Phonetic law versus syntactic rule: Once again on the correlation of synchrony and diachrony (a case study of passive participle accentuation in 15th-century Serbian texts)

The article explores the patterns of accentuation of past passive participles (n-participLes) in Slavic (primarily Old Serbian) texts of the 15th century. The systems of accent rules under consideration are formed as a result of the mutual superimposition of, on the one hand, etymological and, on the other hand, synchronous grammatical oppositions. While such superimposition itself often occurs in various parts of a language system in the course of its evolution, the analysis of the material in question draws attention to the diversity of factors simultaneously influencing the accentual system. The most notable finding appears to be that some originally purely etymological splits can, under certain conditions, be reinterpreted as a kind of “accentual model” for a particular grammatical position. Furthermore, one part of the linguistic system may exhibit an accentual model genetically native to a given dialect, while another part may feature a model borrowed from a different dialect.

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