Re: Slavic endings

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "pielewe" <wrvermeer@...> wrote:

> Novgorod/Pskov Slavic is spoken in an area which originally spoke
> Finnic. If you look at the Finnic case system, you notice that it has
> no vocative. On the other hand the distinction between the nominative
> and the case used for direct object is never neutralized in the
> singular the way it often is in Slavic. So the choice of -e is
> natural given the expectations of a speaker of Finnic learning to
> speak Slavic.
>
> The degree to which the remainder of Slavic cherished the distinction
> between Nsg and Vsg is graphically illustrated by the fact that the
> jo-stems, where the two cases had merged phonetically by the loss of
> final *s, reintroduced it by borrowing the u-stem ending.

The absence (presence) of Vsg in *-ju with the *jo-stems in
Novgorod/Pskov Slavic would corroborate (weaken) your theory. This
morhological position was still (conveniently) absent from the material
in the end of 1994, when Zaliznjak was finishing the first version
of "Drevnenovgorodskij dialekt". I haven't got the revised edition of
2004 or other later publications to hand and can't check.

Sergei