________________
Phonetics and Phonemics in Historical Linguistics-II
343
between the two ways of looking at the facts is something as follows. In the phonetic analysis we consider the change of palatalisation as preceding the change of the merger of e and o, while in the phonemic analysis we find that both the changes, the split of the stop phoneme and the merger of the vowels, occur at the same time, either between stages II and III or between stages I and II according to the manner in which we choose to phonemicize the second stage. In other words, the relative chronology of the two changes gets obliterated or obscured.
The development of the Slavic languages offers us with another similar case. As far as the contrast between palatal and non-palatal consonants at the end of the word is concerned, we may distinguish three stages in the phonetic development in the Slavic group. We may set up a simplified picture of the following type : Pre-Slavic Common Slavic individual languages
[-ti] [-tu] .
[-tu] It is obvious from this picture that the development of the palatal consonants is anterior to the loss of the two jers coming from IE short vowels . *i and *u as the effect of the vowels on the previous consonants must
presuppose their presence. The relative chronology of these two changes is fairly obvious and certain.
[-]
When we phonemicize the data, we can represent it in the following manner :
/-ti/ /-tu/
/-tů/ In this analysis it is clear that both the changes become synchronous and we cannot antedate one as against the other. The contrast between the two phonemes // and /t/ is dependent on the loss of the vowel phonemes and in any case not earlier to it. It is possible to analyse the stage of the common Slavic in a slightly different manner :
7-ti/
/-ta/
/-tu/ /-ta/
/t/ Here we make the distinction between [i] and [ŭ] allophonic and that between /t/ and /t/ phonemic. But even in this analysis the two changes,