From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 7608
Date: 2001-06-13
>Naturally, I was talking about the Nom.sg. of possessive adjectives. The Gen.pl. ending is a completely nother story. As Andrei says, *-ovU < *-ow-om was originally the historically regular ending of masculine -u-stems. In most other Slavic languages it has analogically spread to other masculines, whatever their historical stem class, thanks to its great transparency; in Sorbian, and to some extent in Belarusian, feminines and neuters have adopted it as well. It is not the only -u-stem ending to have been generalised in this way. Polish has a Nom.pl. ending -owie used with a majority of [+ human] masculines (< *-ow-es) and a productive Dat.sg. masculine ending -owi (< *-ow-ei). The original dative ending of -o-stems, -u (< *-o:i = *-o-ei), is nowadays used with just about a dozen nouns.Of course. I've wondered for some time, though, whether the