Re: [tied] Slavic *-os (*-om)

> The most enigmatic part of (North-)Krivichian (Old Novgorodian) morphology
> is the o-stem nom.sg.masc. in -e. Whereas the rest of Slavic has merged
> the nominative and accusative as *-U (as the result of regular sound
> change *-os > *-uh > *-U; *-om > *-uN > *-U), Krivichian maintains them
> separate as nom. -e vs. acc. -U.
>
> Zaliznjak's "Drevnenovgorodskij dialekt" reviews some of the attempts that
> have been made to explain the nom.sg. in -e. They can be divided into
> purely phonological explanations, and morphological/analogical ones. The
> latter type of explanation is represented by Sobolevskij's hypothesis that
> the -e comes from the vocative (this is probably equivalent to V.V.
> Ivanov's hypothesis that -e stems from a PIE "casus indefinitus");

I'm not sure if this is relevant but in Croatian/Serbian epic decameter
("deseterac") vocative case instead of nominative is quite frequent. But
still it's a long shot...

Mate