Abstract
Two classes of consonantal feminine nouns are reconstructed for Early Romani: the unjotated class and the jotated class. In my presentation I argue that both classes may be traced back to different Old and Middle Indo-Aryan feminine noun classes.
While the unjotated feminine nouns derive from the ā- stem nouns, the jotated feminine nouns seem to continue the i-/ī- stem nouns. Furthermore, I show that the feminine inflectional suffix -a-, which marks both OBL.SG and NOM.PL, must be a reflex of the regrammaticalized ā-stem suffix.