Osthoff's law is an Indo-European
sound law
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic cha ...
which states that long vowels shorten when followed by a resonant (
Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
(PIE) *''m'', *''n'', *''l'', *''r'', *''y'', *''w''), followed in turn by another consonant (i.e. in a closed syllable environment). It is named after German
Indo-Europeanist
Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical pro ...
Hermann Osthoff
Hermann Osthoff (18 April 1847, Billmerich – 7 May 1909, Heidelberg) was a German linguist. He was involved in Indo-European studies and the Neogrammarian school. He is known for formulating Osthoff's law, and published widely on Indo-E ...
, who first formulated it.
Overview
The law operated in most of the Proto-Indo-European daughter languages, with notable exceptions being the
Indo-Iranian and
Tocharian branches in which the difference between long and short PIE diphthongs was clearly preserved.
Compare:
* PIE ''*dyēws'' "skyling, sky god" >
Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit was an ancient language of the Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European language family. It is attested in the Vedas and related literature compiled over the period of the mid- 2nd to mid-1st millennium BCE. It was orally preser ...
''dyā́us'', but
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
, with an ordinary diphthong.
The term ''Osthoff's law'' is usually properly applied to the described phenomenon in Ancient Greek, which itself was an independent innovation from similar developments occurring in
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
and other Indo-European languages. However, the term is often used loosely as a cover term referring to all shortening of long diphthongs in closed syllables.
Osthoff's law is, in some version valid, for Greek, Latin, and Celtic but not for Indo-Iranian and Tocharian.
Germanic
Osthoff's law also probably applied in Germanic, although there is very little evidence to support or refute that claim. Some examples might be:
* "meat" >
* "young" >
Balto-Slavic
The traditional school of Balto-Slavic linguistics posits compensatory lengthening of liquid diphthongs before laryngeals. Following this, long vowels become acuted, and the long vowels subsequently shorten again due to Osthoff's law, leaving an acuted liquid diphthong.
For example:
* PIE "birch" >
PBSl. *''bḗrźas'' > > Lithuanian , Serbo-Croatian (by
liquid metathesis
The Slavic liquid metathesis refers to the phenomenon of metathesis of liquid consonants in the Common Slavic period in the South Slavic and West Slavic area. The closely related corresponding phenomenon of pleophony (also known as polnoglasie o ...
).
Some linguists, most notably
Kortlandt and
Derksen, reject the idea of compensatory lengthening before laryngeals, instead positing that the acute reflects laryngeals directly. Moreover, they reject Osthoff's law for Proto-Balto-Slavic, and reconstruct long vowels intact, but only if they are inherited from Proto-Indo-European. One particular case that may reflect an inherited long vowel is , which is reflected in all descendants without an acute. It appears in Lithuanian as , with reflecting a Balto-Slavic long vowel, as opposed to .
See also
*
Szemerényi's law
Szemerényi's law (or Szemerényi's lengthening) is both a sound change and a synchronic phonological rule that operated during an early stage of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). Though its effects are evident in many reconstructed as we ...
*
Stang's law
Stang's law is a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) phonological rule named after the Norwegian linguist Christian Stang.
Overview
The law governs the word-final sequences of a vowel, followed by a semivowel ( or ) or a laryngeal ( or ), followed by a na ...
Notes
References
*
*
{{Proto-Indo-European language
Sound laws
Proto-Indo-European language