--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Jun 2001 19:53:18 +0200, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
> <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> >Naturally, I was talking about the Nom.sg. of possessive
adjectives. The Gen.pl. ending is a completely nother story.
Thank you, that answers my question.
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
> surprising phonetics of Russian pronominal/adjectival gen.sg. -ogo
> (-jego) (with <g> prounced /v/) may have something to do with the
> possessive adjectives in -ov (n. -ovo).
>
> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv@...
In Danish there is a "old, sloppy, dialectal" pronounciation of
medial and final -b and -v as -w (løbe "run, løve "lion" both
pronounced <lø:w(ë)> (not unsimilar to the Spanish situation) versus
an "upwardly mobile" literal pronounciation. Some Jutland dialects
have -w- all the way through. Whether the non-Jutland pronounciation
goes all the way back to PIE w I don't know. In the same "old"
pronounciation medial and final -g (standard G) becomes -w.
Compare Swedish mage / Danish mave "stomach". The written Danish v
renders "old" pronounciation w, but now becomes v. So there has been
a development g > G > w > v. As for g > G, isn't that what happens in
South Russian and Ukrainian?
Since Slavic is IE at some time in the development there must have
been w > v. When?
Torsten