Re: This must be Bulgarian (audiobook?) -- Russian title is: Гёдель, Ешер, Бах

On 19/05/2024 6:17 a.m., Christian Weisgerber wrote:

On 2024-05-18, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
 

I'm remembering, without consulting any books, but I think there is no
actual palatalization before (historic) a,o,u, as one might expect.
The Russian я following palatalized consonant comes from the front nasal
vowel *ę;

 There are other sources of я.  Just looking at two feminines on -я:
неделя ‘week’ < PSl. *neděľa
заря ‘dawn, dusk’ < PSl. *zořa

I don't doubt there are other sources. These two look to me as though they both have a *-ja suffix.
My point was that the palatalization process which produced the largest number of palatalized C's in modern Russian applied only before front vowels. The palatalized C's before a-o-u have other origins.

and unless I'm mistaken ю only represents /ju/ in native
Slavic words

 любить ‘to love’ < PSl. *ľubiti
 Proto-Slavic already had a number of palatalized consonants, most
easily traceable ň, ľ, ř.  Those later merged with the newly
palatalized consonants before front vowels.
 So there are clearly native examples of Cʲa and Cʲu.  The lack of
Cʲo is curious.  Leaving aside the later development of ё, Russian
morphology shows an alternation between Cʲe and Co.  I don't know
what to make of that.
 Huh, it seems to have been as simple as fronting o > e after
palatal consonants:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Slavic_language#Alternations
 

This could be related to the fact that the Russian
vowels have fronted allophones after (ё) or between (ю) palatalized
consonants.

>
Yes, this is a better reason for using ё and ю. It also accounts for the
Bulgarians using ьо /jo/. (Found another example: шофьор 'driver'.)

 You keep writing /jo/, but there is no /j/. Шофьор is /ʃoˈfʲɔr/.
When an actual /j/ is needed, Bulgarian resorts to й:
Jörg Haider > Йорг Хайдер
yo-yo > йо-йо

My impression from Wikipedia was that the Bulgarians could not agree on whether /Cj/ or /C'/ was the correct analysis (for the standard language).

Russian also tends to use йо over ё in such contexts.