Slavic Liquid Metathesis and Pleophony - Law of Open Syllables

During the Common Slavic period, a tendency known as the law of open syllables created the series of changes that completely eliminated closed syllables. This was evident in OCS, which had no closed syllables at all. Some of these changes include the monophthongization of diphthongs, loss of word-final consonants (e.g. 3rd person singular aorist OCS reče < *reket, OCS N sg of o-stems -ъ < *-us etc.), simplification of some medial consonant clusters (e.g. OCS tonǫti < *topnǫti etc.) and the formation of the nasal vowels *ǫ and *ę from *am/*an and *em/*en respectively.

Another change involved liquid consonants (R) *l or *r in closed-syllable *eRC and *aRC clusters, which were eliminated. The application of the law of open syllables for such clusters differed amongst the already differentiated Slavic dialects, but characteristically manifested in a number of dialects as the metathesis of liquid consonants, and is therefore called the liquid metathesis.

Read more about this topic:  Slavic Liquid Metathesis And Pleophony

Famous quotes containing the words law of, law, open and/or syllables:

    The greatest step forward would be to see that everything factual is already theory. The blueness of the sky reveals the basic law of chromatics. Don’t look for anything behind the phenomena, they themselves are the doctrine.
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)

    The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom.
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)

    Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead
    Again again with its pointless sound
    When the moon finds them they are the color of everything
    William Stanley Merwin (b. 1927)

    I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
    And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
    And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for
    her.
    Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)