Re: [tied] Quirky Slavic endings (was: Nominative Loss. A strengthe

> From: Mate Kapovic [mailto:mkapovic@...]

> It does. Could it be solved this way maybe? *e (3) is
> attested instead of *e in G. sg and n/a pl. of a-stems and a.
> pl. of o-stems in NorthSlavic. In pre-ProtoSlavic we had G.
> sg. *-a:s, n. pl. *-a:s and a. pl. *-a:s in a-stems and a.
> pl. *-a:ns in o-stems. Both *-a:s and *-a:ns would yield -y
> in later Slavic. But in later-to-be South Slavic, a. pl. of
> a-stems becomes analogically *-a:ns instead of *-a:s and soon
> after that G. sg. and n. pl. take the new ending being the
> same before that as well. From this *-a:ns we have -y and -e
> in South Slavic. But in later-to-be North Slavic we have
> a-stem a. pl. analogically affecting o-stem a. pl. and it
> changes from *-a:ns to *-a:s. So all four endings are now
> *-a:s there which develops as -y (the same as *-a:ns) after
> nonpalatal consonants but as -e (*-a:s > *-e:s > -e) after
> palatals. The -y looks now the same because both *-a:ns and
> *-a:s > -y but the original difference is seen in soft stems.

I've just looked up in Kortlandt's "From Proto-Indo-Europen to Slavic" how
he solves the *-y -- *-je^ ~ *-jeN controversy.

First, he merges *a:-stems *-a(:)ns and *o-stems *-ons by raising *a, *a: to
*o, *o: (*o(:) will be lowered to *a(:) later, but not before nasals, and
this susequent lowering is in any case unrelevant). Then he postulates (<N>
-- nasality):

(hard declension) *-oNh > (raising before *[#h]) *-uNh > *-uN >
(delabialization) *yN; now he states, that while both acuted *y and
("phonetically complex", thus denasalized) *yN yield *y, "plain" *y yields
*U (jer). Thus >*y.

(soft declension) *-joNh > (raising before *[#h]) *-juNh > *-jiN; now he
states that *iN and *eN were lowered to *e.N and *äN, thus >*(j)e.N; then
(attention!) *äN was raised back to *eN in South Slavic, and, while he
doesn't state that explicitly, it seems that *e.N was merged to this *eN in
South Slavic. This is OCS <(j)eN>. In North Slavic, *e.N and *äN were kept
distinct up to the denasalization, hence *e. -- i. e., Old Russian <e^> (vs.
<'a> from denasalized *äN).

I wonder, who believes that except Kortlandt himself?

Sergei