Acc. plural of o- and eh2-stems (was: The disappearance of *-s -- T

From: Mate Kapovic
Message: 31889
Date: 2004-04-13

----- Original Message -----
From: "elmeras2000" <jer@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 2:41 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] The disappearance of *-s -- The saga continues


> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Mate Kapovic" <mkapovic@...>
> wrote:
>
> > I don't see why some linguists reconstruct *-o:ns in the A. pl. of
> o-stems.
>
> We do so because we find a long vowel in Sanskrit. Most of the other
> languages cannot show the difference. Still, I deem it reasonable to
> derive Lith. -úos- from *-o:ns also, since it is acute.

Yeah, but Lithuanian would point to *-oh2ns with the inserted laryngeal. It
is not certain at all that plain long *o: would give an acute in Lith.
Also, isn't Skr. -a:n < *-ons the same as -i:n < *-ins or -u:n < *uns?

> We can if *-o:ms developed differently form original *-aH2ms. The
> combined evidence of Gothic -o:s and IIr. -a:s points to a PIE form
> of the acc.pl. of a:-stems without the nasal. It is now commonly
> assumed to have been lost in the prehistory of IE already, an idea
> proposed by Stang and now often referred to as his law.

Wouldn't Stang's law be disappearance of the laryngeals, *w and *y before
final nasal? That's why there's no acute in BSl from PIE A. sg. *-eh2m?
We can assume that *-n- was dropped already in PIE (and then later
reappeared analogically) but that doesn't directly influence the question of
A. pl. of o-stems. Also, the *-n- could have been dropped later
independantly in Germanic and IIr and kept (regularly) in BSl, Lat and
Greek.

>The
> confusion between nom.pl., acc.pl. and even gen.sg. in a:-stems in
> Balto-Slavic also points in the direction of an acc.pl. without a
> nasal,

Slavic clearly points to a nasal (palatal ending -e). We need not suppose
that in A. pl. also *-a:s (as in G. sg. and N. pl) and not *-a:ns. If we had
G. *-a:s, n. *-a:s and a. (regularly) *-a:ns, after *-a:s > *-a: (= N. sg)
that could also result with N. pl. taking the A. pl. ending and then G. sg.
taking N. pl. ending (because they were the same before).

> We have a few instances of */aHNC/ in IIr. which come out as /aaC/,
> e.g. váata- 'wind', Av. må /maah/ 'month' (from *meH1-n.s). That
> does not point to merger of *-eH2ns and *-o:ns in that branch.

OK. That I didn't know. Thanks.
I am just looking at all possibilities, I am not saying that o-stem A. pl.
*-o:ns is not also possible. It just depends what approach will you take,
there is more than one way of handling this.
In BSl maybe we have *-aHs : *-o(:)ns > *-aHns : *-oHns > Lith. -a`s : -u`s
and Slavic *-aHns > -y, -e. The a-stems would take the *-n- form o-stems and
the o-stems would take the *-H- form a-stems. If we assume *-aHns : *-o(:)ns
it would just take analogical spread of *-H- to o-stems.

Mate