Glottalized and murmured occlusives in Indo-European (1973) (original) (raw)
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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.
Strange ablauts and neglected sound changes in Proto-Indo-European
1998
This article is a study of "aberrant" ablaut types in Proto-Indo-European, including non-ablauting long vocalism; particular emphasis, however, is placed on alternations exemplified by the so-called "longdiphthong bases" -because of the aura of controversy that has always surrounded them and the lively interest they still inspire in Indo-European studies. Although a number of explanations have been proposed to account for their puzzling vocalism, yet none of them has come to be regarded äs entirely acceptable: what vitiates them is either lack of phonological plausibility or immoderate (that is, insufficiently constrained) recourse to "analogy".
Proto-Indo-European glottalic stops: The evidence revisited
Elsewhere I have argued that the traditional unaspirated voiced occlusives of the Indo-European proto-language were actually glottalic lenes. Martin Kümmel has rejected my argumentation in his comprehensive study of the Indo-European consonant shifts. Kümmel’s reconstruction is based on his rejection of Lubotsky’s law, dismissal of the Sindhi evidence, disregard of the evidence from Panjabi, Armenian, Greek, Slavic and Baltic, his rejection of Lachmann’s law as a phonetic development, and his dismissal of the Germanic evidence. It has a strong bias toward the traditional reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European. The supposed development dh > d which Kümmel assumes for all languages except Indic, Greek and Italic is not attested elsewhere. Breathy voice is common in Sino-Tibetan and Austro-Asiatic languages, where the origin of the Indic voiced aspirates may be sought.
Indo-European Linguistics in the 21st Century (2)
2018
Revisionist trilaryngealism, consisting of the hypotheses CC•C, *h1 h2 h3, and at least two different vowels PIE *e *o (and optionally PIE *a), has split the laryngeal theory into several mutually incompatible models. The models of EICHNER (1973, 1978, 1980, 1988) and MELCHERT (1987)/RIX (et al. 2001) are characterized by symmetrical, but opposed reconstructions for Hitt. a-(*h3e-vs. *h1o-) and Hitt. ḫa-(*h2e/o-vs. *h2/3e/o-). In KORTLANDT's (2003-4) model the preservation of *h2 and *h3 is conditioned by the distributions of *e/o. Both laryngeals are allegedly retained before *e, but lost before *o in Old Anatolian. In addition, it is theoretically possible to define a variant of KORTLANDT's model in which the distributions are reversed. The present paper focuses on KORTLANDT's model in both its original and reversed form and demonstrates the internal inconsistency of this model, due to which it has to be discarded as a serious option for PIE reconstruction. This leaves us only the models of EICHNER and MELCHERT/RIX to compete with SZEMERÉNYI's (1967, 1970, 1996) monolaryngealism for the solution of the PIE laryngeal/vowel problem.