# All Slavic: Incomplete metathesis? dorga > darga/droga, mlěsti > mleko/molsti.



## bardistador

Slavic languages underwent change in which words like Karl (Charlemagne) became kráľ, kralj and król.  I'm hesitant to include East Slavic koról’ because the order of vowel-consonant did not change (or is it the first o the "a"?).

This metathesis changed words like melko (milk) to its various forms, mostly resembling mleko.  

However, this metathesis is not equal in all Slavic languages - although mleko (in its various forms: mlijeko, mlieko, mloko, mljako, etc) became CV(consonant-vowel) other words are less consistent: žьltъ > žlutý  żółty, žołty, жълт ‎(žǎlt), жолт ‎(žolt), жёлтый ‎(žóltyj) and жо́втий ‎(žóvtyj).

Sometimes there are "inconsistencies" (for lack of a better word) within a single language - Slovene has mleko for "milk" but molsti for "to milk" (from mlěsti).   Polish has another example, sól (salt), but salty is słony.   Czech has both solný and slaný meaning different things.

Kashubian has both darga and droga from (dorga).

My question is this: How complete/incomplete is the metathesis in individual Slavic languages?

To be more precise, how likely is it for an old word like darga to survive in that form?  (Survive the metathesis, not survive vowel shifts, I mean).   Wouldn't simple words like melko, dorga and gard all be transformed?  

*Are there cases where a word exists in both forms but means two different things?*  Such as darga and droga meaning two different things?   Think darga meaning "road" and droga meaning "way", something similar to Czech's solný and slaný but for nouns. 

The closest thing I have to this is Russian having both ворота and врата, with the latter being a poetic form; or враг and ворог, with the longer one being the poetic one.

Are adjective "pairs" like solný and slaný rare?  Or are they common?


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## ahvalj

The examples you bring belong to several phenomena. All of them are discussed in detail in English in _Shevelov GY · 1964 · A prehistory of Slavic: the historical phonology of Common Slavic._

(1) The modern East Slavic _el, er, ol & or_ in closed syllables go back to Old East Slavic (OES) _ьl, ьr, ъl & ъr _(and further to Common Slavic _*il, *ir, *ul & *ur_), which didn't undergo metathesis at all, i. e. the Russian _шёлк, верба, молния & горб_ originate from OES _шьлкъ, вьрба, мълнии & гърбъ._ The northern Old East Slavic dialects tended to insert the same vowel after the sonorant in these clusters, producing forms like _вьрьба & мълънии. _Some of these dialectal forms have entered the standard language (e. g. _верёвка_). In other Slavic dialects the development was more nuanced and it appears that it has passed in all or most of them (except in Polish and Cassubian ?) through the stage of syllabic sonorants.

(2) Another story is the development of the former _*el, *er, *al & *ar_ before a consonant. The original groups are preserved in some places at the Baltic coast (your Cassubian examples) and, somewhat transformed, word-initially in several Old Church Slavonic words like _алъкати_ or _алъдии_ (with _*a>ā_ and a reduced vowel developed after the sonorant). In all other cases their development involved metathesis or pleophony. Interestingly, in East Slavic there were areas (e. g. in much of the future Ukrainian territory), where the pleophonic vowel actually differed from the original one, which is testified e. g. by the lack of the development of this _o_ to _o:>i_ in closed syllables (e.g. OES _домъ>дім,_ but _морозъ>мороз_).

(3) Most of your in-language examples (except for the Cassubian pair) are not related to the incomplete metathesis. "Milk" comes from _*melka, _whereas "to milk" from _*mīlztēı̯_; by the way, the noun is a Germanic loanword (testified by _k_ and the short vowel), whereas the verb is inherited. _Sól_ comes from _solь_ (attested in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic) with two open syllables and hence no metathesis, _słony_ (Russian _солон_) comes from _*saln-_ and therefore has metathesis. The Czech _solný_ comes from _solьnъjь _(attested in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic), with four open syllables and again no metathesis. The Russian pairs come from different sources: _ворота & ворог_ are East Slavic, while_ врата & враг _are Church Slavonic (south-east Slavic).

P. S. Early Slavic loanwords in Finnic and Balkanic languages preserve non-metathesized forms, e. g. the later _толокъно_ (Common Slavic *_talkuna_) has been borrowed into Finnish as _talkkuna, _and the later _градьць _(Common Slavic *_gardiķV_) has been borrowed into Greek as _Γαρδίκι_.

P. P. S. I don't understand the attitude of this forum's moderator towards the discussions concerning the history of the Slavic languages: sometimes these are being deleted or transferred to the parallel forum. It is safer to post such questions directly there: http://forum.wordreference.com/forums/etymology-history-of-languages-and-linguistics-ehl.77


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## Karton Realista

bardistador said:


> Polish has another example, sól (salt), but salty is słony. Czech has both solný and slaný meaning different things.


Solny exists in Polish, in expression kwas solny (HCl)
Solny means of salt, słony - salty. 


bardistador said:


> Kashubian has both darga and droga from (dorga).


Kashubian in general is archaic.
It's one of the languages that has "tart" (praslavic: tort) form preserved, like gard, parmiń, darga. (t=any consonant)
Droga is a Polish loanword, for sure.
Short article (in Polish, sorry) about some specifics of Kashubian :
http://xpicto.republika.pl/slavonia/jezyki/ksz.html


bardistador said:


> I'm hesitant to include East Slavic koról’ because the order of vowel-consonant did not change (or is it the first o the "a"?).
> 
> This metathesis changed words like melko (milk) to its various forms, mostly resembling mleko.


Король is pronounced with" ka"
Молоко is also pronounced with "ma"
It's not really relevant, though. Those words are examples of shift from "TorT" form into "ToroT" (in Polish it's into "TroT").
A lot of your examples could be explained by shift in "TorT" vowel - consonant group, that was just different for some languages. In case of inconsistencies - they are probably adapted from other languages or so widely used that it had to survive the shift. There are other examples of this "surviving" of forms, like dual number in words like "oka" (oko sing., oczy plur.) or of short form of adjectives in expressions like "Bądź zdrów" (normal form zdrowy), although the dual number and short forms of adjectives don't exist in Polish. Both of those examples are used very often (oka w rosole - "eyes" in rosół- rosół is the most popular Polish soup, so therefore usage is often; "bądź zdrów" - "be healthy", used to wish somebody good health, not as an order to become healthy ) in everyday's Polish. They are also preserved in sayings, like "Mądrej głowie dość dwie słowie" (słowa - plur.). I think it's analogical with some of your examples and other similar words that you didn't mention. The intense usage may be the reason.


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## ahvalj

Karton Realista said:


> And solony - salted.


S_olony_ is a Past Passive Participle of _solić,_ attested in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic as _soļenъ _(modern Russian _солёный/solʲonyj_).



Karton Realista said:


> Король is pronounced with" ka"
> Молоко is also pronounced with "ma"


It depends on the stress position _(zóloto—bolóto—dolotó)_ and on the idiom: in Ukrainian or in north Russian dialects _o_ is always _o_.


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## Karton Realista

ahvalj said:


> It depends on the stress position _(zóloto—bolóto—dolotó)_ and on the idiom: in Ukrainian or in north Russian dialects _o_ is always _o_.


I know that, I had checked those words before in Wikipedia and they have accent on the last o.
I forgot to say that I had been talking about Russian.

And sorry for solony, I forgot that it's a 'imiesłów odczasownikowy' and not a adjective.


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## Lubella

but it is an adjective!
http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/dmitriev/5024
_Солёная морская вода _is the salty sea water NOT the salted water of the sea


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## ahvalj

Lubella said:


> but it is an adjective!
> http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/dmitriev/5024
> _Солёная морская вода _is the salty sea water NOT the salted water of the sea


_Солёный, варёный, печёный, пареный, жареный_ are used as adjectives, while being morphologically participles. In #4 I mentioned this to explain that _solony_ is the same form as OCS/OES _soļenъ_ (and not as OES_ solonъ_).


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## ahvalj

An interesting case related to the topic question are the parallel toponyms at the language boundaries. The most characteristic example in this sense is probably the city of Grodno (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grodno). Its original Yotvingian name was _*Gardina:_ in Lithuanian, which has lost the neuter gender in nouns, it has become _Gardinas_ (_ar_ remains unmetathesized), in Old East Slavic it was _Gorodьno_ (along with _Gorodьnь;_ neuter gender preserved, late Common Slavic _*a>o_ and _*i>ь,_ East Slavic pleophony), in Polish it sounds like _Grodno_ (neuter gender preserved, the weak _ь_ dropped, Polish metathesis).

The East Slavic development _*gardina>gorodьno_ is regular: e. g. the later Old East Slavic _polotьno_ (modern Russian _полотно_) sounded originally _*paltina,_ which is reflected in the early Finnish loan _palttina_ (cp. also _talkkuna_ and _Γαρδίκι _in #2). The presence of loans with _a, i, u _preserved and with no metathesis in such remote languages as Finnish and Greek (as well as in early German chronicles) suggests that Slavic preserved these features until the last two or three centuries before Cyril and Methodius (the Slavic invasion to the Balkans began in the 6th century and approximately at that time the first Slavs came into contact with Finnic speakers in what is now the north-west of Russia). More examples can be found in the book by Shevelov mentioned in #2.

*P. S. *Interestingly, speakers preserved the feeling of regular sound correspondences across the language boundaries for several centuries after the metathesis/pleophony had occurred. The Slavic name for the "king" is a classical example, but the name of the Old East Slavic _Novъgorodъ_ founded around the 9th century has been borrowed into Lithuanian as _Naugardas,_ i. e. Lithuanians at that time still were able to associate the recently formed East Slavic _årå>oro_ with their (and original Slavic) _ar. _Unlike Germanic, Lithuanian doesn't use the root _gard_- for the "town" (it preserves the original meaning "fence, enclosure, stall" there), so this was not a substitution to the Lithuanian root.


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## Karton Realista

Lubella said:


> but it is an adjective!
> http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/dmitriev/5024
> _Солёная морская вода _is the salty sea water NOT the salted water of the sea


Again, I was talking about Polish solony, not Ukrainian or whatever. 
Solona woda morska - sea water somebody added salt into, basically salted. 
Salty sea water - słona woda morska (almost never used that way, usually 1&2 or 2&3 word only).

While in grammar it behaves as an adjective, it's 'imiesłów'.


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## Lubella

Karton Realista said:


> Again, I was talking about Polish solony, not Ukrainian or whatever.
> Solona woda morska - sea water somebody added salt into, basically salted.
> Salty sea water - słona woda morska (almost never used that way, usually 1&2 or 2&3 word only).
> 
> While in grammar it behaves as an adjective, it's 'imiesłów'.


 

I was talking about  russian соленый that is a adjective
In Ukrainian we have two words, similarly as in Polish:
СОЛО́НИЙ salty
СО́ЛЕНИЙ salted past passive participle and pickled (food)
​


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## Karton Realista

Lubella said:


> I was talking about  russian соленый that is a adjective
> In Ukrainian we have two words, similarly as in Polish:
> СОЛО́НИЙ salty
> СО́ЛЕНИЙ salted past passive participle and pickled (food)
> ​


Out of curiosity, do you have the third form, for HCl (hydrochloric acid), like Polish "solny"?


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## ahvalj

The Russian situation with these _sol_-words is as follows:

the adjective long form is _солёный/solʲónyj_ — which goes back to the Past Passive participle and is cognate to _солений & solony;_
the adjective short form is _со́лон/sólon_ — which goes back to the old adjective and is cognate to _солоний & słony_ and is the only form here that shows pleophony;
the Past Passive participle from _соли́ть/solʲítʲ_ doesn't form, since such participles aren't formed as a rule from Imperfective verbs, but in principle it is **_со́ленный/sólʲennyj_ (cp. the Perfective _посо́ленный/posólʲennyj_);

the cognate of _solny_ has been lost (it is attested in the old texts), but a new adjective has developed, with two accentual variants, _соляно́й/solʲanój_ & _соля́ный/solʲányj;_ the acid is _соля́ная кислота́ / solʲánaja kislotá_ vs. e. g. _соляна́я я́ма / solʲanája jáma;
_
there is another adjective,_ солево́й/solʲevój, _e. g. _солево́й раство́р/solʲevój rastvór._


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## ilocas2

the name of town *Karviná* in Czech Silesia



> Jméno Karviná je odvozeno od základu _karv-_, který je na českém území v této podobě unikátní (nejbližší srovnatelná podoba je severopolské nářeční _karv_, „vůl“). Podoba _karv-_ z praslovanského _*korv-_ („kráva“) je starobylý hláskový relikt. Přípona může být chápána buď jako _-ina_, pak by původní slovo bylo _karvina_ („místo, kde se pasou krávy“) a mělo by se vlastně psát s krátkým _a_ (_Karvina_). Druhá možnost je, že přípona byla původně _-inná_, pak by jméno znamenalo „karvinná louka“ (tedy kraví pastvina) a správný dnešní zápis by měl být _Karvinná_.


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## Karton Realista

ahvalj said:


> The Russian situation with these _sol_-words is as follows:
> 
> the adjective long form is _солёный/solʲónyj_ — which goes back to the Past Passive participle and is cognate to _солений & solony;_
> the adjective short form is _со́лон/sólon_ — which goes back to the old adjective and is cognate to _солоний & słony_ and is the only form here that shows pleophony;
> the Past Passive participle from _соли́ть/solʲítʲ_ doesn't form, since such participles aren't formed as a rule from Imperfective verbs, but in principle it is **_со́ленный/sólʲennyj_ (cp. the Perfective _посо́ленный/posólʲennyj_);
> 
> the cognate of _solny_ has been lost (it is attested in the old texts), but a new adjective has developed, with two accentual variants, _соляно́й/solʲanój_ & _соля́ный/solʲányj;_ the acid is _соля́ная кислота́ / solʲánaja kislotá_ vs. e. g. _соляна́я я́ма / solʲanája jáma;
> _
> there is another adjective,_ солево́й/solʲevój, _e. g. _солево́й раство́р/solʲevój rastvór._


Thanks


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## ahvalj

_Karwin_ is also attested in Poland:
http://www.karwin.szczecin.lasy.gov.pl (north-west)
http://www.ziemialubuska.pl/1197,1164,,.html (east)

Its presence in the east and south (Czechia) is strange, though. Could it be that both were founded by settlers from the Polish north?

P. S. The reconstructed forms like *_korva_ are just Slavists' conventions going back to the 19th century: it appears that they didn't exist in reality, since the Common Slavic forms like *_karu̯ā_ developed independently into the attested later Slavic forms. Words with _ar_ or _al_ are attested in old chronicles, whereas forms with _or_ or _ol_ seem to be absent (at least I have never read about them). Likewise, loanwords into nearby languages either show non-metathesized original _ar_ and _al_ or already the final _ra~ro~oro_ _(ara)_ and _la~lo~olo (ala).
_
I'll cite here several more Finnish loanwords from Early East Slavic, taken from Shevelov's book (p. 415): _taltta (*dalta>doloto), varpu(nen) (*u̯arb->vorobьjь), värttinä (*u̯ertena>vereteno), karsta (*karstā>korosta). _


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## Karton Realista

ahvalj said:


> _Karwin_ is also attested in Poland:
> http://www.karwin.szczecin.lasy.gov.pl (north-west)
> http://www.ziemialubuska.pl/1197,1164,,.html (east)
> 
> Its presence in the east and south (Czechia) is strange, though. Could it be that both were founded by settlers from the Polish north?


The east one surprised me - I would suspect TarT group (typical to Kashubian) in the north - west, where Kashubian dialects have been used really often in the past. Maybe it was, as you say, due to migration, who knows?
From Kashubian :
Karwa - cow.


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## Lubella

Karton Realista said:


> Out of curiosity, do you have the third form, for HCl (hydrochloric acid), like Polish "solny"?


 
yes, adjective соляний HCl  соляна кислота


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