Re: Various loose thoughts

I agree that the <u> of <-mus> probably was an [u], not a schwa.
That is also more or less Stang's conclusion (1975:49). The central
point to me is that OLith. -mus reflects PBSl. *-mas.

Thomas

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Sergejus Tarasovas" <s.tarasovas@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Thomas Olander" <olander@...>
> wrote:
>
> > As to the reduction of *-mas to -mus to -ms, note that Stang got
> convinced of it after
> > having read Kazlauskas (Stang 1975: 49). So did I.
>
> Unfortunately, I didn't. Driven by a gut feeling (which turned out to
> be correct) that your theory stems from the abovementioned
> Kazlauskas' article, I re-read it last night in the hope something
> important probably escaped me during the first reading (some years
> ago), if only again to find his argumentation to be very weak.
>
> Indeed, he suggests <u> in the D.pl. <-mus> of Old Lithuanian texts
> to render a kind of labialized schwa (not [u] proper*) developed from
> an unstressed *a after a nasal. He doesn't comment on the fact that
> despite the dialectal and orthographical variety (or rather
> orthographical chaos) of Old Lithuanian texts the sound in question
> was uniformely rendered with <u> and never, say, with <o> (which
> often rendered the short *lax* closed <o.> in the texts of Z^emaitian
> stock), although an o-type orthogram seems to do better for a kind of
> schwa (cf. Old English <eo> [e&]). It's also noteworthy that Dauks^a
> usually renders the schwa derived from an *unstressed -a after a
> labial* with an apostrophe (<dwiem' dienom'> < *'dviema die'noma),
> but consistently writes <-mus> for the D.pl. desinence.
>
> The only example of progressive labialization he adduces (Lith. dial.
> [nuove:] < nùave:) is not quite to the point, since here we are
> dealing with two labials (at least one of them being vocalic), and
> the outcome is still [o], not an [u]-like sound.
>
> His explanation why the unstressed *a of D.du. -ma (akima) wasn't
> subject to the same reduction/labialization (allegedly because -ma <
> PIE *-ma, while *-mas < PIE *-mos) is untenable.
>
> --------------
> * According to Bu:ga (_Rinktiniai ras^tai_, II, p.24), in the end of
> the 19th c. -mus (not [-m&s] or the like) was still used by the older
> generation in the East Auks^taitian dialect of Lé:nas (near Ukmerge:).
>
> Sergei