Thread:User talk:CodeCat/*źambas, *zǫbъ/reply (5)

I agree, but the difference between źombos and źambas is really trivial. o and a were the same phoneme in Balto-Slavic, so they are two letters for the same reconstructed sound. The only case I can think of where the difference between them would be significant is for a sound change that affected o and a differently. There is in fact such a change, Winter's law, which lengthens the vowels to ō and ā (which don't merge), showing us the distinction. But the only conclusion you can draw from that is that Winter's law occurred before the vowels merged. As far as we can tell, the merger happened before Balto-Slavic split apart, because all Balto-Slavic languages show only a single reflex of both original vowels (a in Baltic, o in Slavic but with evidence of an earlier a > o change in Middle Common Slavic), and there are no post-Balto-Slavic sound changes that require or show evidence for a distinction between a and o. The conclusion then is that they must have been indistinct in Proto-Balto-Slavic itself, and that any difference between them is purely notational.