De Saussure’s law normally denotes a progressive accentual shift from a nonacute to an acute syllable in various interpretations of historical Schools of Balto-Slavic Accentology – cf. Li *blùsā (with the first syllable short/circumflex and the second acute) > *blusā́ (with the final syllable accented and acute), which is later shortened to the attested blusà ‘flea’ by Leskien’s law.

In pre-Stangian accentology (and still today in some nonmainstream approaches to Balto-Slavic accentology that reject Stang), de S…