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The prehistory of the Baltic preterit system has a few major problems. It has two preterit formations, ā-preterit and ē-preterit:

1. ā-preterit: 3sg./pl. Lith. pir̃ko, Latv. pirka '(he/she/they) bought' < Proto-Baltic (PB) *pirk-ā
2. ē-preterit: 3sg./pl. Lith. mìrė, OLatv. mire '(he/she/they) died' < PB *mir-ē

However, the exact distribution is still unclear, and the origin of ē-preterit is not clarified yet. In addition, the ē-preterit has an etymologically enigmatic category, long vowel preterit, which is characterized with the long vowel root. This proposed project will examine the distribution of the long vowel preterit. It has been an issue how the long vowel was introduced to the long vowel preterit forms, while there are ē-preterit forms with short root vowel as well. It has been proposed that he lengthened root vowels were introduced through Stang-Larsson’s rule, according to which a vowel (V) was lengthened and received a circumflex tone in a sequence *-V-íya- where the accent was retracted to -V- from the originally accented -í- (e.g., Proto-Baltic *beríyā > *bē̃rē > Lith. bė̃rė with the circumflex tone on the root). However, this hypothesis works out only if the suffix is accented, although the input *-iyā- is a Sievers-Edgerton’s disyllabic variant that occurs under unaccented environment after a heavy syllable. An examination of the interaction of the position of the accent and Sievers-Edgerton’s variants of the suffix *-(i)yā- will enable us to analyze in more detail the distribution of the e-preterit forms that have or do not have the lengthened root vowel.

• October 20th 2017
  "A revisit to the origin of the root vocalism of Lith. dãvė / dẽvė 'gave'" Kalbų ir Tarmių Transformacijos, Lietuvių Kalbos Institutas.

• "The root vocalism of Lith. dãvė / dial. dẽvė 'gave' revisited." In: Catt, Adam Alvah, Ronald I. Kim, and Brent Vine (eds.) QAZZU warrai, 2019, pp. 410–419, Beech Stave Press.