The Slovene neo-circumflex revisited

• Main Author: Frederik Kortlandt
• Format: Article
• Language: Croatian
• Published: Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje 2012-01-01
• Series: Rasprave: Časopis Instituta za Hrvatski Jezik i Jezikoslovlje
• Subjects: accentuation; Slovene neo-cirkumflex; acute; compensatory lengthening; van Wijk's law; Dybo's law
• Online Access: http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/142485

Keith Langston disagrees with my account of the Slovene neo-circumflex. He rejects compensatory lengthening as an explanation of the neo-circumflex, primarily on theoretical grounds. His "moraic analysis" is quite unacceptable to me because it starts from an a priori segmentation of the speech flow. In a strict autosegmental approach, the segmentation of the speech flow should be part of the analysis and not be given a priori. Langston's rejection of van Wijk's law, according to which the simplification of certain consonant clusters yielded lengthening of the following vowel, is based on a misguided theoretical interpretation which led him astray.