Substrate in the Baltic

In Baltic Fennic, the Finno-Ugric accusative suffix *-m and *-n have
merged, so that old genitives and accustatives can't be distiguished.

In Estonian (probably also in Finnish) (grammatical) objects are
either whole or partial. Objects are partial in negative and in
imperfective sentences.

Whole objects are in the nominative in imperfective sentences,
otherwise in the genitive.

Partial objects are in the partitive, a case which is particular to
the Baltic Fennic languages. It is sometimes constructed with a PFU
separative suffix *-tI/*-tA, with reflexes outside Fennic in Mordva,
Mari and Samoyedic. The same suffix is combined with the co-affixes
*-l- and *-s- in Fennic in the elative and ablative cases.


In Slavonian and East Baltic (Lit., Latv.), but not Prussian, the old
IE genitive is replaced with the ablative. The PIE ablative is
constructed with a suffix *-od, which may be identical to the Russian
preposition ot.

In Slavonian (at least in Russian, to my knowledge) the genitive, ie.
the old ablative, is used with partial objects, including in negative
sentences.


What does one make of this? Finno-Ugric substrate in Slavic and East
Baltic? Or common pre-IE substrate in Baltic Fennic, East Baltic and
Slavonian?


Another thing: the East Slavonian have-sentence is said to be of
the 'mihi est' type. But the Russian is 'u menya kniga' "at me (is)
book", not *'mnye kniga'; it uses a local case just like Estonian
'mul on raamat' "on-me[adessive] is book". The Fennic languages
don't have a dative, and therefore make do with local cases:
'mulle meeldib ...' "onto-me likes ...", ie "I like ...", where IE
languages would use a dative. Is this another substrate feature of
Eastern Slavonian?


Torsten