Re: sum

> They arose as reduced forms in South Slavic. Serbo-Croatian has full
> forms jesam jesi jest jesmo jeste jesu and enclitic sam si je smo
> ste su. Slovene has only the reduced forms sem si je smo ste so. The
> Freisinger Denkmäler (10th cty. Slovene) have several occurrences of
> iesem. The vowel in Slov. sem (which is a schwa), SbCr. sam and
> Bulg. sUm is the regular propvowel which appears when clusters move
> to final position by loss of a final reduced vowel (as in the name
> Peter, Petar from PetrU). The Macedonian -u- in sum (sic) may show
> secondary influence from thematic -u (OCS -oN). There is no high
> antiquity about sem/sam/sum/sUm. The story of its development is
> strikingly parallel to that of Latin sum.

'jesu' is obviously from 'su' and not the other way around. And the
reason that's obvious is that everyone accepts the existence of 3rd
sg. *h1és-ti vs 3rd pl. *h1s-ónti. You would probably see the two
paradigms as coming from a single one like this:

jesam
jesi
jest

smo
ste
su

and I would see them as coming from:
som
jesi
jest
smo
jeste
su

The difference is the distribution of the ablaut vowels. My rule is
my 'misuse' of your rule: stressed -o- before voiced, unstressed -e-
elsewhere. That's phonetic. Your distribution of ablaut is based on
morphology: sg. vs. pl. But what phonetic mechanism do you suggest?


Torsten