Re: Slavic peoples and places

From: tgpedersen@...
Message: 7558
Date: 2001-06-11

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2001 12:18 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Slavic peoples and places
>
> I recall from a Czech phrase book for tourists something like:
>
> "Personal" adjectives:
>
> -úv, -ová, -ovo (masculine), eg. Karlúv most (´ should be a circle)
>
> -in, -ina, -ino (feminine) , eg. Libus^in hrad
>
> Is the former related to the Russian "hard" masc.-neutr. gen. pl.
> ending -ov?
>
> Torsten

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> Yes, it is the same ending. The Proto-Slavic masculine nom.sg. was
*-ov-U. The loss of the final reduced vowel ("yer") triggered the
compensatory lengthening of the *o in West Slavic, and the long *o:
was eventually raised yielding /u/ spelt <ó> in Polish and /u:/ spelt
<u with a circle> in Czech. In feminine *-ov-a, and neuter *-ov-o
there was no vowel loss and consequently no lengthening.
>
> Actually, the suffix -in- may be added to masculines too, since the
Slavic languages retain a number of masculine a-stems (like nauta,
scriba or agricola in Latin).
>
> Piotr
>
>
>
>
That makes sense. I figured that somehow historically the gen. pl.
had become endingless, thus making difficult to distinguish from
the also endingless masc. nom. sg., wherefore -ov was dragged into
service as a case ending. Fem. and neut. nom. sg. with their endings
-a and -o had no such problems, so kept the null gen. pl.

Torsten