From: Jens Elmegård Rasmussen
Message: 46018
Date: 2006-09-10
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "pielewe" <wrvermeer@...> wrote:
Thank you, Willem, for this highly thought-provoking account. I need
to read the original presentations, but one short question just for
now: Is it a problem that Slavic jo-stem nouns turn up in Lithuanian
ending in -ius? For example, Zinkevic^ius to me first-off looks like
the reflex of a pre-Proto-Slavic Ausgang *-ju-s from *-jo-s parallel
to *-u(s) from *-os. Is there a different way to handle this?
Jens
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen <elme@>
> wrote:
>
> On the Novgorod msc o-stem Nsg in -e:
>
> >
> > But you *have* whetted our appetite, and you can spare us a
whole
> lot
> > of searching if you would be kind enough to paraphrase the main
> point
> > of your theory here. Is it graphic?
> >
>
> The trouble is that it is a long and (worse) somewhat paradoxical
> story. But what is really bad is that it is based on Leskien's
> hypothesis that the phonetically regular reflex of word-final PIE
*os
> in Slavic is *o, which is not exactly a view with much support
among
> Cybalist members, despite its clear prevalence among specialists
> (Hujer, Vondrák, van Wijk, Berns^tejn, Mares^, Shevelov, Stieber,
> Kortlandt, and many others).
>
> So if you bear with me in the matter of the reflex of word-final
*os
> (for the sake of the argument), here we go.
>
>
> Assuming that word-final *os yields -o we get the following
reflexes:
>
> msc Nsg o-stem/jo-stem/u-stem/i-stem: -o/-e/-U/-I.
> msc Asg o-stem/jo-stem/u-stem/i-stem: -U/-I/-U/-I.
> msc Vsg o-stem/jo-stem/u-stem/i-stem: -e/-e/-u/-i.
>
> neut NAsg o-stem/jo-stem/es-stem: -o/-e/-o.
>
> In the system of endings as displayed here, the position of the
Nsg
> of the msc o- and jo-stems is precarious, *because it risks being
> perceived as a mark of the neuter gender*, which it is already in
the
> Asg. The problem is much more serious in the case of the o-stems
than
> in that of the jo-stems because the number of underived neuter jo-
> stems is tiny (most jo-stems are characterized by the presence of
> clear-cut suffixes), so that the risk of a random msc Nsg in -e
being
> perceived as a neuter is negligeable.
>
> The obvious way of eliminating the problem was by analogically
> replacing the regular o-stem ending with a Nsg ending from another
> paradigm. The two most obvious candidates are: u-stem -U and the
jo-
> stem ending -e.
>
> Both replacements undermine distinctions present elsewhere in the
> system. Adoption of the u-stem ending eliminates the difference
> between Nsg and Asg, adoption of the jo-stem ending eliminates the
> difference between Nsg and Vsg. (I'm discounting words where those
> distinctions are marked additionally by consonantal alternations
> and/or prosodic means.)
>
> 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 way I see it, Novgorod/Pskov Slavic contains one or two
features
> that were introduced by the first generation of Finnic speakers to
> shift to Slavic, let's say not long before or after around 600 CE.
By
> the time everybody was monolingual again, those features were
locked
> into the system while later changes just went along with what the
> bulk of Slavic was doing.
>
> The real story is longer and more involved, but these are the
> main lines.
>
> Best, Willem
>