From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 4856
Date: 2000-11-26
>One could also postulate *-a:ns, *-o:ns, *-ons > *-aNx > *uNx > *u:, collapsing the last two stages with the development of the Acc.pl. of u-stems (*su:nuns > *syny) and thus making for greater parsimony.Yes. I don't know when the nasality was lost, but it would make sense
>As for the Acc.pl. of *jo- and *-ja: stems, that is North Slavic *-je^ corresponding to South Slavic *-jeN, we could haveOK, that's possible. I forgot umlauted /ą/ gives /ję/.
>
>*-jons, *-ja:ns > *-jaNx > *-jeNx > *-je: (with dialectal denasalisation) ~ *-jeN
>Some authors (e.g. Van Wijk and Kortlandt) attempt to trace the South Slavic present participle in *-y and Northern forms in *-a back to a common prototype. The former is easy to derive from PIE *-onts if, as elsewhere, *ts > pre-Slavic *s (*-onts > *-ans > ... > *-y), but the participle in *-a is rather puzzling.Although my alma mater is Leiden, I'm afraid I don't know how van Wijk
>Milewski (1948) proposes the following scenario (for my taste, it involves far too much prestidigitation):Ingenious. I've never thought about this question, but my first
>
>*-o:nt(s) > *-a:nt > *-a:t (yielding -a), dialectally *-a:(t)s (with analogic *s) > *-a:s (yielding -y)
>
>He also suggests (plausibly this time) that Old Polish -eN (which is many times more frequent than -a) derives from neuter *-ont (> *-aNt > *-uNt > *-oN), and assumes that the neuter form was generalised for participles in *-jont-, which show a nasal (*-jeN) throughout the Slavic branch. It may have been so, but an original *-jonts > *-jaNs would have ended up as *-jeN anyway, at least in South Slavic.
>
>To conclude, I'd propose:
>
>*-ont-s (masculine) > *-aNx > ... > *-y
>*-ont-i: (feminine) > *-aNti: > *-oNtji (with *j of analogical origin)
>*-ont (neuter) > *-aNt > ... > *-oN
>
>*-j-ont-s > ... > *-jeN (~ *je:? perh. in Czech znaje, Russ. znaja, etc.)
>*-j-ont-i: > ... > *-jeNtji
>*-j-ont > ... > *jeN
>
>This leaves -a unexplained. Any suggestions? The only possibility that I can think of is that the *-a of *znaja < *zna:-ja: < *zna:-je: was generalised as the Nom.sg. ending of masculine participles in some (not all) North Slavic dialects.
>P.S. I'd like to return to your argument that forms like OCS robotU contain a reinforced jer in the penult syllable. As argued already by Rozwadowski (1914), this explanation doesn't take into account the dialectal distribution of the -o- forms. The development of reinforced *U into o would not be surprising in West Bulgarian/Macedonian dialects, but this -o- is also found in dialects that generally preserve the back jer unchanged (West Bulgarian) as well as those in which *U > e in strong positions, cf. Old Czech vec^eros 'tonight'.Well, I don't know where and when exactly the forms you mentioned