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Stang’s law (more rarely called Ivšić’s law) is the supposed retraction of the long internal circumflex in Common Slavic that, according to many accentologists of the post-Stang era, accounts for most neo-acute stem-stressed forms in accentual paradigm b (a.p. b). Thus, attested a.p. b forms like present * mõltite ‘you thresh-2.pl’ and * p ò pěx ъ ‘priests-loc.pl’ (see “Accentology”) would originate in preforms like * moltîte, * popě̂xъ.Ivšić (1911: 169–170, 177–182) was the first one to propose a retractional nature of the Slavic neo-acute in forms like * mõltite. However, it was …

forthcomingMate Kapović

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 Saussure’s law was often taken to operat…

Dybo’s law is a name given to a rightward accentual shift that occurs in Proto-Slavic accentual paradigm b or in nonacute accentual paradigm a (a.p. a; see Slavic accentology), where the original *ˋ and *˜ (nonacute prosodemes in immobile accentual paradigm; “dominant circumflexes” in the terminology of the Moscow accentological school) shift to the next syllable (the recessive circumflexes, *  ̏ and *  ̑, which are phonologically unstressed, do not shift, nor does the old acute *˝), e.g., * bòba ‘bean-gen.sg’ > * boba̍. The law is named after the two great Russian accentolo…

Slavic accentology concerns the synchronic and diachronic aspects of Slavic accentual (word-prosody) systems – from accentual systems in modern Slavic languages and dialects to the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic accentual system. Among Indo-European languages, Slavic (and Balto-Slavic) historical accentology is known for its complexity.Modern Slavic accentual systemsThe accentual (word-prosody) systems of modern Slavic languages are rather diverse – western South Slavic languages (Slovene, BCMS) have pitch accent (limited-tone accent)…

In Slavic, there is a general tendency for newly arisen noninitial falling accents (called neo-circumflex) to retract to a preceding syllable with the neo-acute as the result on newly stressed syllables. For the most known, but also the most questionable, of such retractions see Stang’s law. The dialectal Common Slavic post-contractional retraction of the 2sg present * stǫpa̋ješь ‘you tread’ > * stǫpa̋ešь > * stǫpâšь > * stǫ̃pašь (Cr dial. stũpāš, Sk stúpaš, Po stąpasz) type (after a long pretonic syllable) is well known. In Štokavian and Čakavian, neo-circumflex ret…