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

On Fri, 09 Jul 2004 18:54:50 +0200 (CEST), mkapovic@...
wrote:

>> 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...

That's interesting, because one of the arguments against the
vocative theory is the lack of any parallel cases.
Another one is the lack of (first) palatalization before N.
Krivichian nom.sg. -e.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...