The dark past of Balto-Slavic prosody: On Jay Jasanoff's book The prehistory of the Balto-Slavic accent

The relationship between the prosodic systems of Vedic Sanskrit and Ancient Greek on the one hand and those of the Baltic and Slavic languages on the other is among the more complicated questions of Indo-European comparative linguistics. A recent book by Jay Jasanoff examines the question in detail and presents a framework for interpreting it historically. Jasanoff assumes, uncontroversially, that Proto-Indo-European had a prosodic system similar to that of Vedic and Greek. In order to derive the attested Baltic and Slavic prosodic systems from that of Proto-Indo-European he proposes a combination of phonological changes and analogical restructurings. The present study discusses the main ideas proposed in the book, subjecting them to a detailed criticism.