Disertacijoje aprašoma prūsų kalbos kirčiavimo sistema, galimà atsekti iš šaltinių (visų pirma III prūsų kalbos katekizmo, teikiančio daugiausia akcentologijos duomenų) rašybos. Siekiama atkurti kiek įmanoma išsamesnį sinchroninį sistemos vaizdą ir nustatyti galimas diachronines jos raidos tendencijas. Kritiškai įvertinus visas iki šiol paskelbtas prūsų kalbos akcentologijos ir akcentografijos teorijas, pirmajame tyrimo etape apibrėžiami kirčiuoto skiemens nustatymo iš šaltinių rašybos principai, įvertinamas tokių mokslinėje literatūroje prūsų kalbai postuluojamų reiškinių kaip Saussure'o-Fortunatovo ar Kortlandto dėsniai realumas. Kirčiavimo sistemos analizėje, laikantis morfologinės akcentologijos principų, nustatomos kirčiavimą lemiančios paliudytų prūsų kalbos žodžių morfemų akcentinės savybės, žodžiai klasifikuojami į akcentines paradigmas, analizuojamas kirčio vaidmuo žodžių daryboje. Sinchroniniais metodais atkurta sistema nuosekliai lyginama su giminiškų kalbų (visų pirma lietuvių ir slavų) kirčiavimo sistemomis, konstatuojami jų sutapimai ir motyvuojami skirtumai. / The dissertation contains a description of the accentual system of Old Prussian as evidenced by the orthography of Prussian written monuments, particularly that of the Third Catechism (which abounds the most in accentological data). An attempt is made to reconstruct, as comprehensively as possible, the synchronic state of the accentual system in question, as well as to identify any possible trends in its diachronic development. At the first stage of research, upon a critical examination of all the theories dealing with Old Prussian accentology and accentography published to date, the methods of identifying the stressed syllable based on the orthography of the written monuments are outlined. The validity of Saussure-Fortunatov’s and Kortlandt’s laws, which have been postulated in the scholarly literature on Old Prussian, is subjected to a re-evaluation. Then, an analysis of the accentual system is undertaken, in adherence to the principles of morphological accentology, in order to determine the accentual properties of the Old Prussian morphemes conditioning the stress of the attested words, as well as to classify the words by accentual paradigm and to elucidate the role of stress in word-formation. This reconstructed synchronic system is then thoroughly confronted with those of the related languages (primarily Lithuanian and Slavic) to demonstrate the correspondences and to account for the discrepancies between them.

In der Dissertation wird das altpreußische Akzentsystem, das von der Orthographie der Sprachdenkmäler (zuallererst des 3. Katechismus) indirekt dargestellt wird, beschrieben. Das Ziel der Untersuchung ist eine ausführliche (insoweit das dürftig belegte Material eine Beurteilung zulässt) Rekonstruktion des synchronischen Zustands des apr. Akzentsystems und Feststellung möglicher Entwicklungstendenzen des Systems. Nach der kritischen Übersicht über alle bisherigen Theorien zur apr. Akzentologie und Akzentographie werden im ersten Schritt der Untersuchung die Prinzipien, nach denen betonte Silben der belegten Wörter anhand der Orthographie der Texte identifiziert werden können, bestimmt, auch wird die Realität der in früherer Literatur für das Altpreußische postulierten Akzentverschiebungsgesetze (z.B. Gesetz von Saussure-Fortunatov, Gesetz von Kortlandt u.a.) diskutiert. Die Hauptaspekte der nach den Prinzipien der morphologischen Akzentologiekonzeption vorgenommenen Untersuchung des Akzentsystems sind Feststellung der Akzenteigenschaften der Morpheme, welche die Akzentuierung flektierbarer Wörter bestimmen, Klassifizierung der belegten Wörter nach Akzentparadigmen und Analyse der Rolle des Akzents bei der Wortbildung. Das durch synchronische Untersuchung beschriebene System wird mit Systemen der verwandten Sprachen (zuallererst des Litauischen und der slavischen Sprachen) verglichen, ihre Übereinstimmungen werden konstatiert und Unterschiede werden erklärt. / Disertacijoje aprašoma prūsų kalbos kirčiavimo sistema, galimà atsekti iš šaltinių (visų pirma III prūsų kalbos katekizmo, teikiančio daugiausia akcentologijos duomenų) rašybos. Siekiama atkurti kiek įmanoma išsamesnį sinchroninį sistemos vaizdą ir nustatyti galimas diachronines jos raidos tendencijas. Kritiškai įvertinus visas iki šiol paskelbtas prūsų kalbos akcentologijos ir akcentografijos teorijas, pirmajame tyrimo etape apibrėžiami kirčiuoto skiemens nustatymo iš šaltinių rašybos principai, įvertinamas tokių mokslinėje literatūroje prūsų kalbai postuluojamų reiškinių kaip Saussure'o-Fortunatovo ar Kortlandto dėsniai realumas. Kirčiavimo sistemos analizėje, laikantis morfologinės akcentologijos principų, nustatomos kirčiavimą lemiančios paliudytų prūsų kalbos žodžių morfemų akcentinės savybės, žodžiai klasifikuojami į akcentines paradigmas, analizuojamas kirčio vaidmuo žodžių daryboje. Sinchroniniais metodais atkurta sistema nuosekliai lyginama su giminiškų kalbų (visų pirma lietuvių ir slavų) kirčiavimo sistemomis, konstatuojami jų sutapimai ir motyvuojami skirtumai. / The dissertation contains a description of the accentual system of Old Prussian as evidenced by the orthography of Prussian written monuments, particularly that of the Third Catechism (which abounds the most in accentological data). An attempt is made to reconstruct, as comprehensively as possible, the synchronic state of the accentual system in question, as well as to identify any possible trends in its diachronic development. At the first stage of research, upon a critical examination of all the theories dealing with Old Prussian accentology and accentography published to date, the methods of identifying the stressed syllable based on the orthography of the written monuments are outlined. The validity of Saussure-Fortunatov’s and Kortlandt’s laws, which have been postulated in the scholarly literature on Old Prussian, is subjected to a re-evaluation. Then, an analysis of the accentual system is undertaken, in adherence to the principles of morphological accentology, in order to determine the accentual properties of the Old Prussian morphemes conditioning the stress of the attested words, as well as to classify the words by accentual paradigm and to elucidate the role of stress in word-formation. This reconstructed synchronic system is then thoroughly confronted with those of the related languages (primarily Lithuanian and Slavic) to demonstrate the correspondences and to account for the discrepancies between them.

This PhD thesis examines a phenomenon known as Monosyllabic Circumflexion (MC, hereafter) from a historical linguistics / phonological point of view. MC denotes a Lithuanian or Balto-Slavic phenomenon according to which long vowels and diphthongs in monosyllabic words exhibit a circumflex tone instead of the expected acute tone.  It is observed in the following four categories: I. 3rd person future forms of monosyllabic stems (e.g., šõks ― šókti `to jump;' vy͂s ― výti `to drive') II. reflexes of PIE root nouns (e.g., Latv. gùovs `cow;' Lith. šuõ `dog') III. prepositions/adverbs (e.g., nuõ `from' ~  nùotaka `bride;' vė͂l `again' ~ Latv. vêl `still, yet,' tė͂ (permissive particle) < *teh1) IV. pronominal forms (e.g., tuõ ~ gerúoju `the good (m.~sg.~instr.),' tie͂ ~ tíeji `id. (pl.nom)'). The unexpected circumflex tone in these categories is problematic and important for the solution of a Balto-Slavic accentological question on the etymological background of acute and non-acute tones. The aim of this thesis is to partially contribute to the solution of this problem by establishing the existence of MC and its relative chronology. The first category, the 3rd person future forms, provides a substantial number of examples and counterexamples. The examination of them has revealed the fact that the counterexamples constitute a morpho-semantic group of verbs whose future stems underwent considerable morphological changes in the prehistory, hence not exhibiting MC. This shows that the regular tonal reflex of the 3rd person future forms of monosyllabic acute stem must be circumflex, allowing for the establishment of MC as a regular phonological process, although this category does not provide much information on the relative chronology of MC. The second category, the reflexes of Proto-Indo-European root nouns, gives an important clue as to where MC is located in the relative chronology of Balto-Slavic sound changes. Next, there is a discussion of whether the results of the examinations of the first two categories can be maintained for the data of the third and fourth categories, which show an irregular distribution of the acute and circumflex tones in monosyllabic forms. It is shown that various morphological factors, such as homonymic clashes within the paradigms for pronouns, can explain why some monosyllabic forms have acute tone. Also, the linguistic feature of West Aukštaitian dialects of Lithuanian that tend to preserve the results of MC is revealed. These dialects are known to have played an important role in the formation of standard Lithuanian. In this way, the monosyllabic forms with unexpected circumflex tone in Lithuanian are explained as a combination of MC in the Proto-Balto-Slavic time and the dialectal tendency of West Aukštaitian dialects of Lithuanian.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate norm in contemporary Russian verbal stress. In a first step the concept of norm is explored. It is shown that the criteria generally used in Russian for defining norm (correspondence to the language system, usage and authority/tradition/necessity) are not applied strictly. It is also concluded that any study of norms must take into account the distinction between the explicit norm, i.e. the codification, and the implicit norm, i.e. the usage and attitude of educated native speakers. In a second step the explicit norm is investigated. The analysis is based on the stress notation in two orthoepic dictionaries. This comparison shows that there is not, as is often suggested, one unanimous, "objectively existing", explicit stress norm. In a third step, the implicit norm is examined. This is done through a survey of reported and actual usage, carried out on 106 Russian speakers in Moscow. Subsequently, implicit norms are related to explicit norms. There is compliance between these in many cases, but the discrepancies are numerous. Furthermore, there is no direct or predictable relationship between the implicit stress norms and the labels these stresses are assigned in handbooks. A comparison with additional sources demonstrates that among the, in all, nine sources no two are perfectly alike in their notation. Sources that reflect the implicit norm better than others are identified. Finally, dictionary data and the survey results are compared with results from previous surveys (1956-1994). This shows that certain stress variants have apparently functioned as the implicit norm for several decades, but this has not yet been taken into account in codification. The general conclusions are that there is in theory an unclear definition of norm; there is in practice disagreement in codification; there is no official codex, although some sources might be considered more reliable; there is in many cases a discrepancy between explicit and implicit norms, which is most likely a result of arbitrariness or subjectivism and of conservatism. It is possible that these conclusions are valid for areas of language normativisation other than verbal stress.