Miguel wrote:
>There is no (phonological) merger of 3rd. person sg. and
>plural in Baltic, like there is in the Romanian a:-verbs.
>In Baltic, there is simply loss of the dual (*-e-te) and
>plural (*-o-nt[i]) forms, not by phonological, but by
>syntactic processes.
>This only affects Baltic. Not Slavic, not Albanian, not
>Romance.
I. Miguel, I trust more Cyril Babaev than you regarding Lithuanian:
url:
http://indoeuro.bizland.com/project/grammar/grammar12.html#8
"The peculiarity of Lithuanian is the joint 3rd person form, with no
number distinction. It was caused by the disappearance of two Indo-
European endings -t and -nt, so only a vowel remained, and since then
all Lithuanian verbs have the same forms for "he does" and "they do".
Another sign of analytization. "
See also the current Lithuanian endings:
I. Conj. II III
3 pers. -a / -ia -i -o
3rd pers. -a / -ia -i -o
II. Regarding Albanian is a non-sense to talk about here because the
IE thematic present was lost in Albanian and replaced by other forms.
III. At least Regarding Romanian you have agreed.
So my assupmtion that the disappearance of the two Indo-European
endings -t and -nt happened "earlier" in the "Eastern Indo-European
Zone" (before Roman arrival in Balkans) is confirmed.
Regards,
Marius