On the Slavic Word for ‘Morning’: *(j)u(s)tro

Abstract

The history of the Slavic word for ‘morning’ constitutes an old problem of Slavic etymology. Forms such as OCS utro, Cr jȕtro, R утро, Cz jitro ‘morning’ as well as the adverb OCS zaustra ‘in the morning’, Bg зáстра etc. certainly continue the root PIE *h2eu̯s- ‘(morgens) hell werden’. Consequently, an explanation of the attested forms needs to account for the following three issues: (1) the loss of the root final sibilant in most of the Slavic forms; (2) the acute tone on the root syllable; (3) the presence of a word-initial glide j in some Slavic languages. The present article deals with these problems. By starting from a holokinetic r-stem both the loss of the root final sibilant as well as the acute tone on the root syllable are explained as resulting from contamination of different stem or root variants respectively. The occurrence of a word initial glide, on the other hand, is explained by a transfer within syntagmatic expressions. One of the advantages of the proposed scenario is that all the posited changes may be paralleled by developments elsewhere in Slavic or Indo-European.