Re: [tied] Re: sum

pielewe wrote:

> I don't want to suggest that competent reconstruction on the basis of
> _all_ attestations would really yield *sUmI, though. Absence of *U is
> abundantly attested, for instance, in Novgorod birchbark letters
> beginning in the first half of the twelfth century, e.g. 119, which is
> written in dialect.

Cf. Old Polish jes'm', enclitic -(e)s'm' < *(j)esmI, eventually reduced
to -(e)m- in Middle and Modern Polish. A Proto-Slavic yer in *sUmI would
have yielded OPol. sem (totally unknown). There is a _secondary_ prop
vowel in Czech jsem, etc., regular in this position. Of course nobody
who knows anything about the history of Slavic needs to be told that --
it's all for the sake of Torsten's education.

Piotr