Re: [tied] Lith. ins.pl.

On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 00:29:29 +0200, Miguel Carrasquer
<mcv@...> wrote:

>It occurred to me that the Lith. o-stem ins.pl. -ai~s cannot
>go back to the usually reconstructed PIE form *-o:is (or
>*-ôis). That would have given -uis, since uo~R gets reduced
>to -uR (e.g. Gpl. -uN, Dsg. -ui) and uó gets reduced to ù
>(I.sg. -ù). The Lithuanian form must go back to *-ois.
>
>Slavic -y is inconclusive, as -VRs gets lengthened to -V:Rs,
>so *-ois > *-uih > *-u:ih > -y, the same as *-o:is or *-ôis.
>
>The other form pointing to a long vowel, Skt. -aih. (i.e.
>-a:is], would seem to be inconclusive too, as Sanskrit has,
>independently of Slavic (and independently of
>Szemerényi-lengthening in pre-PIE) the same soundlaw too:
>e.g. acc.pl. of i- and u-stems -i:n/-i:s, -u:n/-u:s, like
>Slavic -i, -y, < *-ins, *-uns.
>
>So, unless I'm missing something (Greek -ois, Latin -i:s are
>inconclusive too), the ending should be reconstructed as
>*-ois, based on the conclusive Lithuanian evidence.

Some further thoughts on Lithuanian:

The o-stem acc.pl. -ùs shows that the PIE form was *-o:ns,
not *-ons (which would have given *-às).

As to the o-stem nom.pl. -ai/-i, it occurred to me that
root-stressed (ap 1 & 2) forms in *-ijo- (brólis <
*bró:lijas) regularly reduce *-ijV- to -i-, while mobile
forms have *-ijV' > *-i~:- (arkly~s < *arklijás). So we
might expect the nom.pl. *-ijaj to develop to *-ij, and in
mobile (end-stressed) forms *-ijáj > *-i~:j > *-ìj. Both
forms would have likely been reduced to -i (-ì).

That of course doesn't explain the actual distribution,
which is (o) -ai, (jo) -iai (ijo) -iai for nouns, and (o)
-i, (jo) -i, (ijo) -i/-iai for adjectives.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...