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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mcarrasquer" <miguelc@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mcarrasquer" <miguelc@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mandicdavid" <davidmandic@>
> > wrote:
> > > > > Slavic vodá might be backformed as a
> > > > > singular (hence the mysterious f.) from the regular *vódy <-
> > > > *wódo:ns.
> > >
> > > That's more likely than *wodo:r > voda.
> >
> > It isn't likely at all. How could a nominative in -y be
> > interpreted as a genitive
>
> Reading the above quote (from Torsten), the reference seems not to
> be to a genitive, but to a plural. But what plural?

That's very simple. The most common noun form in -y is a plural. The
plural vódy is a plural of either a masc. *vod (but -vod alrady meant
something else) or vodá. From then on you can forget about the old
heteroclitic *wodor etc. The poor Slavs or new Slavic-speakers ended
up with a form that looked like a plural, so they made up a singular
for it (cf. the toponym Mineral'nye Vody, apparently vody means spring
or well here).

> The plural of a neuter n-stem would be *undena: (*udena:, *wodena:,
> *wondena:, ...), or (as in Hittite) the collective *udó:r ~ *wedó:r
> itself. That makes even less sense.

Too bad you weren't around then to explain it to them ;-)


Torsten