(no subject)

Your points here are well taken. Let me modify my initial hypothesis: first we have *-s > *-x in inflectional endings (just like English -s > -z), then *-ax > *-ux (a purely phonological development, like *-aN > *-uN), and finally the dropping of all final consonants. No need to bring *-z in.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Friday, November 24, 2000 1:17 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] The Wizard of **-oz

>In none of these cases would it make sense to postulate two original phonemes rather than phonological changes sensitive to the morphological environment. My claim is that the case of *-os in Slavic is as clearcut as any of these English examples. Baltic has -as in masculines and there's little doubt that the Balto-Slavic ending was just that. Then something happened in pre-Slavic: most likely, in my opinion, the falling together of *-a (< *-as < *-os) and *-u (< *-ux < *-us) in the Nom.sg. (after the change *-aN > *uN both paradigms had the same Acc. endings). The u-stems were responsible? Naah. I know the havoc they've caused in Polish, but I don't think we had any of this in pre-Slavic, or we wouldn't have had any distinct u-stems at all. I think in the above you mean *-a (< *-ax < *-os) [like *-u (< *-ux < *-us)], with development of final *-s to *-x. Something like this (the presence of a "breathing" after the vowel) must have caused the phonetic development of PIE *o (PS *a, probably a very back /A/ or /O/) to /u/. Cf. for the influence of *-s the o-stem dat.sg. *-o:i > Slav. -u, vs. ins.pl. *-o:is > Slav. -y [1]). But this didn't happen in the s-stems, which is why I think the sibilant remained there longer as a sibilant. Either because the sibilant itself was different (my proposal), or because of the analogical weight of the *-s- in the oblique cases (another possible view). In any case, I can't see the development of o-stem nom.sg. *-os > *-u as anything but a regular phonological development, as it was in Latin. No u-stems, no analogy can explain it. Compare also forms like dat.pl. -mU < *-mos / *-bhos / *bhi-os [yet another sibilant (*sw) in my proposals, and indeed -mus even in Baltic (Old Lith.)]. [1] Another development for which I've seen no good proposal yet. The best I can do is to postulate a (marginal) Proto-Slavic phoneme /uo/, /u@/, parallel to *e^, yat', which I believe to have been a falling diphthong /ie/, /i@/, i.e. *-o:i > *-uo/*u@, *-o:is > *-uox/*-u@:. The lengthening and backing effect of the *-x caused the latter form to merge early with *u: > y, while the former remained independent long enough to merge with new /u/ from *ou (*au). >This happened only in inflections, not in syllables that belonged to stems, which is why *slawa(s) 'word' or *neba(s) 'heaven' were not affected. > >Nom. Acc. > >*-i : *-i in i-stems >*-u : *-u in u-stems >*-a : *-u in thematic masculines --> *-u : *-u > >As in English (Example 1), one could expect some thematic masculines to retain the original ending in fossilised combinations, e.g. with an enclitic. This is precisely what we find in OCS: rodosI '(this) family', rabotU '(that) servant' < *rada-si, *arba-tu. But these are vocalized yers, as in OCS <otecI>!