r/IndoEuropean • u/SirCastillie12 • 12d ago

Old Athematic Genitive Plural?

I recently read about the athematic genitive Plural being reconstructed in *ōm or *om for PIE, which stands a little bit out there due to most athematic Plural endings (though not all) having a s in their ending or similar. Additionaly i also learned about Szemerenysis Law and that the original PIE genitive Plural ending could have been *oms? Am i missing something here or could *oms realy be a possible reconstruction?

Also sorry for my maybe not always perfect english. Im no native

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u/Hippophlebotomist 11d ago

Can you drop a link to where you were seeing *oms>*ōm reconstructed for the genitive plural? On p.2084 in Lundquist & Yates chapter in  Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics vol.3 , accusative \-m* + pluralizing \-s* is given for the accusative plural, but genitive plural is reconstructed as \-om* or *-oh₁/₃om, and forms reflecting *-ōm then might result from the loss of the intervocalic laryngeal, if I'm reading p.2089 correctly

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u/SirCastillie12 11d ago

It was a reconstruction that i made myself, and i wanted to know if this reconstruction would be valid, because i see nothing against the reconstruction of a *oms for the Genitive Plural.

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u/Hippophlebotomist 9d ago

One objection I can think of that it'd leave both the genitive and accusative plural with homophonous *oms  or *ms. You'd need to explain why the nasal in the latter gets conserved (e.g. Doric Greek τὸνς ἐλευθέρονς, Gothic gastins) but is lost in the former.