Thread:User talk:CodeCat/Proto-Finnic declension/reply (2)

The illatives of *s-stems are actually from forms like †kuninkaasen < *kuninkahe-sen with the stem in the weak grade as expected, and hence the ending in the strong grade. The long-vocalic endings -seen, -siin are by analogy to diminutives like punaiseen < *punaise-hen.

The sibilant in the conditionals has certainly been *-c-, yes. The mood marker ,has been explained to have developed from the continuative verbal suffix *-ice-, as in 'joy' :  'to revel'.

On syncope:
 * I'm not sure what you mean by "contraction in the inessive". We have no evidence of any former vowel between *s and *n in the ending.
 * Loss of two subsequent vowels is not attested anywhere, no. I guess the analogy of the other personal endings would have kept the 2PS potentials from contracting.
 * IIUC there is no original *-te- element in the optatives: the long vowels are shaped after the relatively frequently used 3PS forms. Hence *-gotek, etc.
 * I think *-ht- < *-šet- is pretty much regular, yes. Though of course this is not found in the inflection of words like or  where another consonant precedes. CCC contracted forms like *kante-ta- > *kantta- > *katta- 'to cover' were fossilized already by Proto-Finnic.
 * Syncope before *k is exceptional and indeed does not seem to have occurred anywhere else than in nähdä, tehdä and their passives nähnyt, tehnyt. I wonder if the fact that all other -ke-stem words are back-vocalic (e.g., ) or nominals (e.g. , ) has something to do with this. It may also be relevant that these verbs have an exceptional inflection in Livonian, based largely on the monosyllabic stems nǟ-, tīe- (which look like as if they were from *näxə-, *texə- and not *näkə-, *tekə-).