Reconstruction talk:Proto-Slavic/eša

Slawski hypothesis

@Sławobóg: I appreciate your prejudice towards Slawski's explanation, however, it does not seem to be as compelling as you present it. First, the shift *ešče > *eša is not a simplification; it's a corruption. Second, there are instances where both Old Church Slavonic ѥщє (ješte) and Old Church Slavonic ѥша (ješa) are found within the same text. Third, Old Church Slavonic is the oldest attested Slavic language and it tends to preserve most faithfully proto-forms. I'm no aware of any other instance in OCS, where pSl. *-šč- contracts to OCS -ш-. Hence, to justify this change with dialectal irregularities from younger cousin-languages is as good as making stuff up. Forth, the examples that Slawski gives have loopholes. For example, Russian ещё (ješčó) < *ešče and Russian исто (isto) < *jisto seem to be two distinct lemmas with synonymous meaning. Fifth, where does final *-a in *eša come from under Slawski's conjecture?

I don't intend to start edit-wars over nitpicky details, so do as you want here. However, elsewhere where details do matter, probably you will benefit if you shy away from topics which you lack expertise on. 46.10.1.70 08:19, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't know if it's compelling or not, I didn't push any view on this etymology, I just explained Sławski's etymology in detail. That change could happen already in PS, so it is not visible in OCS. He also gives argument against this etymology (All this is unlikely, there are no other traces in Slavic of the Indo-European optative verbs with the formant -ye-). We can set Iljinsky's etymology as main etymology if that makes it more neutral. We could use newer papers tho. Sławobóg (talk) 14:25, 23 December 2022 (UTC)