Re: final -s, IE

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao" <josimo70@...> wrote:

> In Romance there is not a real s-drop: Romance languages abbandoned

the nominative -s, and adopted accusative -m.

Does anyone know how long the nominative/accusative distinction
survived in Italian? I suppose we should mean Tuscan. The
distinction was still there in Old French, and is probably reflected
in names like _Charles_ and _Jacques_.

> 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) ...

I think that change is restricted to monosyllables. In the 1pl,
Latin -mus > Italian -mo.

> and in French almost all final consonants are dropped.

As in Slavic, so is this -s drop or not?

Richard.