Word Final *n in n-stems in Lithuanian

A long long time ago, I wrote a little article on my suspicion that maybe Indo-European didn't have a word final *n in the nominative of n-stems, and that Greek had in fact innovated. I have more proof for this now!

Namely in Lithuanian. Lithuanian, being the wonderful archaic language it is, still fully preserves n-stems. And guess what! The nom-sg. seems to end in *ō. For example the word for water vanduõ.
Nom. vanduõ
Gen. vandeñs
Acc. vándenį

Isn't that nice? Yes, yes it is.

If I were to reconstruct Late Indo-european *n-stems I would no longer reconstruct a word final *n, and consider Greek's *n an innovation.

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Ray Cote
[this is good]
My first thought was that this is ridiculous. Every idiot knows that the the n-stems ended in *-n in the nominative (after the loss of *-s after resonants).So I went back to check things out. Now I always thought there was something wrong with the n-stems, but I could never quite figure it out. Now is seems obvious. You're entirely correct! All the languages except Greek, Armenian, and maybe Old Church Slavonic point to *o:. OCS sometimes has sound changes I don't quite understand, but it looks like it had *-e in the nom. sg. But it still lacks the *n. The Armenian form is the same as the accusative, so it could be that the accusative was analogically extended to the nominative. That leaves the Greek, which itself probably restored the *n analogically.
Glen Gordon

Don't worry, you're not alone Ray. I was a pigheaded skeptic myself but admittedly my mind has been blown. Regardless, we still have to reconstruct a Pre-IE *-n at least, so it's just a matter of pushing the chronology of this denasalization back a little.

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