In my Ph.D. dissertation (Accentual mobility: the prehistory of the Balto-Slavic mobile accent
paradigms, 2006) I have suggested that the origin of the paradigmatic accent mobility in the
Baltic and Slavic languages (e.g. Russian nom. sg. golová, acc. sg. gólovu, gen. sg. golový; nom.-
acc. pl. gólovy, gen. pl. golóv, etc.) may be found in a pre-Proto-Balto-Slavic accent loss in
syllables with a certain structure.
Recently, Henning Andersen has pointed out that typologically similar, if not identical, processes
of accent loss have taken place independently in Slavonian dialects of Štokavian and Karelian
dialects of Russian. Referring to the attested cases of accent loss, Andersen has proposed a
reinterpretation of the accent loss that gave rise to the Baltic and Slavic mobile accent paradigms.
In this paper I will examine the new perspectives opened by Andersen’s contribution to the
discussion about the origin of paradigmatic mobility in Baltic and Slavic.