Slavic endings / transferred from "contintental Celtic List"

From: hwhatting
Message: 47059
Date: 2007-01-22

The discussion is moved from here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/continentalceltic/message/4658

Re: [con-celtic] o-stems: u & o & length in final syllables.


--- In continentalceltic@yahoogroups.com, "mcvwxsnl" <mcv@...> wrote:
> For the development of the Slavic endings from PIE, my model works
> with just six "Auslautgesetze", in chronological order:
>
> 1) raising of circumflex vowels in final syllables (e~ > i:, a~ >
o:,
> o~ > u:)
> 2) raising of back vowels before final nasal (-aN > -uN, -a:N > -
> o:N, -o:N > -u:N)
> 3) raising of back vowels before final -h < -s/-s^ (-ah > -uh, -
a:h
> > -o:h, -o:h > -u:h)
> 4) shortening of final diphthongs (-V:R > -VR)
> 5) lengthening before -Rh in the acc.pl. and o-stem ins.pl.
> 6) j-umlaut (ja > je, ju > ji, etc.)
>
> Since (1), (2) and (3) do not occur in Baltic, and they must occur
> before (4) and (5), it follows that the shortening of long
diphthongs
> occurred independently in Slavic and Baltic. Since the soundlaw
> itself is trivial enough (reduction of 3-moraic sequences is quite
a
> natural thing to happen), I don't think that poses much of a
> problem. It's much more curious that, quite independently from
> Slavic of course, Sanskrit also has soundlaw (5) [lengthening in
the
> acc.pl. and o-stem ins.pl.].

How does the APl. of the stems in -yo- and -ya:- develop under your
model?

> > What is your position on the Slavic Nsg. and ASg. of the o-stems?
>
> My position is that -U is the regular outcome of both *-os (*-as
(3)>
> *-uh > -U) and *-om (*-am (2)> -uN > -U) [Although the
accentuation
> of mobile o-stems suggests that the nominative was in fact
replaced
> by the accusative: we should have e.g. N. *snꧧU with neo-acute vs.
> A. sn꾧U with circumflex]. The o-stem neuter ending -o (Lith. -a
> ["neuter adjective"]) comes from the pronouns (*-od), via the
> adjectives (regular -U < *-om is seen in the barytone neuters such
as
> dvorU < *dhw󲯭). The s-stem NAsg. ending -o must also be analogical.
>

The neuter s-stems have always been the point that convinced me that
PIE *-os > Slavic -U must be analogical. Is there naything speaking
against the assumption that this development was not a sound law,
but an analogical development (Nsg / Asg. u-stems -uh / -uN , i-
stems -ih/-iN, therefore a-stems -a(s/h) / -uN > -uh/-uN) that
spread from the o-stems to other cases of *-os? Because at some
point, both *-us and *-as (or, *-uh and *ah, or whatever would be
the expected form at that time) were possible in a frequently used
form, and from there this parallelism could spresd to other forms,
e.g. to the ending of the 1st Pl. In that case, the variation -mU
vs. -mo in Slavic might represent not two different PIE endings (say
*-mos vs. *-mo), but reflect this parallel usage.
Your comments on the accentuation would also speak for a remodelling
of the paradigm - not only the vocalism was taken from the ASg, but
also the accentuation.


> > If this gets too Balto-Slavic for this list, I wouldn't object
to
> > move this discussion to cybalist.
>
> I'm in Poland right now, and can only post through the Yahoo web
> interface, which doesn't seem to allow the "Reply-To" header to be
> set. But yes, this is getting too Balto-Slavic for con-celtic.
>

Done.
Best regards,

Hans-Werner