Reconstruction talk:Proto-Slavic/volsь

Why masculine rather than feminine? Serbo-Croatian vlas is feminine, and Slovene lasje could easily be secondary (collective suffix -je). --Ivan Štambuk (talk)
 * Slovene exactly matches the Slavic masculine paradigm in the plural, I see no need to bring in "collectives". Aren't collectives normally neuter singular anyway? 18:21, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * In Serbo-Croatian Proto-Slavic i-stem masculines become o-stems. To my knowledge there are no cases that they switched to i-stem feminines. Slovene singular forms reflect *volsъ, and plural forms could easily be secondary otherwise it would be some kind of strange "mixed" o/i-stem paradigm. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:09, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Such a mixed paradigm is not unique in Slovene. There are other nouns with various degrees of irregularity. In particular, the nominative plural in -je (where -i is regular) is found in several nouns that are otherwise masculine o-stems. For example,, , , , . and  are clear loanwords (because f is not native to Slavic) but  is unambiguously a masculine i-stem.  19:17, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * These examples, if anything, prove that beside inherited i-stem masculines such as gost, the plural in -je was extended to inherited o-stems such as mož and zob. Which means that Slovene plural lasje could be secondary as well. OTOH, we have Serbo-Croatian i-stem feminine which couldn't have been inherited from i-stem masculine, because all of the Proto-Slavic i-stem masculines became o-stems in Serbo-Croatian. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:58, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Of course, that is true. But that doesn't explain the other irregular i-stem endings which has inherited, which are far rarer.  also has an inherited i-stem form, but it's only used in set phrases and it's not listed in the inflection table yet. I just wanted to illustrate that such paradigm mixing, with one or two irregular forms, is not unusual in Slovene. I think it's pretty much indisputable that -je is the inherited i-stem masculine nominative plural ending, not a collective ending. And while its presence on this noun is not conclusive evidence that it was an i-stem, it certainly speaks in favour of it especially when you also consider the other irregular endings which also match the Proto-Slavic i-stem paradigm. That, combined with the irregular inflection in Lower Sorbian, and the fact that Serbo-Croatian has an i-stem, says to me that this was a masculine i-stem in Proto-Slavic. Saying "all Proto-Slavic i-stem masculines became o-stems in Serbo-Croatian" is really a circular argument, because it would be rendered either true or false by this very example depending on what conclusion you draw.  21:09, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * How is it a circular argument? There are no known examples of Serbo-Croatian feminine i-stems reflecting Proto-Slavic masculine i-stems, this would be the only example. What singular endings in las point to original i-stem? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:16, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * No singular endings do, but all of the plural ones do, and specifically to a masculine i-stem at that. We conclude that this is an example if a masculine i-stem that did not become an o-stem in SC, then it's false, but if we say it's not an example, then it's true. If we decide to use it as an argument against treating it as an example, then it becomes circular. Because you will be saying "it's not an example, because there are no examples". 21:22, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * But you yourself already showed that plural forms in -je in Slovene have spread to other classes beside inherited masculine i-stems. Why would vlasje be different than zobje?
 * That Proto-Slavic masculine i-stems become o-stems in Serbo-Croatian is fact that can be cited from the books. It's not a "circular argument" made up to invalidate the speculation that the original noun was not feminine, so as to promote the theory of lasje reflecting the supposed original masculine i-stem, of which traces can be found nowhere else. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:33, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * What makes it different is that it also has other i-stem endings. Of course lasje and zobje could be the same, but then you're saying that lasje, which already has a full i-stem plural paradigm, nonetheless got its nominative plural by analogy with other inherited masculine i-stem nouns. That's kind of a strange argument. 21:39, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Why is it strange that lasje got it by analogy, and it's not that strange zobje and others did not? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:41, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Because lasje already has an i-stem paradigm, like I said. zob is an inherited o-stem, which Baltic evidence (and I think other IE evidence) confirms. So its -je can't be inherited and must have come from another masculine i-stem. On the other hand, lasje already has a whole set of i-stem forms in the plural and it's very unlikely that all of those were taken from another i-stem noun wholesale. So the evidence clearly speaks in favour of an inherited i-stem paradigm, and this means that the ending -je is actually what's expected. If it's analogical, that just begs the question, what inherited ending could it have replaced? Itself? 21:55, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you misunderstood my question: which plural endings of zobje are different than that of lasje, with the latter more convincingly reflecting an inherited i-stem masculine plural forms rather than an analogical transfer to a different inflectional class? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:20, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually now that I look at it, zob has the exact same set of endings, but also has them in the dual, so that only the singular has o-stem endings. I didn't realise that and it's quite puzzling to me now. 22:23, 5 October 2013 (UTC)