On Sat, 24 May 2003 08:56:57 +0000, fortuna11111
<
fortuna11111@...> wrote:
> The vowel in
>> >Abl. Sg. m/n is long, but it does include a thematic vowel
>plus /a/,
>> >or it could be an /a:/. Sanskrit alone, I guess, does not allow
>any
>> >conclusions on the length of the vowel.
>>
>> Actually, it does. Skt. -a:t can in principle reflect
>> *-{e:|a:|o:}{t|d}, so the length is a given.
>
>Yes, that's clear, but in a word like as'va:t (sorry, I have no idea
>how to type all those symbols, so I type them after the word and I
>hope it's readable so) you have /as'v-a-/ whereby the /a/ is the
>thematic vowel, so to get a long vowel, the ending could contain
>an /a/ or an /a:/. So unless you compare with other languages, it
>is hard to say if the vowel in the ending is short or long, since
>*e, a, o also become /a/ in Sanskrit.
That's a different question. The ending of the o-stem (thematic)
ablative can be shown to have been long (*-o:t), and in fact can be
shown to have been contracted from *-o-Vt (because Lithuanian has a
circumflex accent, not an acute: Gen. (< Abl.) rãto < *rotHõ:(t) vs.
Ins. ratù < *rotHó:). What you are asking is whether the athematic
ending *-Vt could itself have had an original long vowel.
For that we have to look for athematic ablatives, which are rare.
Athematic nouns do not have a separate ablative, so we can only
compare the pronominal forms. The normal Sanskrit pronominal ablative
has the thematic ending -sma:t (*-sm-o:t) with *-sm(o)- inserted
between the root and the ending, but the personal pronouns still have
-at (mát "from me", tvát "from you"; analogical asmád "from us",
yus.mát "from you (pl.)"). The pronouns *is and *yos also retain
adverbial forms á:t and yá:t (besides asmá:t and yásma:t with *-sm-).
This all indicates that the ending was *-ot with a short vowel ("from
me" *m-od, "from you" *tu-od, "from him" *é-od (contracted to a:t in
Skt., but in Slavic ego/ewo, in Latin eo:), "from whom" *yó-od).
Now personally I believe that this short *o was originally a long
vowel, but that's a different story.
>> Some time ago, I suggested here that the Slavic adjectival and
>> pronominal genitive ending -ego/-ogo (northern Russian /-Ivó/ ~
>> /-&vó/) can also be derived from the ablative endings *-eo(t),
>> *-oo(t), with glides /h/ (> /g/) or /w/ (> /v/) to break the
>hiatus.
>
>That sounds interesting, but I would, of course, wonder how one
>would explain genitive taking on the ablative ending. Is this often
>the case in other languages?
It is always the case in Balto-Slavic, at least where a separate
ablative form exists, which is in the pronouns and the o-stems.
Lithuanian has o-stem genitive -õ, pronominal genitive also -õ (e.g.
*is "he" = jìs -> G. jõ; *so/*tos "this" = tàs -> tõ).
Slavic has o-stem genitive -a, pronominal genitive -ego (*is "he" =
*jI, G. jego) or -ogo (*tos "this" = tU, G. togo, *kWos "who?" =
*kU(to), G. kogo).
The o-stem genitive obviously derives from the Ablative in *-õt. The
pronominal genitives, if we assume PIE *e-ot and *to-ot, can also be
derived straightforwardly: Proto-Balto-Slavic probably had *eo(t) and
*to:(t). In Lithuanian *eo became *eo:/*jo: by analogy from *to: (and
the o-stems' -o:). In Slavic *to: became *too by analogy from *eo,
leading to togo and (j)ego.
As far as I know, in the whole of Balto-Slavic the original
o-stem/pronominal PIE genitive (*-osyo; *esyo, *tosyo) only survived
in the single Slavic form *kWesyo > OCS c^eso "of what?". (Modern
Slavic lgs. have generally normalized this to c^ogo or c^ego, but
Slovenian still has c^ésa).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...