Re: IE & Uralic

On Sri, siječanj 9, 2008 1:08 am, tgpedersen wrote:

> There are some things in Slavic that are reminiscent of similar
> features in Fennic, ie. the use of the genitive in Slavic and the
> partitive in Fennic in negative contexts, where the rest of IE would
> use a nominative (afaIk).

Use of genitive/partitive in partitive contexts also connects some Slavic
languages/dialects with Fennic (Finnish, Estonian...) with French
(de-construction) and Basque. But this should be just typology.

> Also, Estonian (and the rest of Fennic?) has
> a special verb sajama for precipitation, Russian (and Slavic?) uses
> the standard IE movement verb *i- "go" for precipitation, where the
> rest of IE has kept separate verbs for rain, snow etc.

Other Slavic languages use also verbs derived from the nouns (*sněžiti <
*sněgU "snow", *dUzdjiti < *dUzdjI "rain") or the verb "fall".

Mate