Reconstruction talk:Proto-Slavic/tolkti
Eastern Slavic specific phonological change
[edit]@ZomBear: This *tolkti is likely a quite late pronunciation, specific for East Slavic. I wouldn't reconstruct it on a proto-Slavic level. In East Slavic, in general pSl. *-el-/*-ьl- became buccalized in closed environment, before a hard syllable. That's why one encounters Old East Slavic молоко (moloko), волк (volk) instead of expected **мелеко, *велк. In principle, here the following syllable eventually becomes soft and perhaps for this reason Melnychuk gives *tolkti.
From a comparative perspective, this *tolkti is rather dubious. O-grade stem-verbs are possible (cf. *kolti, *borti) but they are rarely ablauting. Alternation between 0- and o-grade occurs only in *zъvati and it is most likely а result of phonological change (earlier heterosyllabic *-e|v- > *-o|v- before a back vowel + generalization).
On this account, I would keep *telkti as the original and *tolkti only as an intermediate stage from Proto-Slavic to Old East Slavic and onwards.
PS Of the proposed descendants, only Ukrainian толокти (tolokty) and the omitted Russian толочь (toločʹ) actually reflect full grade in the infinitive. The remaining descendants point instead towards 0-grade *tьlkti. Безименен (talk) 09:37, 14 May 2023 (UTC)