science

Jakubinskij's law

Jakubinskij's law is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Jakubinskij's law rather than just read about it. In short: Jakubinskij's law, or Meyer–Jakubinskij's law, is a sound law that operated in the Croatian Chakavian dialect in the 12th and 13th centuries, named after Lev Jakubinskij who discovered it in 1925, and sometimes also after K. H.

Key takeaways

Jakubinskij's law belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Jakubinskij's law to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Jakubinskij's law from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Jakubinskij's law, or Meyer–Jakubinskij's law, is a sound law that operated in the Croatian Chakavian dialect in the 12th and 13th centuries, named after Lev Jakubinskij who discovered it in 1925, and sometimes also after K. H. Meyer who expanded and refined the rule in 1926. Jakubinskij's law governs the distribution of the mixed Ikavian–Ekavian reflexes of Common Slavic yat phoneme, occurring in the Middle Chakavian area. In the Southern Chakavian Ikavian area, yat */ě/ was reflected as /i/, and became merged with the reflexes of Common Slavic */y/ and */i/. In the northwest, however, according to the Meyer–Jakubinskij's law, */ě/ > /e/ before dental consonants {d, t, s, z, n, l, r} which were followed by one of the back vowels {a, o, u, y, ъ}, and elsewhere */ě/ > /i/. This /e/ has thus merged the reflexes of Common Slavic */e/ and */ę/. Compare tȇlo 'body' as opposed to bīžéć 'fleeing'. The effect of Jakubinskij's rule has been levelled out in paradigmatic alternations and derivational morphology, by the analogical influence of nominative form onto the oblique cases, infinitive on other verbal forms, word stem onto derivations etc. Thus no or extremely little alternation occurs throughout the inflectional paradigm. For example, Common Slavic *město 'place, position' would yield N sg mesto, but L pl is mestih, not **mistih. L sg of mera (< Comm Slavic *měra 'measure') is meri not **miri etc. Though initially applied only to Chakavian Ikavian–Ekavian accents, this rule is also valid for some Kajkavian Ikavian–Ekavian accents of Duga Resa, Ogulin, Karlovac and Žumberak.

In popular culture In 2023, the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal poked fun at the law, implying a pronunciation pattern in a defunct dialect does not deserve a named scientific law.

Notes

References Mihaljević, Milan (2002), Slavenska poredbena gramatika, 1. dio, Uvod i fonologija (in Serbo-Croatian), Zagreb: Školska knjiga, ISBN 953-0-30225-8 Lav Jakubinskij (1925). Die Vertretung des urslav. ě im Čakavischen. Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie 1, pp. 381–396 K.H. Meyer (1926). Beiträge zum Čakavischen. Archiv für slavische Philologie 40, pp. 222–265

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jakubinskij's law

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jakubinskij's law claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Jakubinskij's law before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Jakubinskij's law ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Jakubinskij's law

In research: Jakubinskij's law appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Jakubinskij's law in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Jakubinskij's law is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Balto-Slavic sound laws, Croatian language, Historical linguistics stubs, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Jakubinskij's law outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Jakubinskij's law in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Jakubinskij's law means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Jakubinskij's law out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jakubinskij's law in simple terms?

Why does Jakubinskij's law matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Jakubinskij's law?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Jakubinskij's law.