Re: [tied] Re: final -s, IE

From: Joao
Message: 34646
Date: 2004-10-13

In Romance there is not a real s-drop: Romance languages abbandoned the nominative -s, and adopted accusative -m. The real s-ending are seen in Accusative Plural, e.g. Latin caballo:s, Portuguese/Spanish cavalos, French chevaux (<chevals). In Italian -s>-i (caballo:s>caballoi>caballi), and in French almost all final consonants are dropped.
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Wordingham
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 2:26 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: final -s, IE


--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao" <josimo70@......> wrote:
> Is there any explanation why some IE languages dropped -s and
another didnt?
> Ending -S is kept in:
> Baltic
> Latin (even Romance)

But lost in Eastern Romance (incl. Italian), and French (except in
liaison and some exceptional forms), reduced to /h/ in several
American dialects of Spanish.

> Proto-Celtic, Gaulish
They're older than the modern forms :)

> Greek
> Hittite
>
> Ending -S is dropped in:
> Germanic
Not all of it.  While English plural -s may derive from *ses and 3s -
s from 2s *-si, Icelandic preserves nominative singular -s as -(u)r. 
I'm not sure of the origin of Dutch/German plural -s (probably the
same as English) or the Scandinavian present tense ending -er, but
the consonants certainly represent PIE *s.

> Slavic
> Sanskrit (>h)
> Avestic
(But now gone in most, if not all, modern Iranian languages!)
> Armenian
> Modern Celtic languages
> Tocharian
>
>
> Is there any reason to drop the -s ? Accent  position? Substratum? 
The presence or ausence can be used to define some kind of group?

It's largely a matter of time, possibly combined with issues of
usefulness.  Loss is a bit jagged - a different contrast could be
drawn up for the loss of the thematic vowel in nominative singular *-
os.

Richard.