Re: Thematic vowel etc

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> The Russian adj. inflection in m.nom. has ´-yj, but when stressed
> it's -ój.
> Now here's a hen-or-egg discussion:
> 1) did the /o/ attract the stress? or
> 2) did the stress change the /y/ to /o/?

No.

The distinction is /"oj/ v. /&j/. The spelling -<yj> is Church
Slavonic.

> Note this German example:
> nom. das warme Wasser
> dat. dem warmen Wasser "the warm water"
> cf. without demonstrative
> nom. warmes Wasser
> dat. warmem Wasser "warm water"
> Note the endings of the adj.!
>
> Now why does German do that? I think because the
> otherwise-inflected demonstrative acts as a left bracket to the
> noun's right bracket; in other words, it delimits the extent of the
> NP in the sentence. That device seems so useful that Germans don't
> want to give it up even when there's no demonstrative present in

the

> NP, so they add the endings that the demonstrative would have had,
> to the first member, namely an adjective, of the present NP.

More to the point, the article and the strong adjective are the
surest indicators of the case and number. With the possessives and
_ein_ that do not show the case endings in the nominative singular,
one uses the strong form of the adjectives in this case:

nom. mein warm*es* Wasser 'my warm water'
dat. mein*em* warmen Wasser.

Funny bracketing!

Richard.