Re: Slavic endings

constantly.

>
> Is the current state of things things really so bad? I think the main
> arguments for and against either view are rather well known to all the
> interested parties and the lack of consensus results simply from the
> hard-to-resolve internal conflict in the evidence. Speaking for
> myself, I find it more economic to accept *-os > *-ah > *-u(h) > -U,
> which accounts not only for the nom.sg. of thematic masculines but
> also for the 1sg. pres. and dat.pl. *-mU, and fits the general
> pattern of back-vowel raising before the reflex of final *-s.

You seem very certain it was *-mos. Suppose it was *-mon?

> The nom.sg. *-o of es-neuters _can_ be explained as analogical
> (pace Kortlandt), and the masc. nom.sg. in *-o- before enclitics
> (as in OCS narodotU, OCz. vec^eros, etc.) may be due to
> pre-clitic dissimilatory loss -- something like *-os#tos >
> *-ah#tah > *-a#tah > *-a#tuh > -otU. If the nom.sg. *-U had been
> borrowed from u-stems and generalised so thoroughly, why should
> the *-o- of <narodo-tU> etc. have survived at all?

I recall Jens saved the '/o/ before voiced, /e/ elsewhere' rule
for the thematic inflection by positing that m.sg.nom was *-z,
not *-s. Now I would like to narrow that down to '/o/ before
resonant', to see if that might explain o-grade elsewhere so
(and here I've forgotten how much of this is Schmalstieg and
how much me):

Suppose m.sg.nom. was *-ns.
We'd have m.sg.nom. *-õs -> *-õ and from then on m.sg.nom.
and m.n.sg.acc.,n.sg.nom. would be confused and have to be
reorganised;
and *-õs#tõs# -> *-õ#tõ -> *-õn#tõ -> *-o#tõ -> -otU;
similarly, the nom.sg. of es-neuters might be from a dissociated
*õ -> *on.


Torsten