--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>
> Torsten:
> >Glen might want fifty examples (and once he gets them, he'll want
> >seventy);
>
> I just want one _valid_ example. Your Swedish example sounds
> like paradigmatic levelling.
>
The story is this: final -t (also the neuter suffix) is lost in -Vt
in many Scandinavian dialects. Specifically this means
that 'det' "it, that, the (sg. n.)" and 'de' "they, those, the (pl.)"
would become homonyms, which unacceptable situation Danish (and
Scanian) remedied by replacing 3rd pl nom 'de' (only in the spoken
language) by 'di' (loan from Dutch demonstrative 'die'?), and spoken
(but now also written) replaced 3rd pl nom with the oblique form. So
far so good, and that is paradigmatic levelling alright. But... the
older Swedish 3rd pl obl form is 'dem' whereas now both nom and obl
is 'dom'. The question is now: where did this /o/ come from? Is it a
stressed version of schwa?
Torsten