Why Does PGmc *smalaz (from PIE *(s)mal-) have "a" (not "o")?
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4Why should it have *o? Long PIE *ā (usually < eh2) becomes PG *ō, but short *a generally remains *a.– Janus Bahs JacquetApr 12, 2022 at 8:33
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@JanusBahsJacquet Why Does Proto-Slavic have long ā malъ?– Фёдор ЛюбовApr 12, 2022 at 9:04
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1That’s a much better question – not one I’m sure anyone knows the answer to (but I’m not a Slavicist!). Derksen chooses to reconstruct a root *(s)meh₁- with a (presumably diminutive) -lo suffix. He posits o-grade for the Sl. form, and e-grade for Gk μῆλον and OIr míl, but zero-grade for Gmc… which of course doesn’t work, because *sm̥h₁-lo- would become **sumla. Others have argued that the root is *(s)melH-, which works for Gmc, but less so for Gk and OIr, and not for Sl. at all. Perhaps they’re from separate roots, or perhaps there was a metathesis in Gmc…– Janus Bahs JacquetApr 12, 2022 at 9:18
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1@JanusBahsJacquet zero-grade smh̥1-lo would give the correct Germanic reflex, and it's more typical for the coda of the root to become syllabic in zero-grades– TristanApr 12, 2022 at 9:42
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1that said, the reconstruction of this particular root is definitely problematic– TristanApr 12, 2022 at 9:43
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1 Answer
Proto-Germanic lacked a robust distinction between the *o & *a vowel qualities.
At an early stage, the two qualities merged, with the short phoneme always being reflected as *a, and the long & overlong phonemes always as *ō and *ô. Later a new *ā developed from earlier *aja sequences, and borrowings, but it was quite restricted.
