Re: Balto-Slavic C-stems / long vowel endings

> The 1sg. pres. ending -oH2 yielded acute -o: in Lithuanian (later
> short -u). In Slavic, it turned into -a: and was later expanded with
> the secondary ending -m (cf. 1sg. aorist pekU < *pekwom, and also
> skr. bhára:mi < *bhero:+mi). The addition of -m probably followed
> the change o: > a: in Slavic, because the o: yielded u: > y before
> nasal stops in word-final position: kamy < *ka:mu: < *ak'mo:n. Also,
> -a:N# wasn't affected by umlaut (A.sg. zemljoN; thus also 1.sg.
> pres. bijoN etc.).

If one takes the Schmalstieg approach instead, the 1sg pres. ending
would be *-oN, with sandhi variant *-o: of which the latter was taken
by Lithuanian, whereas the former would be taken by Slavic. Since the
language probably like PIE was SOV the verb ending would be
sentence-final, where the sandhi variant *-oN would be the result,
whereas in oxytone neuters, which weren't, *-o was preferred.

BTW, kámy vs. akmuo reminds me somehow of nom. n-inflection ON bogi
vs. Gothic hana. There must be some common explanation to the
variation in those two pairs, and I suspect stress has to do with it.


Torsten