--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen <elme@...>
wrote:
> Is it a problem that Slavic jo-stem nouns turn up in Lithuanian
> ending in -ius? For example, Zinkevic^ius to me first-off looks
like
> the reflex of a pre-Proto-Slavic Ausgang *-ju-s from *-jo-s
parallel
> to *-u(s) from *-os. Is there a different way to handle this?
I think one should take into account the fact that Lithuanian doesn't
have the *ji-stem while it does have the *ju-stem. Slavic words (I am
talking of non-Novgorod/Pskov Slavic here) entered Lithuanian at the
stage when the Nsg of Slavic *-jo-stems was already *-jI (or even
still pre-Umlaut *-jü, but that depends on where one places the
Umlaut in the relative chronology of Slavic) no matter whether as a
result of an analogical replacement (as Willem suggests) or as a
regular phonetic reflex of *-jos. Now, while Lith. *i-stem words fit
perfectly to render Slavic *i-stem words in -CI (kùmetis < *kÙmetI
(a) > kmèt'), they didn't fit for Slavic *jo-stems since the presence
of Slavic *j did matter for the East-Baltic speakers of the time
(Baltic *Ci looked unsatisfactory to render Slavic *CjI). The closest
approximation for Slavic *CjI was East-Baltic *Cju [Cjü], differing
from it only in the feature of labialization (or possibly not
differing at all for pre-Umlaut loans), whence karãlius < *karàljus
from the East-Slavic reflex of *korljI. The same approximation was
even used to render Slavic *C^I (*C^ -- an affricate) when *C^ wasn't
a product of iotization sensu strictu, eg. pe~c^ius < the reflex of
*pekt'I.
Sergei