--- In nostratic@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Nov 2001 02:16:37, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
> wrote:
> >
> The o-stems are substantially different from all other stems in the
> following respects:
>
> 1) Gsg. in *-osio
> 2) Ab.sg. in *-o:d (other declensions do not have a separate Abl.)
> 3) Plural built on *-oi- (Npl. *-oi or *-o:s < *-o-es; Lpl. *-oi-su,
> Ipl. *-o:i-(h1)s, DAb.pl. maybe *-oi-os).
> 4) Bare stem (Voc sg.) ends in *-e, not *-o.
> 5) Immobile stress (either on the root or on the thematic vowel).
>
Hi
My hypotesis that the thematic wovel arose during the zero-grade
periode in nouns having permanent stress on the second root-wovel,
explains many of these facts.
For those nouns, the zero-grade process originally produced a lot of
homonymity in the case endings. (For example nom.sg, nom.pl, gen.sg,
abk.sg all just having the ending -s). In order to repair these
defaults, analogies were introdused partly from the athematic
declension, and partly from the pronominal declension.