Talk:tśmjeń

Etymology

@Mahagaja Are we sure of that Proto-Slavic reconstruction? The East Slavic words don't exhibit pleophony; I suppose they could have been borrowed from OCS, but then {{R:ru:Vasmer|стре́мя}} doesn't say so. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 20:36, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam: I think I just got it from Appendix:List of Proto-Slavic nouns/Agriculture and crafts. Muka reconstructs it as *strьmenь, *strъmenь. Quite apart from the first syllable, it doesn't look like one unique reconstruction can account for all the modern forms anyway, since Slovene streme, Bulgarian стреме, Polish strzemię, Belarusian стрэ́мя, and Russian стре́мя all suggest a neuter noun in *-mę, while Serbo-Croatian strȅmēn, Czech třmen, Slovak strmeň, Upper Sorbian třmjeń, and Lower Sorbian tśmjeń all suggest a masculine noun in *-menь, and Ukrainian стре́мено (strémeno) suggests something else again. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 20:48, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: I think Ukrainian стре́мено (strémeno) could be analogical from the plural (apparently, that's what happened with *ormę). But yes, that doesn't explain everything. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 20:53, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

@Guldrelokk, do you have an opinion on this? --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 18:47, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I believe it should be *stremę, nothing else accounts for most of the forms, not only the East Slavic ones. The term isn’t even attested in OCS (sure, attestations might not have survived, but there is no ground to suspect a borrowing in the first place). *-men- nouns switch gender very often by natural levelling. Guldrelokk (talk) 20:43, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Then what caused the apparent change of e to a yer (or of re to syllabic r) in the first syllable in Czecho-Slovako-Sorbian? —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 08:57, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

On the other hand, the South Slavic forms point to *e (not *ě, which would be apparent in Ikavian Serbo-Croatian, so a metathesis is also excluded). The East Slavic ones can come from either, but Polish is very reliable in dropping weak yers, and it too points to *e. I do not know much about either Czech or Sorbian historical phonology, except that it is very complicated, but seeing how Czech authors reconstruct *stremę I want to believe they now what they are doing. *bresti too gets its syllabic r from somewhere in the same languages. May be both *stremę and *strьmę should be listed? Guldrelokk (talk) 17:16, 20 April 2018 (UTC)