Lengthening of nasal vowels in older Slavonic

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alice
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Lengthening of nasal vowels in older Slavonic

Post by alice »

As I understand it, when a jer dropped, a preceding short vowel lengthened and gained the neoacute intonation. Are there any examples of this happening with a nasal vowel? For example, /CenCu/ > /Ce~:C/?
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alice
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Re: Lengthening of nasal vowels in older Slavonic

Post by alice »

What a stupid question. Are you an idiot or something? Everybody knows that nasal vowels were always long.
Zompist's Markov generator wrote:it was labelled" orange marmalade," but that is unutterably hideous.

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Re: Lengthening of nasal vowels in older Slavonic

Post by ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ »

Well, the nasal vowels shortened in Polish before yer dropping, so there were such alternations as /dõːb/ and /dõba/, /ksẽːd͡z/ and /ksẽd͡za/ ("oak" and "prince", Nom and Gen singular). Later, all nasal vowels merged to one quality /ã(ː)/ written ø (ø̄) with former front vowel palatalizing preceding consonants (/dãːb/, /dãba/, /ksʲãːd͡z/, /ksʲãd͡za/). Then short vowel changed to /ɛ̃/ :> today /ɛũ̯/ and long one to /ɔ̃/ :> today /ɔũ̯/, giving current "dąb", "dębu", "ksiądz", "księdza".
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Re: Lengthening of nasal vowels in older Slavonic

Post by hwhatting »

I had written something similar to Diego's post, but the internets ate it. Wikipedia has more details on the Polish developments.

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