1 post tagged “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.
