--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> As far as I know (which is mainly the modern standard
> languages), there are 5 different systems:
>
> 1. nesy, znajeN, xvaleN (OCS)
Actually, the situation is more complex in that several other
possibilities are attested in the manuscripts alongside the textbook
ending -y, most spectacularly the use of a glagolitic letter that was
apparently developed for the express purpose of writing this very
ending and nothing else.
> 2. extension of -e(N) to all forms (Slv, Srb, Mod.Russ)
The Mod. Russ. system is attested from the earliest times in the
extreme North (Novgorod). It is not without significance that
Slovene, SCr and Novgorod are precisely the Slavic dialects that have
tended most strongly to generalize "soft" endings in decensions that
oppose a hard to a soft sub-paradigm, so extension of -e(N) fits a
morphological pattern in all three dialect areas. The southward
spread of the Novgorod system to embrace all of Russian is in a line
with the general tendency of morphological simplifications that arose
in Novgorod to spread southward.
Willem