SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN 19 established itself over a limited area comprising Slavonic and Indo-Iranian, but excluding the rest of Indo-European. The fact that the change appears only to a very small extent in Baltic demonstrates that the Baltic group was to a certain extent autonomous of Slavonic even at this early date. Another change which has occurred in both groups is that of k to £ before the vowels £, t. 1 This however seems to be a case of parallel independent development. In Old Slavonic the paradig- matic alternation occasioned by this change, and by the second Slavonic palatalisation, remains in full force (e.g. Nom. S. vluku, Voc. vlu£e f Loc. vluce). Such alternation has been elim- inated in Sanskrit even at the earliest period, and it is unlikely that it could have maintained itself in Slavonic over the very long period that it would be necessary to assume if the change in Slavonic had been so ancient. In grammar a fair number of special features common to both groups can be enumerated, though there are also some notable divergences. The most important of these latter is the existence in Balto-Slavonic in common with Germanic of an element -m- which appears regularly in place of the -bh- which is familiar from Sanskrit and other IE languages (e.g. Dat, abl. PI, Lith. vilkdms, SI. vlukomu, Goth waif am : Skt. vfkebhyas). This is an ancient Indo-European divergence cutting across the usual dialect divisions. Another idiosyncrasy of Balto-Slavonic is the use of the old ablative to form the genitive singular of 0-stems : Lith. vilko, O. SI. vluka. In spite of these divergences there are many special gram- matical features uniting the two groups. The more important of these may be briefly enumerated : A. Nominal Inflection : (1) Nominative without r of r- stems, Skt. maid 1 mother svdsd ‘ sister ' ; O, SI. mati , Lith, moil, sesuo. (2) The locative plural in -su (as opposed to -at in Greek) is found only in these two groups : Skt. vfkesu, O. SI. vlucechu. (3) The Dual inflection is closely similar, containing a good deal that is not found elsewhere, e.g. Skt. Nom. D. bale, yug £ , namam, mdnasi, aksl , sunU ; O. SI. zene, ize, imeni , tehsi, oci (Lith. ak i), syny (Lith. sUnu), Gen. D. Skt. tayos , dvayos : O. SI. toju , dvoju . (4) A similar development in the singular stem of feminine nouns in -d : e. g. Instr. Skt. tdyd , senayd : O. SI. tojg, rQkojg, Loc. Skt. sdndydm , Av. haenaya : Lith. rankoje . (5) 1 For examples see p. 76.
