Re: [tied] Re: Various loose thoughts

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sergejus Tarasovas" <s.tarasovas@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2005 7:45 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Various loose thoughts


>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Mate Kapovic" <mkapovic@...> wrote:
>
>> Hm, but the fact is that only -u- does *not* disappear from the
> last
>> syllable in Latvian. Cf. in o-stems Lith. -as : Latv. -s and in u-
> stems
>> Lith. -us : Latv. -us. Also, *-u is preserved in Auslaut as well in
> Latvian.
>> Thus, it couldn't have been *-mus in pre-Latvian.
>
>
> By that logic, modern Standard Lith. -ms can continue anything but *-
> mus, since -u- otherwise does *not* disappear from the last syllable
> in Lithuanian. One should not forget we are speaking of a
> *disyllabic* desinence, which well may have developed by slightly
> different (morpho)phonological rules.
>
> I'm not an expert in Latvian historical phonology, but I think
> Endzeli:ns had his reasons to not exclude *-mus.

I still think you cannot compare (Modern) Lithuanian developments with
pre-Latvian ones. Do you have any example of the cases of unregular
behaviour of vowels in the last syllable in Latvian? In Latvian, the rule is
simple, short vowels are dropped in the last syllable, except *-u-. When we
see that in Lith. -mus yield -ms and maybe earlier *-mas yielded -mus, we
have to assume a special development. But in case of Latvian, we do not. Of
course, there is always a possibity of it I think that we have stick with
the simplest and regular development if we have no strong proof pointing
otherwise.

Mate