Re: [tied] Nominative: A hybrid view

Hi Miguel,

> >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 < *rotH?(t) vs.
> Ins. rat?< *rotH?). What you are asking is whether the athematic
> ending *-Vt could itself have had an original long vowel.

I think I got it where the misunderstanding lies. You have the a:t
ending in Saskrit only by thematic ablative, and even there only by
n/m, so that's the ablative I meant. I have not been discussing
athematic ablatives and I am not acquainted with any particular
scientific issues connected with this topic.

>
> 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.

Yes, exactly, but I never looked at things from the perspective
thematic/athematic. I could try.

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.)").

Clear.

> Now personally I believe that this short *o was originally a long
> vowel, but that's a different story.

My question was more like if it is at all clear if it was long or
short, if there is a convention on it.

> >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.

Ahem, this is something I have to check for myself. Most speakers of
Slavic languages are not aware of ablative, except if they have done
comparative linguistics. :-)))

> 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.

I will dig deeper into this. Sounds intriguing (rediscovering my
language?).

>
> 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).

Okay, I need a historical grammar, I got the point. :-)

Eva