On the distribution of velar consonants in the suffixes and endings of Indo-European (original) (raw)
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On the Divergence of a Proto-Indo-European Velar Syllabic Nasal in Indo-European Languages
Дискурс, т. 5, №5, 2019
Introduction. The proposed article critically examines the explanation of the origin of nasal vowels in Slavic languages by incorporating an open syllable law. It is shown that the convergence of many closed syllables, ending with nasal consonants, into two kinds of open syllables with nasal vowels contradicts a number of facts of evolution in the opposite direction, e. g., evolution of nasal vowels towards combinations "a vowel - a nasal consonant" in Balkan Slavic languages (Bulg. пент "five", вънзел "knot"), as well as to the observed interpretation of Slavic nasal vowels in acts of borrowing by languages without nasal vowels, e. g. OCS дѫбрава "oak forest" > Rom. dumbravă. Methodology and sources. The proposed model results from generalization of the data of instrumental phonetical research, which show that the articulation of palatal consonants is unstable leading to there divergent evolution, i. e. transformation to sounds with more definite zones of articulation, e. g. palatal lateral approximant *[ʎ] split into palatalized lateral liquid [l'] and fricative [j]. In the proposed model Proto-Indo-European (PIE) syllable velar nasal consonant *ŋ̍ in the process of its phonetic evolution in Indo-European (IE) languages split into a variety of nasal vowels with different articulations, which further on irregularly transformed into vowels without nasalization or into combinations of vowels with nasal consonants (e. g. OInd. paŋktíṣ, Olsl. fimt, Lith. penkì, OCS пѩть, OHG finf, fimf, funf "пять", etc., from the common PIE prototype with syllable nasal *ŋ̍). Results and discussion. Examples of PIE prototypes of lexemes meaning "water bird", "tooth, sharp edge", "five", as well as lexemes, related to Russ. нутро, ядро, неясыть, уж, угорь, нагой, нога, ноготь are presented. All prototypes contain a nasal syllabic, which is split producing four types of reflexes in IE languages. Newly discovered etymological links, such as the connection between Russ. Lexemes meaning "leg" and "corner", are discussed. Conclusion. The proposed model permits to uniformly explain the facts of synchronous existence of related Rus. недро "insides" and ядро "nucleos", related нутро и утроба "belly", related OCS ѫты, Lith. antis and AGr. Att. νῆττα "duck", related Rus. неясыть "a kind of owl; pelican" and ненасытный "insatiable", etc., using the notion of divergent evolution of the PIE syllable velar nasal *ŋ̍.
This paper analyses a non-exhaustive list of pairs of Proto-Indo- European roots of equal or close meaning that differ by alternations between voiceless stop and voiced aspirated stop at the same place of articulation, as well as between *l and *n – or, in some cases, both. The compared roots may occasionally also differ with respect to grades of apophony (e, o or zero) and the presence or absence of extensions. It presents the hypothesis that such alternations can be due to diatopic and/or diachronic variations that were included in the same reconstructed model of Proto-Indo-European, or else had some grammatical role, possibly of aspect. Possible explanations of the phenomenon are that laryngeal consonants adjacent to voiceless stops may turn them into voiceless aspirates and subsequently voiced aspirates, or that the very phonetic nature of these consonants may be different from what is currently accepted. The aim of this work is not exactly theorising on the subject, as more data need to be collected for this, but raising the interest of Indo-Europeanists in looking into the issue in order to seek more empirical evidence (and, possibly, exclude the possibility that such a phenomenon is the product of mere coincidence or has a trivial explanation) and perhaps outline some theory about it.
Renewal and Innovation in the Emergence of Indo-European Evaluative Morphology
Lexis, 2011
A diachronic survey in the field of the so-called evaluative morphology in some branches of the Indoeuropean family (above all Romance and Slavonic languages and Greek) reveals two different tendencies. On the one side suffixes that displayed a diminutive value in the earliest stages of these languages do not correspond to present-day diminutive suffixes. On the other side, Proto-Indoeuropean before and Latin and Ancient Greek then lacked augmentative suffixes at all, while Romance languages and Modern Greek have at their disposal some of them. So, diminutives seem a dynamic and unstable linguistic strategy, which, in the course of ages, has undergone a wide (cyclic?) renewal: the semantic function has been kept on, while the formal strategies to express it have changed. Instead, augmentatives seem to be the result of an innovation: to a sure point, a new category has been introduced and each language has had to find the means to express it. In a diachronic perspective, augmentatives seem to be a more steady linguistic strategy than diminutives. In this paper I intend at reconstructing, going backwards, the genesis of some Romance, Slavonic, and Greek diminutive and augmentative suffixes in order to single out both their semantic archetypes and possible common stages recurring in their evolutive processes.
Proto-Indo-European *-l-stems revisited
2023
In this paper, I propose to have another critical look at a still unresolved sore spot in Indo-European nominal morphology: the possibility that Indo-European had an ablauting class of athematic *-l-stems in addition to other consonant stems. The most compelling evidence for the existence of such a class comes from Anatolian and Tocharian, the two branches believed to have split off first. However, the viability of these reconstructions has been called into question in recent years.
A Grammar of Modern Indo-European
2009
nouns marked by -ti-, nouns in the religious sphere marked by -uand collectives marked by *-h. B. In addition to characterization by means of order and categories of selection, the sentence was also delimited by Intonation based on variations in pitch. 9. Proto-Indo-European Syntax 295 To the extent that the pitch phonemes of PIE have been determined, a high pitch may be posited, which could stand on one syllable per word, and a low pitch, which was not so restricted. NOTE. The location of the high pitch is determined by Lehmann primarily from the evidence in Vedic; the theory that this was inherited from PIE received important corroboration from Karl Verner’s demonstration of its maintenance into Germanic (1875). Thus the often cited correlation between the position of the accent in the Vedic perfect and the differing consonants in Germanic provided decisive evidence for reconstruction of the PIE pitch accent as well as for Verner’s law, as in the perfect (preterite) forms of the r...
Proceedings of the 32nd Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, 2022
This paper proposes a new account of the oblique singular case-forms of Proto-Indo-European "simple" neuter *-r/n-stems that exhibit stressed inflectional endings in the Indo-European languages. Unexpected on the "acrostatic" reconstruction of this category, such forms were previously held to reflect the singular-marked oblique case-forms of a suppletive "amphikinetic" collective. I argue that these forms are instead the result of a recurring pattern of morphophonological change (EMERGENT MOBILITY) whereby erstwhile "acrostatic" formations develop intraparadigmatic stress mobility. In view of this alternative analysis, I contend that in (pre-)PIE neuter *-r/n-stems and athematic neuter nominals generally built oblique plural case-forms in the same way as animate nouns-i.e., by adding plural inflectional endings to the same stem (with the same prosodic properties) as in their corresponding oblique singular caseforms. * I am grateful to the audience of the 32nd UCLA Indo-European Conference; to the members of the Indo-European and Modern Linguistic Theory research group (especially Jesse Lundquist and Ryan Sandell
More evidence for Proto-Indo-European transfixes: Two types of "lengthened grades"
The Vulgar Pre-Indo-European new lengthened grade marking nominative and locative singular forms must be distinguished from a Proto-Indo-European geminate transfix *_VV_ which was realized as a long vowel in the root vowel slot. The new lengthened grade arose by laws of Auslaut and was secondarily employed as an additional marker of nominative singular and locative singular forms. It cannot plausibly be dated to a period prior than the Vulgar Pre-Indo-European dialect or variant cluster. The geminate transfix *_VV_, however, was a proper Proto-Indo-European marker of nominal and verbal PLURATIVITY. Keywords: Lengthened grade, Szemerényi’s law, Nussbaum’s law.
Proceedings of the 30th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference (David M.Goldstein, Stephanie W. Jamison, and Brent Vine, eds.). Bremen: Hempen.
This article proposes a new formal reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) nouns containing the suffix *–oi–. I argue that both primary and non-primary derivatives in this class had stress alternating between the derivational suffix and the following inflectional ending (e.g., ACC.SG *[-óy-ṃ] vs. GEN *[-y-ós]) rather than the "amphikinetic" alternation between root and inflectional ending (ACC.SG *[´-oy-ṃ] vs. GEN *[-y-ós]) that is traditionally assumed for all primary nominals with suffixal *[o]-vocalism under the widely accepted “Erlangen Model” (Schindler 1975a,b, Rix 1992) of Indo-European morphophonology. Support for this alternative reconstruction comes from Hittite, which confirms that the suffixal stress seen in the Greek reflex of this noun class was inherited from PIE rather than root stress as in Vedic Sanskrit. More broadly, I contend that an adequate account of the prosodic behavior of PIE *–oi-stems requires (i) abandoning the traditional connection between suffixal *[o]-grade and "amphikinetic" word stress; and (ii) adopting a framework (such as the one articulated by Kiparsky 2010) in which the suffix's capacity to attract stress in both primary and non-primary derivation can be modeled in a unified way.
Review of Kenneth Shields, A History of Indo-European Verb Morphology
Diachronica, 1994
Reviewed by MICHAEL WEISS, Yale University Kenneth Shields' new book follows firmly in the footsteps of his 1982 work, Indo-European Noun Inflection: A developmental history. As in that work, S offers a number of theories concerning the origin and evolution of various PIE categories and morphemes. And, as in that work, he does not maintain that his views are the only correct ones, but only one possible reconstruction out of a set of many conceivable and perhaps equally valid reconstructions. In the first part of the Chap.l (pp. 1-10), S sketches out his views on the methods of historical linguistics and responds to critics of his earlier work. On p.2, S writes that "historical linguistics appears to have its own constraints problem [...] diachronic theory and methodology are too powerful in the sense that they permit too many explanations of the same data." This is undeniably true. But, although S spends a few pages discussing the evaluation of reconstructions (4-10), he does not consider that historical linguistics has always had a rough and ready metric for the evaluation of competing accounts: the critical comparison of these accounts with regard to their descriptive adequacy and simplicity. In order for S to convince the reader that his own novel views are more likely than, or even as likely as, the communis opinio, he would have to show that they do, in fact, account for all the data just as well and involve no more steps or supplementary unproven hypotheses. One finds, however, that this vital work of critical comparison is left to the reader or to earlier scholars from whom S quotes extensively. For example, on p.46, in dealing with the origin of the Germanic rpreterites, S dismisses the widely held theory that they are relics of originally reduplicated perfects by quoting two rather weak objections from Lehmann (1952: 57) that "there is no evidence that any [...] verb forms [in these dialects] developed from reduplicated forms like *spespume", and that "the dissimilations are unusual". But Germanic clearly inherited reduplicated preterites which are well-attested in Gothic and some of these clearly survived into West Ger