The Western South Slavic Contrast Sn. sah-ni-ti // SC sah-nu-ti

Abstract

The paper reexamines the traditional explanation for the "idiosyncratic development'' of the Common Slavic Class II verbs with the aorist and/or infinitive suffix -nǫ-, attested in OCS sъxnǫti 'dry', P schnąć, R soxnut', SC sahnuti, but in Slovenian as sahniti. The peculiarity that gave rise to this development in Slovenian is generally thought to be simple analogy with the Class IV verbs, e.g., braniti 'defend'. In the course of this reexamination, the author shows how the "idiosyncratic development," once restated, fits in with data from other Slavic languages. Rather than proceeding from the assumption that the -nǫ type was replaced by -ni-, the author demonstrates that it is reasonable to depart from a Common Slavic dialect difference -nǫ// -ny (< Early Common Slavic innovative *-nū-n// archaic *-nū -), which probably had its origin in the period before the Slavic Migrations. These by-forms could thus have given rise to the variation that is found in the modern Slavic dialects. This variation was transported with the Slavs who colonized the Western South Slavic and West Slavic territories in the 400—700s and in turn gave rise to sociolinguistic competition between the alternatives in the following centuries. These findings are shown to correlate well with recent advances in the identification of the major routes of migration taken by the Slavs, which progressed up the Danube, into Pannonia and Noricum, up the Morava to Upper Silesia, across the Bohemian Basin and through the Elbe River Gorge to the Ore Mountains in Upper Lusatia; then beyond, down the Elbe to the eastern border regions of the later principality of Hannover and along the banks of the lower Elbe. Working back from these routes, the author suggests that the Early Common Slavic *-nū forms may have characterized dialects somewhere in the present-day East Slavic language area, probably a relatively small region long since repopulated with speakers of *-nǫ dialects.