Proto-Slavic - Historical Development - Regressive Palatalizations

Regressive Palatalizations

As an extension of the system of syllable synharmony, velar consonants were palatalized to postalveolar consonants before front vowels (*i, *ĭ, *e, *ę) and *j:

• *k → *č
• *g → *ž → )
• *x → *š

This was the first regressive palatalization. Although *g palatalized to an affricate, this soon lenited to a fricative except when following *z. *s and *z palatalized to š and ž, respectively, before palatal consonants (*j, *č, ž). Subsequently, a number of vowel changes took place: *ū lost its labialization (possibly, represented hereafter as , as in modern Polish) both *ou and *eu became *u, and back vowels became front vowels after palatal consonants (including *j). This was closely followed by the monophthongization of diphthongs in all environments:

• *ū → *y
• *ou → *u
• *eu → *u
• *o → *e / J_
• *ŭ → *ĭ / J_
• *y → *i / J_
• *oi → *ei / J_
• *ei → *i
• *oi → *ě†
• *oi → *i†

^† In many common grammatical forms such as the nominative plural of o-stems (Schenker 2002:89), the second person imperative (Schenker 2002:103), in the second singular of athematic verbs and in the dative singular of the clitic personal pronouns, *oi became *i (Schenker 2002:90).

By this point, Proto-Slavic had the following vowel system:

Proto-Slavic was still operating under the system of syllabic synharmony; because it had a new front vowel, yat (possibly an open front vowel ), the language underwent the second regressive palatalization, in which velar consonants preceding the new (secondary) phoneme *ě (derived from *oi) were palatalized. As with the progressive palatalization, these became palatovelar. Soon after, palatovelar consonants from both the progressive palatalization and the second regressive palatalization became sibilants:

• ḱ → *c
• ǵ → *dz → *z
• x́ → *s/*š

In noun declension, the second regressive palatalization originally figured in two important Slavic stem types: o-stems (masculine and neuter consonant-stems) and a-stems (feminine and masculine vowel-stems). This rule operated in the o-stem masculine paradigm in three places: before nominative plural and both singular and plural locative affixes.