DICTIONARY OF REVIVED PRUSSIAN:

Next, one must have in mind that the letter ‘e’ may render an unstressed short i
as in rekian I ‘Lord”, rendering [rikîjan]. On the other hand, the letter ‘o’ may render
a short bright u as in meddo E ‘honey’, rendering [medu].
The great advantage of V. Maþiulis is pointing out the palatalization expressed
by the letter ‘i’ as in Polish tradition (cf. the spellings of Polish siæ and Prussian sien
‘self’, Polish piæƒc ‘five’ and Prussian piçncts ‘fifth’), what is evident by comparing
parallel spellings gçide III and giçidi III ‘waits’ with the palatalized [g’ ]. Analysis of
the attested spelling is crucial for each kind of serious Prussological work.
As for the lost part of the language, it is recovered by restoring systemic relations
with the help of inner reconstruction.
One of the elementary procedures may be called complementary explication (a
term proposed by Vladimir Toporov 7 ). I have in mind not only such a simple instance
as using a word in grammatical forms, in which it has not been attested. The procedure
is quite simple here as can be seen from the sequence e.g. nom. sg. masc. deiws
‘God’, gen. sg. deiwas, dat. sg. grîku ‘sin’, acc. sg. deiwan, nom. pl. grîkai, gen. pl.
grîkan, dat. pl. waikammans ‘servants’, acc. pl. deiwans one gets automatically dat.
sg. *deiwu, nom. pl. *deiwai, gen. pl. *deiwan, dat. pl. *deiwammans.
By revealing systemic relations between stems, many non-attested case forms
may be easily reconstructed in a similar way. Thus on the basis of the attested astem
nom. sg. deiws, dat. pl. waikammans, i-stem acc. sg. nautin ‘trouble’, u-stem
nom. sg. Soûns III, gen. sg. Sunos I [sûnus] ‘son’ one may reconstruct the i- and ustem
nom. sg. *nauts (but cf. Dantis E 93 ‘tooth’ in Pomezanian), gen. sg. *nautis,
dat. pl. *dantimmans, *sunummans.
Nevertheless, one faces problems when trying to reconstruct i- and ja-stem
adjectives because of the confusion of these stems in the Catechisms. In all probability,
this indicates the tendency of both stems to merge in the 16 th c. Therefore, no doubt,
there must be only a common i-/ja-stem paradigm of the adjectives in the 21 st c.
Much more problematic is the reconstruction of the verb. The attested data
enabled V. Maþiulis to conclude that the forms of the presence coincided with the
forms of the past tense in a lot of instances except athematic stems (ast–bçi),
praes. ja- – praet. i-stems (New Prus. l`nke–l`nki, cf. the attested praes.
7
Îò ðåêîíñòðóêöèè ñòàðîïðóññêîãî ê ðåêðåàöèè íîâîïðóññêîãî / Áàëòîñëàâÿíñêèå
èññëåäîâàíèÿ 1983 / Èíñòèòóò ñëàâÿíîâåäåíèÿ è áàëêàíèñòèêè,
Ìîñêâà 1984, p. 59.
10