# Third person singular verb ending -t in Russian



## CitizenEmpty

Based on xoditi, I found out that the Proto-Slavic equivalent of "he/she goes (by walking)" would be *xoditь, with "ь" at the end.

If you look at the Russian equivalent, it's quite similar without "ь".

Russian: ходи*т* = he/she goes (by walking)​
How did this vowel or semi-vowel ь disappear in Russian?

But if we compare with a West Slavic and a South Slavic languages:

Russian: ходи*т* = he/she goes (by walking)
Polish: chodzi = he/she goes (by walking)
Serbian: ходи = he/she goes (by walking)​
Polish and Serbian don't have any *т* at the end. What sound change affected Polish and Serbian in this case?


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## ahvalj

We seem to have already touched this in an earlier thread. Well, for the sake of readability I will try to be more compact.

(1) It is unknown how did the vowel -_ь_ disappear from this Russian ending. The ancient dialects of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir-Suzdal) that are the cradle of later Standard Russian, are not attested in writing, since all the texts reflect the bookish language with either the Old Church Slavonic -_тъ/tъ_ or the Old East Slavic -_tь/ть_.

(2) Most West and South Slavic languages are first attested at the stage when they already lacked -_t_- in the 3rd person. However, we have the example of Bulgarian and Macedonian, which now lack -_t_ in Sg. 3 but possess it in Pl. 3, whereas their ancestor, Old Church Slavonic, had -_t_- in both: OCS _ходитъ/xoditъ_ and _ходѧтъ/xodętъ_ vs. Bulgarian _ходи/xodi_ and _ходят/xodʲət_ (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ходя#Conjugation). Since this -_tъ_ in Sg. 3 and Pl. 3 was identical, this divergence must be non-phonetic. That -_t_+vowel was present in other languages as well, is evidenced by the length of the preceding vowel in e. g. Czech (_chodí_), Slovak (_chodí_) and Serbo-Croatian (_hodī_): in standard languages the ancient final long vowels of this kind have shortened, e. g. Serbo-Croatian Gen./Dat./Loc. Sg. and Nom./Acc. Pl. _kosti_ (the length of _hodī_ in the Serbo-Croatian Aorist Sg. 2/3 has another explanation). Why did -_t_ disappear is unknown.

*P. S. *The difference between the short _i_ in the Infinitive/Aorist/l-Participle (_chodit/hoditi,_ _hodih, chodil/hodio_) and the long _i_ in the Present (_chodí/hodī_) is explained by their different origin: the Aorist long _i_ bore an acute accent and originated from PIE *_i_+laryngeal, whereas the Present long _i _bore a neo-acute accent (=Balto-Slavic circumflex) and originated most probably from the diphthong *_eı̯:_ the fate of these two kinds of long vowels was different in pre-modern Slavic.


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## CitizenEmpty

ahvalj said:


> We seem to have already touched this in an earlier thread. Well, for the sake of readability I will try to be more compact.



Yes, we did. But this made me to question about this even more, now that I discover some verbal conjugations in other Slavic languages.



> (1) It is unknown how did the vowel -_ь_ disappear from this Russian ending. The ancient dialects of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir-Suzdal) that are the cradle of later Standard Russian, are not attested in writing, since all the texts reflect the bookish language with either the Old Church Slavonic -_тъ/tъ_ or the Old East Slavic -_tь/ть_.



I think of this quite differently. I think the common Russian infinitive ending -ть was a weakened version of "archaic" ти (unstressed). And I think the third person singular ending in modern Russian -т was originally the old -ть that became a hard consonant in order to distinguish the infinitive marker -ть.



> (2) Most West and South Slavic languages are first attested at the stage when they already lacked -_t_- in the 3rd person. However, we have the example of Bulgarian and Macedonian, which now lack -_t_ in Sg. 3 but possess it in Pl. 3, whereas their ancestor, Old Church Slavonic, had -_t_- in both: OCS _ходитъ/xoditъ_ and _ходѧтъ/xodętъ_ vs. Bulgarian _ходи/xodi_ and _ходят/xodʲət_ (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ходя#Conjugation). Since this -_tъ_ in Sg. 3 and Pl. 3 was identical, this divergence must be non-phonetic. That -_t_+vowel was present in other languages as well, is evidenced by the length of the preceding vowel in e. g. Czech (_chodí_), Slovak (_chodí_) and Serbo-Croatian (_hodī_): in standard languages the ancient final long vowels of this kind have shortened, e. g. Serbo-Croatian Gen./Dat./Loc. Sg. and Nom./Acc. Pl. _kosti_ (the length of _hodī_ in the Serbo-Croatian Aorist Sg. 2/3 has another explanation). Why did -_t_ disappear is unknown.



Interesting. I would not assume that -t would become a glottal and suddenly disappear. Would there be any similar examples in other non-Slavic European languages?


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## ahvalj

CitizenEmpty said:


> I think of this quite differently. I think the common Russian infinitive ending -ть was a weakened version of "archaic" ти (unstressed). And I think the third person singular ending in modern Russian -т was originally the old -ть that became a hard consonant in order to distinguish the infinitive marker -ть.


As far as I can judge, the dialectal evidence rather contradicts this scenario: the South Russian dialects and Belarusian have -_ть_ in both Sg. 3 and the Infinitive (thus the standard _мутит/мутить_ correspond there to _мутить/мутить _in South Russian and _муціць/муціць_ in Belarusian), whereas the Northern dialects have -_т_ in the 3rd person but -_ти_ in the Infinitive (_мутит/мутити_), so that where such a differentiation is necessary, it is absent, whereas where it would seem redundant, it is present.



CitizenEmpty said:


> Interesting. I would not assume that -t would become a glottal and suddenly disappear. Would there be any similar examples in other non-Slavic European languages?


-_t_- in the 3rd person has disappeared in the historical times in dialectal Latin and in most Romance languages.


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## CitizenEmpty

ahvalj said:


> As far as I can judge, the dialectal evidence rather contradicts this scenario: the South Russian dialects and Belarusian have -_ть_ in both Sg. 3 and the Infinitive (thus the standard _мутит/мутить_ correspond there to _мутить/мутить _in South Russian and _муціць/муціць_ in Belarusian), whereas the Northern dialects have -_т_ in the 3rd person but -_ти_ in the Infinitive (_мутит/мутити_), so that where such a differentiation is necessary, it is absent, whereas where it would seem redundant, it is present.



I'm very tempted to think of this -т as some kind of a non-Slavic influence. If it cannot be explained within the Slavic linguistic sphere, then it's going to be quite awkward.


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## ahvalj

CitizenEmpty said:


> I'm very tempted to think of this -т as some kind of a non-Slavic influence. If it cannot be explained within the Slavic linguistic sphere, then it's going to be quite awkward.


Actually, these Sg./Pl. 3 -_tь_ along with the Pl. 2 -_te_ and the athematic Sg. 1 -_mь_ are the only four unproblematic Slavic endings of the Present tense: every other has some difficulties with it in the sense that it can't be linearly derived from the accepted PIE proto-form (Sg. 1 -_ǫ,_ Sg. 2 -_si/ši,_ Sg./Pl. 3 _-tъ,_ Pl. 1 _-mъ/-me/-mo/-my,_ Du. 1 -_vě_, Du. 2/3 -_te/-ta_).

For example, the traditional explanation of -_ǫ_ (which I share) is that the original *-_ō_ regularly developed into *-_ā_ and then acquired a final nasal -_n_ from the secondary (Aorist) endings (compare -_ǫ_ in the Acc. Sg. of the _ā_-declension), so that Praes. Sg. 1 *_pādā_ (< post-PIE *_podō_) vs. Aor. Sg. 1 *_pādan_ (< post-PIE *_podom_) were transformed into *_pādān_ vs. *_pādan_ and then regularly produced the attested OCS _padǫ_ vs. _padъ_.

The Sg. 2 -_šь_ seems not to be original, since it is attested later than -_ši_, so it can't be derived directly from PIE *-_si_. These older -_si/-ši_ are obviously related to Prussian _-sei/-sai _(e. g. Prussian _assai/essei _vs. OCS _jesi_), and may represent a contamination of the original thematic *-_ehₑi_ (modern Lithuanian non-reflexive -_i_ and reflexive -_iesi, _Greek_ -εις_) with the Mediopassive *-_soı̯ _etc.


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## CitizenEmpty

Are there any examples of Russian words that lost their "ь"?


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## ahvalj

CitizenEmpty said:


> Are there any examples of Russian words that lost their "ь"?


If you mean, lost without trace, then only after hardened palatals (_-ць, -шь, -жь_). But as I had explained in that thread, we can't be sure that the modern verbal endings with _-t_ continue only the primary endings -_ti_ and -_nti_: they can perfectly be explained phonetically from the PIE Imperative -_tu_ and -_ntu._ In this scenario, after the disappearance of the inherited Imperative (the modern Imperative is the ancient Present Optative, whereas the modern Conjunctive is the ancient Perfect Optative) some Slavic dialects may have used its well-defined _-tu_ and _-ntu_ as variant endings in the Present, and eventually some dialects have chosen _-ti/-nti,_ while the others have preferred _-tu/-ntu_. The actual picture may have been even more complicated, of course: let's recall e. g. the endingless 3rd person forms in oldest texts.


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## CitizenEmpty

ahvalj said:


> of course, if we recall the endingless 3rd person forms in oldest texts.



Could we say that -т was reintroduced in later centuries?


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## ahvalj

CitizenEmpty said:


> Could we say that -т was reintroduced in later centuries?


They coexisted. Some dialects have regularized the distribution of zero and -_t_: e. g. standard Ukrainian and Belarusian use (Ukrainian examples) -_е_ but -_еться_ and -_ить, -иться_. What was the situation in the ancient North-East Russian (the source of modern Northern dialects and of the standard language), is, as I had written, unknown.


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## CitizenEmpty

I see. Now I have a different thought on this. That the the third person singular -т came from the third person singular optative ending "-t/-d" of the Proto-Indo-European language. And I think I'm wrong about this.


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## ahvalj

Beware that this is just a phonetic possibility: nobody can tell for sure. Most scientific opinions, as well as most human opinions in general, are wrong — this is how the brain works. Historical linguistics is one of the most endangered branches of science since its sources are exhaustible: the last 100 years have brought incomparably less discoveries in the area of IE reconstructions than the 100 years before that. If no old texts are discovered and no time machine of some kind is invented, we may never learn what exactly was the source of the Slavic _t_-endings.


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## CitizenEmpty

Absolutely correct.


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## ahvalj

CitizenEmpty said:


> I see. Now I have a different thought on this. That the the third person singular -т came from the third person singular optative ending "-t/-d" of the Proto-Indo-European language. And I think I'm wrong about this.


It can't be so since Slavic lost all its final consonants. In particular, the Optative is continued in the Slavic Imperative, which has no ending in the Sg. 3:
_*bʰeroih₁-mi>*berěmь_ (attested e. g. in _bǫděmь_)
_*bʰeroih₁-s>beri
*bʰeroih₁-t>beri
*bʰeroih₁-mV>berěmъ
*bʰeroih₁-te>berěte_
…


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## CitizenEmpty

ahvalj said:


> It can't be so since Slavic lost all its final consonants. In particular, the Optative is continued in the Slavic Imperative, which has no ending in the Sg. 3:
> _*bʰeroih₁-mi>*berěmь_ (attested e. g. in _bǫděmь_)
> _*bʰeroih₁-s>beri
> *bʰeroih₁-t>beri
> *bʰeroih₁-mV>berěmъ
> *bʰeroih₁-te>berěte_
> …



But could it be that it's a fossilized remnant that was accidentally preserved? It's because I don't particularly believe that early East Slavic languages are uniform. And I also think that the optative form wouldn't suddenly lose almost all of its endings, except for one (-te). [correct me if I'm wrong, please] It's like in Korean. Korean humble honorific form (very old fashioned and used in the royal court, family gathering +100 years ago) still exists in a very limited form in this modern era, but some fossilized humble endings are immediately understood today.


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## ahvalj

CitizenEmpty said:


> But could it be that it's a fossilized remnant that was accidentally preserved? It's because I don't particularly believe that early East Slavic languages are uniform. And I also think that the optative form wouldn't suddenly lose almost all of its endings, except for one (-te). [correct me if I'm wrong, please] It's like in Korean. Korean humble honorific form (very old fashioned and used in the royal court, family gathering +100 years ago) still exists in a very limited form in this modern era, but some fossilized humble endings are immediately understood today.


Let me remind you that the Old East Slavic endings were _-tь_ and _-tъ,_ i. e. _t_+vowel.

The Optative>Imperative has lost not the endings, but its forms: the 3rd person has disappeared in all modern Slavic languages (except in some fossilized phrases like _спаси тебя господь_ "may the lord save you"), as is the Sg. 1., whereas Pl. 1 is preserved in several languages, e. g. in Ukrainian (_станьмо_). There is one probable remnant of this Optative: the Russian invariable Imperative in the unreal meaning (_прид*и* я/ты/он/мы/вы/они вовремя, всё случилось бы иначе_ "had I/you/he/we/you/they come on time, everything would have occurred differently).


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## CitizenEmpty

ahvalj said:


> Let me remind you that the Old East Slavic endings were _-tь_ and _-tъ,_ i. e. _t_+vowel.



Come to think of it, the proto-Slavic third person plural marker is also _t_+vowel. Now I feel more confused.


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## ahvalj

CitizenEmpty said:


> Come to think of it, the proto-Slavic third person plural marker is also _t_+vowel. Now I feel more confused.


There was *-_tV_ in Sg. 3, *_-te/-tā_ in Dual 3 and *-_ntV_ in Pl. 3, e. g. Late Common Slavic Sg. 3 *_bereti_, Du. 3 *_berete/beretā_, Pl. 3 *_beranti_ (> Old East Slavic _beretь, berete/bereta, berutь_).


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## CitizenEmpty

Could we say that the final vowel in *VtV (in Sg.3 and Pl. 3) was systematically deleted?


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## ahvalj

CitizenEmpty said:


> Could we say that the final vowel in *VtV (in Sg.3 and Pl. 3) was systematically deleted?


Since in the earliest Slavic written records these endings had final _ъ_ and _ь_, and since these vowels eventually disappeared word-finally (in Northern East Slavic this was happening between around 1050 and 1150), then yes, but final _ъ_ and _ь_ were dropped in the entire vocabulary (except a couple of words like _нъ>но_): there was nothing special with these two verbal endings in East Slavic.


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## ahvalj

Concerning the absence of _-ть_ in the Present Sg. 3 of the first conjugation in Belarusian: I've just thought that it is demonstrably secondary. Let's take the paradigm with the stressed endings: _кладу́, кладзе́ш, кладзе́, кладзём, кладзяце́~кладзе́це, кладу́ць._ We'll notice that the shift _е>ё_ has occurred only before the hard consonant, _m_ (_кладзём_); it is absent before _ʂ_ (_кладзе́ш_) and _ʦʲ_ (_кладзе́це_), which were palatal/palatalized at the time of this change (and _tʲ>ʦʲ_ remains so). It is also absent in the Sg. 3, but we know that word-finally the stressed _-е_ changed to _-ё_ (cp. _житьѥ́>жыццё_), so the most plausible explanation is that the Sg. 3. _-ть_ was still present in this paradigm around the 13th century when this shift occurred. For some reasons it was later dropped, but preserved in the reflexive verbs (_кладеть́ сѧ > кладзе́цца_).


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## ahvalj

_Бевзенко СП, Грищенко АП, Лукінова ТБ, Русанівський ВМ, … · 1978 · Історія української мови∶ морфологія: _319 mention that_ -т_ is present also in some local dialects of Ukrainian, both in the west (_замітат, ся зачинат, співат_) and east (_співаєт, знаєт_).


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