PIE *-om usually develops into Slavic -U.
Unexpectedly, Slavic neutra of o-declension end in -o. As long as know,
there were two attempts to explain this feature.
1. Vyacheslav Ivanov supposes that in IE
o-declension neutra originally had zero ending, just as consonant stems do.
Slavic -o is the trace of this archaic feature (because phonetically it can
regularly reflect PIE *-o).
2. Another explanaition belongs to Frederik
Kortland, who writes that in Slavic the IE original *-om in neutra was replaced
with -od (from pronominal paradigms). Just the same we find in late Anatolian
languages, e.g. in Lydian.
Nevertheless, neither explanation seems to me
satisfactory. Perhaps, it remains still better to assume that PIE *-om could
give Slav. *-o sometimes. As a reason for such a conclusion, we find several
examples where IE neutra seem to show the regular development *-om > *-U, and
therefore are tracted as masculines, e.g. Slav. *darU (m.) vs. Gr. do:ron (n.)
"gift". But why could *-om give both *-U and *-o, I fail to
understand.
Does anybody has any idea on this
subject?
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Vadim Ponaryadov