Proto-Slavic *j, Van Wijk’s Law, and ē-Stems

The loss and restoration of the phoneme /j/ plays a major role in the development of Proto-Slavic. After vowel contraction in posttonic syllables, Dybo’s law, and the rise of new /j/ in east, South, and West Slavic, contracted and uncontracted forms may have coexisted during a considerable period of time. After Dybo’s law we have *voļȃ *vòlja ‘will’ but *rolьjà *orlь̀ja ‘plowland’, after contraction *roļá in Slovincian rolåu, Old Polish rolå. The loss of distinctive tone yielded merger of the two paradigms, as a result of which most nouns of the former type adopted the accentuation of the latter. Slavic deverbal ja-stems are original proterodynamic ī/jē-stems. The proterodynamic nouns *dūšà (c) ‘soul’ and *zorjà (c) ‘dawn’ have probably preserved the original accentuation. The other proterodynamic jā-stems evidently adopted the accent pattern of the deverbal ā-stems