Re: Germanic without the Schleifton

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

>The genitive in -o is obviously an ablative, but (as I read
> on a website the other day and, silly me, I had never realized) *-

o:~

> should have given Lith. -uo not -o! Lith. -o can only go back to *-

a:.

> Fortunately, -a: is presumably just what uncontracted -aa gave in
> Lithuanian when the ending finally contracted.

I've come across two (types of) explanations in historical grammars
of Lithuanian: the first goes along your lines, while the second
employs so called Maz^iulis-Kazlauskas-Girdenis hypothesis, stating
among other things that *o: yielded *a: in East Baltic in positions
which were (always) unstressed across the paradigm (*a: in orthtonic
monosyllables being explained as analogical).

Sergei