Re: Gender of the sun

> They do, but earlier both Polish and Russian had monosyllabic forms.
> Also, in ogieN /ogon' 'fire', weNgiel/ugol' 'coal', etc. (there are
> scores of similar cases) the "yer" is no doubt what I call spurious.
> This is why I think a similar explanation for posolon is most likely.
> After all, we only have dolg- 'long', never *dolog-
>
> The reason why I didn't use the past tense when citing Russian poln is
> that it has some sort of marginal currency as a poetic archaism. My
> best recollection of it is from Pushkin's "Mednyj vsadnik":
>
> Na beregu pustynnyx voln
> Stojal on, dum velikix poln,
> I v dal' gl'adel...
>
> Of course there are various traces of the former quantitative
> distinction in East and West Slavic. I gave South Slavic examples
> simply because in them the difference is still reflected in accentual
> contrasts and can be seen very clearly (East and West Slavic have no
> pitch accents).
>
> Piotr
>

It's not my intention to turn this venerable IE discussion into discussion
on the Russian languauge but (sorry :)
still dare note that
1. we DO have this dolog in Russian (put' dolog, I have to look through
Dal's dictionary for other examples)
2. Pushkin's poln is not archaism, it's just common even in today's standard
Russian Church Slavonism, eventually of South Slavic origin.