Re: Slavic endings

> > I don't get the whole idea of 'importation from pronouns'.
> > What would be the point of that? Suppose instead PIE
> > *-od/-o:d was originally a partitive ending (?= Lat. de,
> > ?= Slav ot) and *-od -> gen. -a, *-o:d -> nt. nom.,acc. -o ?
>
> Pronominal inflections are often imported into the noun system.

Hm. Pronominal inflections are often claimed to be imported
into the noun system, and I still don't get why they should be.

> Well-known examples include the nom.pl. *-oi of animate o-stems in
> several branches of IE

Hm. See below.

>and Gothic gen.sg. -is < *-es(j)o

As I suggested, that might be from <noun> es-jo "<noun> its",
cf the same construction in Norwegian, Dutch and Jysk, which
would explain the e-grade.

> The reason is that a demonstrative pronoun often occurs next
> to a noun in the same noun phrase, and the two must
> agree gramatically. Rhyming endings emphasise the agreement
> (same function --> same form).

A much simpler solution is to assume that the case endings of
the pronouns, and so of the nouns claimed to import them,
are inflected versions of the demonstrative i-s etc.
Cf. German
von gute-m Hause
von de-m gutem Hause
etc
showing exactly the opposite of what you claim was the origin:
namely one, and only one, postposed "pronominal" ending,
at the beginning of the NP. That suggests it might have
been an independent word recently.


Torsten