Pedersen's law, named after the Danish linguist
Holger Pedersen, is a law of accentuation in
Balto-Slavic
The Balto-Slavic languages form a branch of the Indo-European family of languages, traditionally comprising the Baltic and Slavic languages. Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European bran ...
languages which states that the stress was retracted from stressed medial syllables in
paradigms with mobile accent.
It was originally proposed by
Ferdinand de Saussure for Baltic to explain forms such as Lithuanian ''dùkterį'', ''dùkteres'' (cp. Ancient Greek ''thugatéra'', ''thugatéres''), but was later generalized in 1933 to Balto-Slavic by Pedersen, who then assumed that accentual mobility spread from the consonant-stems to Balto-Slavic ''eh₂''-stems and ''o''-stems.
The term "Pedersen's law" is also applied to later Common Slavic developments in which the stress retraction to prefixes/proclitics can be traced in mobile paradigms, such as Russian ''ná vodu'' 'onto the water', ''né byl'' 'was not', ''pródal'' 'sold', and ''póvod'' 'rein'.
Proto-Indo-European *
''dʰugh₂tḗr'' 'daughter', with accusative singular * (Ancient Greek
''thugátēr'', acc. sg.
''thugatéra'') > Lithuanian ''duktė̃'', acc. sg. ''dùkterį''.
Proto-Indo-European *''poh₂imń̥'' ~ *''poh₂imén'' 'shepherd' (Ancient Greek
''poimḗn'', accusative singular ''poiména'') > Lithuanian ''piemuõ'', acc. sg. ''píemenį''.
Proto-Indo-European *''gʰolHwéh₂'' with Balto-Slavic semantics of 'head' > Lithuanian ''galvà'' (with accusative singular ''gálvą''), Russian
''golová'' (acc. sg. ''gólovu''), Chakavian ''glāvȁ'' (acc. sg. ''glȃvu'').
Within the relative chronology of Balto-Slavic sound changes, this law was, in its first occurrence in the Balto-Slavic period, posterior to the loss of Proto-Indo-European accentual mobility (i.e. later than the advent of Balto-Slavic mobile paradigms, such as the above-mentioned Lithuanian ''duktė̃'', as opposed to non-final stress in Ancient Greek etymons), so its application was originally limited to the inflection of polysyllabic consonant stems.
Later the retraction of stress spread by analogy to non-consonant stems in case-forms where Pedersen's law applied (commonly termed "
barytonesis"). Thus we have accusative singular forms of Lithuanian ''ãvį'' 'sheep', ''sū́nų'' 'son', ''diẽvą'' 'god', ''žiẽmą'' 'winter'. Afterwards oxytonesis,
Hirt's law
Hirt's law or Hirt–Illich-Svitych's law, named after Hermann Hirt, who originally postulated it in 1895, is a Balto-Slavic sound law that triggered the retraction of the accent (or metatony in the valence theory) under certain conditions.
Over ...
, and
Winter's law
Winter's law, named after Werner Winter, who postulated it in 1978, is a proposed sound law operating on Balto-Slavic short vowels */e/, */o/, */a/ ( Proto-Balto-Slavic ''*sēˀstei'' (''*sēˀd-tei'') > Lithuanian ''sė́sti'', OCS '' sěsti'' ...
applied.
References
* Pedersen, Holger. 1933. ''Études lituaniennes.'' København: Levin & Munksgaard.
* Kortlandt, Frederik. 1975
''Slavic Accentuation - A Study in Relative Chronology''
Balto-Slavic languages
Sound laws
Stress (linguistics)
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