From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 17572
Date: 2003-01-13
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer" <mcv@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, January 13, 2003 2:05 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Polish G. -ga
On Sun, 12 Jan 2003 22:01:47 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
>> I see no reason to believe that <-ga> in collective numerals should be particularly old. It's simply the generalised extension -g- of pronominal origin plus the gen.sg. ending.
> OK, sounds reasonable. What about Slovene/Serbo-Croat -ega/-oga?
Looks like plain analogy, motivated by the coexistence of "long" (pronominal) and "short" (noun-like) declensions for the same adjective (dobra : dobrogo > dobra : dobroga). Both declensions survive in Serbo-Croatian even today. Slovene retains only traces of the contrast, but <-ga> goes back to the tenth century at least, and at that time the double declension of adjectives was well and kicking everywhere.
Piotr