linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, metatony refers to the change of nature of accent (its intonation, or tone), usually within the same

syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

. When the accent also changes its syllable, the process is called metataxis. Metataxis can also be analyzed as a combination of accent movement and metatony. The term is usually used when referring to accentual developments in the history of

Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages *Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originatin ...

and

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

which exhibited numerous such developments, representing the accentual equivalent of

sound change In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...

Slavic metatony

South Slavic languages The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches (West Slavic la ...

(

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...

and Slovene) Proto-Slavic old acute accent ⟨ő⟩ was shortened. Its direct reflex is the short falling accent ⟨ȍ⟩ in standard Serbo-Croatian, whereas standard Slovene has long rising accent ⟨ó⟩ with younger length. * Common Slavic *bra̋trъ "brother" > Serbo-Croatian ''brȁt''/бра̏т, Slovene ''bràt'' In all Serbo-Croatian and Slovene dialects, in nominative singular of o- and i-stems the stem-final syllable of accent paradigm ''c'' words is lengthened. For monsyllabics this amounts to lengthening of short circumflex accent ⟨ȍ⟩ to long circumflex ⟨ȏ⟩: * Common Slavic *bȍgъ "god" > Serbo-Croatian ''bȏg''/бо̑г, Slovene ''bóg''

Slavic metataxis

During the

Proto-Slavic Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium BC through the 6th ...

period the so-called neoacute accent was created by accent retraction owing to the reduction and ultimately loss of weak yers. There were two forms - ⟨ò⟩ the ''short neoacute'', and ⟨õ⟩ the ''long neoacute''. Short and long neoacute are traditionally marked with two different symbols, even though we're dealing with the same prosodeme on short and long vowels, respectively. Neoacute is traditionally reconstructed as a rising intonation on the basis of Slovene and Russian, and the description of dialectal Serbo-Croatian ( Chakavian) ⟨õ⟩ as a rising tone. Short neoacute has a distinct reflex in Slovak and some Russian dialects.

Baltic metatony

In Aukštaitian Lithuanian dialects a metatony occurred as a reflex of

Balto-Slavic The Balto-Slavic languages form a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family of languages, traditionally comprising the Baltic languages, Baltic and Slavic languages. Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits ...

acute accent which is generally assumed to be a rising tone, and which was changed to a falling tone in Lithuanian. The new accent is also marked with an

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...

mark, but its nature has changed from rising to falling. This change, usually called Lithuanian metatony, is absent in Žemaitian dialects of Lithuanian where Balto-Slavic accented acute is reflected as a broken tone.

Notes

References

* * {{citation , title=Metatony in Baltic , first=Rick , last=Derksen , author-link=Rick Derksen , year=1996 , location=Amsterdam-Atlanta , publisher=Rodopi Stress (linguistics) Prosody (linguistics) Sound changes