Re: Various loose thoughts

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

>(there were no diphthongs in OLith -ìmus, -ùmus,
> right?).

Of course.

> How come the standard language
> maintains -imìs, -umìs and doesn't have the -im~s, -um~s
> which you cited (dialectal forms?).

The short answer is "by chance". The Lithuanian dialects demonstrate
nearly all the possible combinations of contracted and non-contracted
disyllabic desinences, and the process is still active, so the
standard language probably just has photographed (in the end of the
19th c.) and canonized the wave of this (morpho)phonological change
as it went through some of the South-West Auks^taitian dialects.

> Is the reduction of
> Dpl. -oms, -ams, -ims, -ums part of the same phenomenon that
> led to the reduction of akmen~s, dukter~s?

Yes.

Sergei