Identifying the Early Proto-Slavic Acrostatic Declension of i-Stem Nouns

Abstract

This article uses the analysis of lexemes from the word family *kostь f. ‘bone’ with the phonemic sequence *-st’- and typologically comparable material from other Slavic word families to establish that during the early Proto-Slavic period the acrostatic declension pattern of i-stem nouns of the type Skt. ávi-ḥ, Gsg ávy-aḥ was at least still partially active in inflectional morphology and that it was only later (and in the Slavic linguistic system) that it was supplanted and the dominant proterokinetic type *kȍstь < *-i-s, Gsg *kȍsti < *-e-s prevailed over it.

Keywords

• slavic i-stem declension
• proto-slavic acrostatic declension of i-stem nouns
• slavic inflectional morphology
• slavic word formation
• slavic lexicon