On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:34:11 +0100 (CET), Mate Kapović
<
mkapovic@...> wrote:
>On Pon, siječanj 29, 2007 12:33 am, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal reče:
>
>> - the Npl.
>> Lithuanian nominal -ai(~), adjectival -ě. The nominal ending
>> is perhaps from the stems in *-ijos, which have -iai even in
>> the adjectives (from unstressed contracted *-ijaj).
>> Adjectival -i` is as expected from PIE *-oj.
>
>Yeah, but this is originally acute, cf. definite -íeji.
Yes, -i` is obviously from -íe by Leskien's law.
What I mean is that _originally_, this was not acute or even
a diphthong. It was just a short vowel followed by a
consonant (which happened to be /j/). Now when final /aj/
merged with /ai/ segmentally, i.e. when */aj/ became a
normal diphthong, it had to adopt one intonation or the
other, and it adopted the acute. It's not a coincidence that
the same happened in Greek (the -ai's and -oi's that count
as short for the law of limitation are synchronically normal
diphthongs --they scan as long-- in Ancient Greek, and they
carry the acute accent). So Bräuer (Fortunatov) _has_ a
point here, at least for Lithuanian (and Greek). I just have
to wonder about the optative...
Now I'm not sure what happened in Slavic: it is possible to
come up with [ad-hoc] reasons why *-ai~ > -e: vs. *-aí >
-i:, but there are two reasons why I'm inclined to think it
didn't go like that in Slavic. First, (Proto-)Slavic is
never keen on tonal distinctions in final syllables. Second,
the dual ending *-aiH, which cannot but give an acute, gives
-e^ anyway. And since it's just as easy to come with ad-hoc
reasons why *-ai(H) > -e: vs. *-aj(H) > i:, I prefer to
stick to that for Slavic.
>> - the personal pronoun datives *moj, *toj, *soj
>> Not attested in Lithuanian?
>
>Old Lithuanian has -m(i), -t(i), -s(i) for GDA. usually derived from the
>same pre-form as Slavic (whether *moy or *mey) with a possible *-aj > -i
>in unstressed position.
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...