Frederik Kortlandt, Leiden University, www.kortlandt.nl

On Derksen’s law and related issues In his classic treatment of Baltic and Slavic nominal accentuation (1963), Illič-Svityč distinguishes between Indo-European barytona on the one hand and mobilia and oxytona on the other. Since there is no evidence for accentual mobility in the o-stems, the absence of a distinction between mobilia and oxytona suggests that the original accentual mobility may have been lost before the rise of the characteristic lateral mobility in Baltic and Slavic paradigms, as it was in Greek and Sanskrit at an early stage. This is indeed Olander’s position (2009). However, it appears that there are traces of earlier accentual mobility in Baltic and Slavic nominal and verba