Reconstruction talk:Proto-Slavic/stьklo

@Guldrelokk: I wrote that Ukrainian скло (sklo) is a borrowing from Polish szkło, but there also exists Ukrainian шкло (šklo), which looks like a closer match. Was I mistaken? Could скло (sklo) be borrowed from Slovak sklo? In any case, it's not directly inherited from Proto-Slavic (native Ukrainian would be стікло (stiklo)?), right? Per utramque cavernam 15:24, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

By the way, I hope I'm not bothering you with all my pings. You're a real puits de science, (a “knowledge well”, as we say in French), I'm always interested in learning more from you, and I'm truly grateful for our fruitful exchanges. If you don't mind my asking, are you a linguist by trade? Per utramque cavernam 15:29, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam: Ukrainian скло, Russian dialectal скло are regular outcomes of Old East Slavic стькло < Slav. *stьklo̍.

The -е- of Russian стекло́ has been restored in order to break up a tricky consonant cluster and avoid the extreme alternation скло ~ стёкол resulting from its simplification. This tendency is to different degrees common to all Slavic languages, being extremely pronounced in South Slavic (where some forms are occasionally speculated to have a phonetic origin), and least so in Polish which ended up barely pronounceable.

Furthermore, in the plural of a. p. b nouns (expect most masculine nouns, which got rid of the endingless genitive instead; and a few obscure dialects that do preserve the type жены́/села́) accent on the last syllable of the stem has been generalised from the genitive plural, which required a vowel. Thus, just as ребра́ ~ ре́беръ (< Slav. *rebra̍ ~ *rèbrъ) was replaced with ре́бра ~ ре́беръ, скла ~ сте́колъ was replaced with сте́кла ~ сте́колъ. This is the origin of the Ukrainian paradigm: sing. скло, скла ~ pl. сте́кла, сте́кол, which should be thought as the intermediate step in Russian before levelling the stem стекл- to the singular as well.

Further Russian examples of ‘vocalisation’ of weak yers are доска́ (dialectal цка), де́бри (place name Брянск < Дьбряньскъ), тёща (old тща) and many others. I remember seeing a collection of examples somewhere in Zaliznyak’s articles.

Belorussian and Ukrainian шкло must have gotten its ш- from Polish, where regularly szkło < śkło < śćkło (compare żbik < zdbik [źd͡źb́ik] < *stьbl-). Guldrelokk (talk) 05:10, 20 January 2019 (UTC)