On 2006-05-03 18:40, Andrew Jarrette wrote:
> I've never heard of this acc. pl. in *-o:ns (as opposed to *-ons).
> What is it, what is its origin, and is it the form that regularly
> occurred in Germanic, or certain branches of Germanic?
I assume that the PIE acc.pl. ending of masculine o-stems was *-o:ns. In
most branches you can't see the difference because of the Osthoffian
shortening of *-o: in this context, but Skt. has -a:n, and the long
vowel seems to be confirmed by the Lith. acute intonation on the ending.
There was a discussion of the problem on Cybalist some time ago, cf.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/15770
and the rest of that thread.
As for its origin, one can only speculate. My guess is that the ending
was originally *-o:m < *-o-X-m, where *X is a pre-PIE plural marker
(never mind its phonetic realisation for the moment) and *-m is the
familiar acc. ending. The *-s is a later addition, marking plurality
once again after the old marker had become obscured.
Piotr