Re: [tied] Re: Slavic peoples and places

I am confused.

Nouns of both -o and -u stems reduced their final vowel to -U. Gen.pl. -ov
belongs to -u stems only. -o stems seem to have had no problem in having
gen.pl same as nom.sg - both "endingless".

Piotr's words about "masc. nom. sg. was -*ov-U" were about possessive
adjectives, weren't they?

As for modern Russian second noun declension (where all non -a masculines
belong), it is a mixture of former -o, -u, -i stems. Wouldn't it be simpler
to assume that "hard" masculines regularized in gen. pl. on ending of -u
declension than to bring possessive suffux in?

Andrei

At 6/11/01 08:43 AM +0000, tgpedersen@... wrote:

> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: tgpedersen@...
> > To: cybalist@...
> > Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2001 12:18 PM
> > Subject: Re: [tied] Slavic peoples and places
> >
> > I recall from a Czech phrase book for tourists something like:
> >
> > "Personal" adjectives:
> >
> > -úv, -ová, -ovo (masculine), eg. Karlúv most (´ should be a circle)
> >
> > -in, -ina, -ino (feminine) , eg. Libus^in hrad
> >
> > Is the former related to the Russian "hard" masc.-neutr. gen. pl.
> > ending -ov?
> >
> > Torsten
>
>--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> > Yes, it is the same ending. The Proto-Slavic masculine nom.sg. was
>*-ov-U. The loss of the final reduced vowel ("yer") triggered the
>compensatory lengthening of the *o in West Slavic, and the long *o:
>was eventually raised yielding /u/ spelt <ó> in Polish and /u:/ spelt
><u with a circle> in Czech. In feminine *-ov-a, and neuter *-ov-o
>there was no vowel loss and consequently no lengthening.
> >
> > Actually, the suffix -in- may be added to masculines too, since the
>Slavic languages retain a number of masculine a-stems (like nauta,
>scriba or agricola in Latin).
> >
> > Piotr
> >
> >
> >
> >
>That makes sense. I figured that somehow historically the gen. pl.
>had become endingless, thus making difficult to distinguish from
>the also endingless masc. nom. sg., wherefore -ov was dragged into
>service as a case ending. Fem. and neut. nom. sg. with their endings
>-a and -o had no such problems, so kept the null gen. pl.
>
>Torsten
>
>
>
>
>
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