P&G <
petegray@...> wrote:
> Pardon me butting in. What *-s/*-i confusion? As far as I'm
> aware, only
> Greek and Latin have regularly replaced the old PIE nom plural
> with an -i
> ending, and only Latin regularly shows any -i forms in the genitive.
I think Celtic too has an o-stem nom.pl. based on *-oi and an o-stem genitive singular in -i:. The nom.pl. in *-oi is also in Balto-Slavic, and Albanian too I think.
The Latin-Celtic o-stem gen.sg. in -i: is I believe merely a special development of the inherited ending *-osyo (c.q. *-esyo in some pronominal paradigms). In Latin, *sy became *y, and this is basically what we still have (albeit augmented with an analogical genitive ending -s) in the pronouns *kWosyo > *kWoyo > cuiu-s and *esyo > *eyo > eius. Where the (initial) stress did not fall on *oyo or *eyo, they became *i:o, as in <illi:u-s>, <isti:u-s>. Unstressed final *i:o was further reduced to -i: in the nominal stems (*ek^wosyo > *ekwoyo > ekwi:o > equi:).
In Celtic, something similar happened. Old Lepontic still had a gen.sg. ending -oiso (by metathesis from *-osyo). After the dropping of *s, -oyo (-eyo) must have further developed into *-i:o > -i:, except in Celtiberian, where the development was *-oyo > *-oo > -o: (cf. Greek *-osyo > -oyo > -oo > -o: > -u).
--
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal