Re: Soft sign in Russian verb endings

From: Miguel Carrasquer (mcv_at_wxs.nl)
Date: 01/11/05 

Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 15:07:40 +0100

On 11 Jan 2005 09:59:45 +0100, Arndt Jonasson
<do-not-use@invalid.net> wrote:

>What is the historic explanation of the soft sign used at the end
>of 2nd person singular present tense verb forms in Russian?

The 2nd. person singular ending used to be -s^i, with a full
vowel -i (although this was possibly a Church Slavicism, the
popular pronunciation always having been -s^I, with a front
yer). The modern spelling can reflect either reduced Church
Slavonic -s^i (for which compare the infinitives in -t' from
older -ti) or directly East Slavic -s^I.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@wxs.nl