Re: [tied] Re: Slavic peoples and places

Naturally, I was talking about the Nom.sg. of possessive adjectives. The Gen.pl. ending is a completely nother story. As Andrei says, *-ovU < *-ow-om was originally the historically regular ending of masculine -u-stems. In most other Slavic languages it has analogically spread to other masculines, whatever their historical stem class, thanks to its great transparency; in Sorbian, and to some extent in Belarusian, feminines and neuters have adopted it as well. It is not the only -u-stem ending to have been generalised in this way. Polish has a Nom.pl. ending -owie used with a majority of [+ human] masculines (< *-ow-es) and a productive Dat.sg. masculine ending -owi (< *-ow-ei). The original dative ending of -o-stems, -u (< *-o:i = *-o-ei), is nowadays used with just about a dozen nouns.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Andrei Markine

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 11:28 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Slavic peoples and places

I am confused. Nouns of both -o and -u stems reduced their final vowel to -U. Gen.pl. -ov belongs to -u stems only. -o stems seem to have had no problem in having gen.pl same as nom.sg - both "endingless". Piotr's words about "masc. nom. sg. was -*ov-U" were about possessive adjectives, weren't they? As for modern Russian second noun declension (where all non -a masculines belong), it is a mixture of former -o, -u, -i stems. Wouldn't it be simpler to assume that "hard" masculines regularized in gen. pl. on ending of -u declension than to bring possessive suffux in? Andrei > ... 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