WikiPortallus: Proto-Indo-European phonology.html

The phonology of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) has been reconstructed by linguists, based on the similarities and differences among current and extinct Indo-European languages. Because PIE was not written, linguists must rely on the evidence of its earliest attested descendants, such as Hittite, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Latin in order to reconstruct its phonology.

The reconstruction of abstract units of PIE phonological systems (i.e. segments, or phonemes in traditional phonology) is much less controversial than their phonetical interpretation. This especially pertains to the phonetic interpretation of PIE vowels, laryngeals and voiced stops.

Phonemic inventory

Proto-Indo-European is traditionally reconstructed to have used the following phonemes. See the article on Indo-European sound laws for a summary of how these phonemes reflected in the various Indo-European languages.

Consonants

The table gives the most common notation in modern publications. Variant transcriptions are given below. Raised ʰ stands for aspiration.

Labials

PIE */p/, */b/, */bʰ/ are conveniently grouped with the cover symbol P. The phonemic status of */b/ is disputed: it only appears in handful of reconstructible roots that themselves are often disputed. All of the reconstructed roots with */b/ inside are usually confined to a few Indo-European branches, likely representing late PIE dialectalism. Such */b/ is then usually explained away as a result of some typologically common dissimilatory process¹, or some rather recent phonological developments².

Coronals/dentals

The standard reconstruction identified three coronal/dental stops: */t/, */d/, */dʰ/. They are symbolically grouped with the cover symbol T.

In so-called "thorn clusters" of the form TK in all branches except Anatolian and Tocharian a metathesis occurred resulting in PIE *Kþ. The resulting interdental fricative *þ was limited to the position after the dorsals, and thus was not phonologically relevant. Beside Anatolian and Tocharian material, metathetized and unmetathetized forms survive in different ablaut grades of the root *dʰégʷʰ "burn" (whence also English day) in Sanskrit, dáhati "is being burnt" < *dʰégʷʰ-e- and kṣā́yat "burns" < *dʰgʷʰ-éh₁-. Confer the section on PIE phonological rules for more examples.

Dorsals

Satem and Centum languages

The Satem group of languages merged the labiovelars */kʷ/, */gʷ/, */gʷʰ/ with the plain velar series */k/, */g/, */gʰ/, and the postvelars became fricatives or affricates. In some phonological conditions depalatalization occurred³, yielding what appears to be a Centum reflex in a Satem language.

The Centum group of languages on the other hand merged the palatovelars */ḱ/, */ǵ/, */ǵʰ/ with the plain velar series */k/, */g/, */gʰ/.

The problem of three velar series

The existence of all three dorsal rows (series) has been disputed since the beginning of Indo-European studies. Today, most PIE linguists believe that all three series were distinct by the time of Late Proto-Indo-European, although a minority believe that the distinction between plain velar and palatovelar consonants was a later development of certain Satem languages; this belief was originally articuled by Antoine Meillet in 1894 and argued more recently by Frederik Kortlandt and others⁴. This argument contends that PIE had only two series, a simple velar and a labiovelar. The Satem languages palatalized the plain velar series in most positions, but the plain velars remained in some environments. These environments are typically reconstructed as before or after /u/, after /s/, and before /r/ or /a/; also apparently before /m/ and /n/ in some Baltic dialects. (This is similar to Proto-Germanic, where e.g. /t/ became /θ/ most of the time, but remained as /t/ after original /s/, /k/ or /p/.) The original allophonic distinction was disturbed when the labiovelars were merged with the plain velars. This produced a new phonemic distinction between palatal and plain velars, with an unpredictable alternation between palatal and plain in related forms of some roots (those from original plain velars) but not others (those from original labiovelars). Subsequent analogical processes generalized either the plain or palatal consonant in all forms of a particular root. Those roots where the plain consonant was generalized are those traditionally reconstructed as having "plain velars" in the parent language, in contrast to "palatovelars".

There is residual evidence of various sorts in the Satem languages of a former distinction between velar and labiovelar consonants:

This evidence shows that the labiovelar series was distinct from the plain velar series in PIE, and cannot have been a secondary development in the Centum languages. However, it says nothing about the palatovelar vs. plain velar series. When this debate initially arise, the concept of a phoneme and its historical emergence was not clearly understood, however, and as a result it was often claimed (and sometimes still is claimed) that evidence of three-way velar distinction in the history of a particular IE language indicates that this distinction must be reconstructed for the parent language. This is theoretically unsound, as it overlooks the possibility of a secondary origin for a distinction.

Arguments based on typology are also inconclusive: both of the above positions are typologically natural.

It is quite possible to use the traditional three-way distinction while remaining agnostic on the issue of whether it represents the actual state of the parent language or is an artifact of later developments in the Satem branch.

Fricatives

The only PIE fricative phoneme */s/ was a strident sound, whose phonetic realization could possibly range from [s] to palatalized ɕ or ʃ. It had voiced allophone *z that emerged by assimilation in words such as *nisdós 'nest', and which later became phonemicized in some daughter languages. Some PIE roots have variants with *s appearing initially: such *s is called s-mobile.

In the aforementioned "thorn clusters" dental stops *t, *d could have inderdental fricative allophones appearing in a position after a dorsal and usually transcribed as *þ, *ð . The development of these fricatives was posterior to the separation of Anatolian and Tocharian branch from PIE dialect continuum.

The "laryngeals" may have been fricatives, but there is no consensus as to their phonetic realization.

Laryngeals

The phonemes */h₁/, */h₂/, */h₃/, with cover symbol H also denoting "unknown laryngeal" (or ə₁, ə₂, ə₃ and ə), stand for three "laryngeal" phonemes. One should note that the term laryngeal is an anachronistic misnomer, retained only because its usage has become standard in the field.

Phonetic value of the laryngeal phonemes is disputable; various suggestions for their exact phonetic value have been made, ranging from cautious claims that all that can be said with certainty is that */h₂/ represented a velar fricative pronounced far back in the mouth, and that *h₃ exhibited lip-rounding up to more definite proposal; e.g. Meier-Brügger writes that realizations of *h₁ = [h], *h₂ = [χ] and *h₃ = [ɣ] or [ɣʷ] "are in all probability accurate".⁸ Other commonly cited speculations^who? for *h₂ and *h₃ are ʔ ʕ ʕʷ and x χ~ħ xʷ. There is some evidence that *h₁ may have been two consonants, ʔ and h, that fell together.^{citation needed}

The schwa indogermanicum symbol ə is commonly used for a laryngeal between consonants, in a "syllabic" position.

Sonorants

Ina phonological sense, sonorants in Proto-Indo-European were those segments that could stay in syllable nucleus (i.e. they could be syllabic) and out of it (i.e. they could be non-syllablic). PIE sonorants are the liquids, nasals and glides: */r/, */l/, */m/, */n/, */y/ (or *i̯), */w/ (or *u̯), all grouped with the cover symbol R.

All of them had allophones in a syllabic position, which is generally between consonants, word-initially before consonants and word-finally after a consonant. They are marked as: *r̥, *l̥,*m̥, *n̥, *i, *u. One should note that, even though *i and *u where phonetically certainly vowels, phonologically they were non-syllabic sonorants.

Vowels

In a strict phonological sense, Proto-Indo-European had only two vowels: */e/ and */o/. Their phonetic and phonological interpretation is questionable: it was most probably the opposition of high and low vowel, rather than the opposition of back and front vowel. Typologically, such system reminds of the vowel systems of Northwest Caucasian languages, such as Abkhaz:

However, these two vowels where not the only syllabic segments in PIE; beside *e and *o, syllable nucleus could also contain sonorants *y, *w, *m, *n, *l, and *r. Such syllabic sonorants therefore surface as vowels, but are distinct from the real vowels by that fact that they participate in ablaut alternations with their nonsyllabic pairs, and by the distribution; while the vowels *e and *o can be positioned only in the syllable nucleus, sonorants can also make appearance in both syllable nucleus and onset.

Also, sonorants can comprise the second part of a complex syllable nucleus, i.e. they can form diphthongs with real vowels: *ey, *oy, *ew, *ow, *em, *en, *om, *on etc. From a phonetical viewpoint, syllabic allophones of sonorants *y and *w act like vowels, and are marked as vocalics *i and *u.

Depending on whether one considers segments *i and *u vowels (according to the phonetical criterion), or sonorants (according to the distributional criterion), Proto-Indo-European vowel system would comprise 2 or 4 members. The system of four (short) vowels - *e, *o, *i, *u - can then be presented as oppositions of high (*i, *u) : low (*e, *o) and front (*e, *i) : back (*o, *u):⁹

In certain morphological (e.g., as a result of Proto-Indo-European ablaut) and phonological conditions (e.g. in the last syllable of nominative singular of a noun ending on sonorant, in root syllable in sigmatic aorist etc.; cf. Szemerényi's law, Stang's law) vowels *e and *o would lengthen, yielding respective lengthened-grade variants. Basic, lexical forms of words in PIE contain therefore only short vowels; on the basis of well-established morphophonological rules forms with long vowels *ē and *ō appear.

Lengthening of vowels must have been phonologically conditioned change in Early Proto-Indo-European, but at the period just before the dissolution of Proto-Indo-European speaking community, which is usually reconstructed, it is not possible to phonologically predict the appearance of all long vowels, because the phonologically justified resulting long vowels have begun to spread analogically to other forms in which they were not phonologically justified. But even then, long vowels can be understood as a sequence of tho short vowels *e and *o, i.e. as dimoric *e and *o.

It is possible that Proto-Indo-European had a few morphologically isolated words that contained the vowel *a, e.g. *dap- 'sacrifice' (Latin daps, Ancient Greek dapánē, Old Irish dúas); or appearing as a first part of a diphthong *ay, e.g. *laywos 'left' (Latin laevus, Ancient Greek laiós, OCS lěvъ). The phonemic status of *a has been fiercely disputed; for example Beekes¹⁰ expressly concludes: There are thus no grounds for PIE phoneme *a, and the same conclusion is reached by Lubotsky¹¹. After the discovery of Hittite and the advent of laryngeal theory, basically every instance of previous *a could be reduced to *eh₂. Against the possibility of PIE phoneme *a, that is even today held by some Indo-Europeanists, the following can be said: vowel *a does not participate in ablaut alternations (i.e. it does not alternate with other vowels, as the "real" PIE vowels *e, *o, *ē, *ō do), it makes no appearance in suffixes and endings, it appears in very confined set of positions (usually after initial *k) and the reflexes of words upon which *a is reconstructed are usually confined only to a few Indo-European languages which makes it possible to ascribe it to some late PIE dialectalism, or are of expressive character thus not being suitable for comparative analysis, or are argued to have been borrowed from some other language which had phonemic *a (e.g. Proto-Semitic *θawr > PIE *táwros 'bull, steer').

However, others, like Mayrhofer¹², argue that PIE did in fact have *a and *ā phonemes independent of *h₂.

Taking into account the long vowels, as well as the (marginal) vowel *a, the following maximal system of PIE vocalism emerges:

Glottalic theory

Phonological rules

A number of phonological rules can be reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. Some of them are disputed to be valid for "PIE proper", and are claimed to be later innovations in some of the daughter branches. Some of these laws are:

Phonotactics

Ablaut

Notes

^ e.g. *ml- → *bl-; commonly reconstructed root with */b/ as *bel- 'power, strength' (> Sanskrit bálam, Ancient Greek beltíōn) could then be connected with 'mel-' in Latin melior, and other commonly reconstructed word with */b/, *h₂ebl-/*h₂ebōl 'apple', could then be connected with earlier form *h₂eml-, which is in unmetathesized form attested in another reconstructible PIE word for apple, *méh₂lom (> Hittite maḫla-, Latin mālum, Ancient Greek mēlon).
^ E.g. PIE *ph₃- regularly gives *b in PIE; compare reduplicated present stem of *peh₃- 'to drink' > *pi-ph₃- > Sanskrit píbati.
^ E.g. in Balto-Slavic and Albanian, where palatovelars were depalatalized before resonants unless the latter were followed by a front vowel.
^ e.g. Szemerényi (1995), Sihler (1995)
^ Craig Melchert (1987). "PIE velars in Luvian". Studies in Memory of Warren Cowgill pp. 182–204.. Retrieved on 2008-10-27.
^ Holger Pedersen, KZ 36 (1900) 277-340; Norbert Jokl, in: Mélanges linguistiques offerts à M. Holger Pedersen (1937) 127-161.
^ Vittore Pisani, Ricerche Linguistiche 1 (1950) 165ff.
^ Meier-Brügger, M (2003). Indo-European Linguistics. pp. 107. ISBN 3-11-017433-2.
^ The Proto-Indo-European Vowel System from the Typological Point of View, R. Matasović, Govor 20/2003: 249-262.
^ Beekes 1995:139
^ Alexander Lubotsky. "Against a Proto-Indo-European phoneme *a".
^ Mayrhofer 1986: 170 ff.

Proto-Indo-European phonology.html

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