихъ не мозэте кляти, нъ исправлшье, почитаите. ‘I beg all who are reading this not to curse me, but, having corrected me, to read on’. Istn’t that something? I repeat the same for my readers.

gmc