Re: IE & Uralic

> Partitive genitive in Russian may be due to a relatively late
> influence from the Baltic Finnish substrate.

I thought the use of partitive genitive in negative existential
sentences was pan-Slavic, not just Russian? And why the correspondence
Slavic genitive < ablative *-od <-> Fennic separative *-tV?

> Note that the North
> Russian dialects (Slavo-Finnish contact area) make use of partitive
> genitive also in positive contexts which finds exact correspondence
> in Baltic Finnish (particularly in Suomi, see I. Vahros' Venäjän
> genetiivi ja suomen partitiivi eritoten objektin ja subjektin
> kaasuksina. Juhlakirja L. Hakulisen 60-vuotispäiväksi. Helsinki,
> 1959. Pp. 283ff).
>
> Conclusion so far: the partitive genitive is hardly a result of
> hypothetical European IE – Uralic contacts in the proto-epoch but
> rather either a typological feature attested in various IE
> (Germanic, Romance) and non-IE (Finnish, Basque) languages or a
> vestige of relatively recent contacts (North Russian < Finnish).

So if it's both in positive and negative contexts it's substrate
influence but if it's only in negative contexts it's just typology? I
don't think so.

What's the use in negative existential sentences in Baltic?

The other thing to consider is how close East Germanic was to Slavic
and Fennic during its genesis?


Torsten