Ivšić's law

Ivšić's law is a Common Slavic accent law named after Croatian accentologist Stjepan Ivšić.

According to the law, the accent was retracted from the word-final yers onto the preceding syllable. That syllable gained rising accent ("Slavic neoacute").^[1] Compare:

• PSl. *pirstù > Common Slavic *pьrstъ̀ > *pь́rstъ (Čakavian pr̃st, Russian pérst, N pl perstí)

In conservative Croatian dialects of Čakavian and partly Štokavian (e.g. Slavonian) this neoacute is preserved as special tone in long syllable, and is marked with a tilde.

Retraction also occurred if Proto-Slavic accent (but not acute) was carried by a secondarily lengthened syllable, e.g. on verbs in *-iti. Compare:

• PSl. *maltèj > Common Slavic *moltì > (Ivšić's law) *mol̃ti > Russian molótit, Čakavian mlãti

Also, Ivšić's law explains the acute on nouns such as sũša (Slavonian Štokavian speeches), vȍlja (with shortened neoacute).

Borrowings from other languages show that Ivšić's law operated after Dybo's law. Compare:

• PSl. *kàrlu 'king' (originally the name of Charlemagne) > (Dybo's law) *karlù > (Ivšić's law) *kãrlu > Čakavian Croatian krãlj.

Standard Štokavian Croatian has merged the reflex of neoacute with the reflex of Proto-Slavic circumflex, i.e. the long falling accent (cf. standard Croatian krȃlj), but the neoacute has still been preserved as a distinct prosodical feature in Čakavian and Old Štokavian (e.g. Posavian) speeches.

Notes

1. ^ Matasović 2008:168

References

• Ranko Matasović (2008) (in Croatian). Poredbenopovijesna gramatika hrvatskoga jezika. Zagreb: Matica hrvatska. ISBN 978-953-150-840-7. 
• Stjepan Ivšić (1911). Prilog za slavenski akcenat (in Croatian). Rad JAZU:187/1911