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Indo-European Sound Laws
As the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) broke up, its sound system diverged as well, as evidenced in various sound laws associated with the daughter Indo-European languages. Especially notable is the palatalization that produced the satem languages, along with the associated ruki sound law. Other notable changes include: * Grimm's law and Verner's law in Proto-Germanic * an independent change similar to Grimm's law in Armenian, dubbed the Armenian Consonant Shift * Adjarian's law in Proto-Armenian * loss of prevocalic ''*p-'' in Proto-Celtic * Brugmann's law in Proto-Indo-Iranian * Winter's law and Hirt's law in Balto-Slavic * merging of voiced and breathy-voiced stops, and /a/ and /o/, in various "northern" languages * Sturtevant's law * Cowgill's laws of Germanic and Greek * Osthoff's law * Slavic first, second and third ("progressive") palatalization Bartholomae's law in Indo-Iranian, and Sievers's law in Proto-Germanic and (to some extent) various o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Indo-European Language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE and its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Winter's Law
Winter's law, named after Werner Winter, who postulated it in 1978, is a proposed sound law operating on Balto-Slavic short vowels */e/, */o/, */a/ ( Latin '' sedeō'', Sanskrit '' sīdati'', Ancient Greek '' hézomai'' and English ''sit'') > Proto-Balto-Slavic (PBS) ''*sēˀstei'' (''*sēˀd-tei'') > Lithuanian ''sė́sti'', Old Church Slavonic (OCS) '' sěsti'' (with regular *dt > *st dissimilation; OCS and Common Slavic yat /ě/ English ''apple'') > Proto-Balto-Slavic ''*āˀbōl'' > standard Lithuanian '' obuolỹs'' (accusative ''óbuolį'') and also dialectal forms of ''óbuolas'' and Samogitian ''óbulas'', OCS '' ablъko'', modern Serbo-Croatian '' jȁbuka'', Slovene '' jábolko'' etc. Winter's law distinguishes the Balto-Slavic reflexes of PIE */b/, */d/, */g/, */gʷ/ (before which Winter's law operates in closed syllables) and PIE */bʰ/, */dʰ/, */gʰ/, */gʷʰ/ (before which there is no effect of Winter's law). Therefore in relative chronology, Winter's law operated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonology
Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' [''obsolescent''] 1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often preferred by the American Structuralists and reflecting the importance in structuralist work of phonemics in sense 1.": "phonematics ''n.'' 1. [''obsolete''] An old synonym for phonemics (sense 2).") is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages systematically organize their phonemes or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a particular language variety. At one time, the study of phonology related only to the study of the systems of phonemes in spoken languages, but now it may relate to any Linguistic description, linguistic analysis either: Sign languages have a phonological system equivalent to the system of sounds in spoken languages. The buil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Germanic Language
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branches during the fifth century BC to fifth century AD: West Germanic, East Germanic and North Germanic. North Germanic remained in contact with the other branches over a considerable time, especially with the Ingvaeonic languages (including English), which arose from West Germanic dialects, and had remained in contact with the Norse. A defining feature of Proto-Germanic is the completion of the process described by Grimm's law, a set of sound changes that occurred between its status as a dialect of Proto-Indo-European and its gradual divergence into a separate language. The end of the Common Germanic period is reached with the beginning of the Migration Period in the fourth century AD. The alternative term " Germanic parent langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sievers's Law
Sievers's law in Indo-European linguistics accounts for the pronunciation of a consonant cluster with a glide ( or ) before a vowel as it was affected by the phonetics of the preceding syllable. Specifically, it refers to the alternation between and , and possibly and as conditioned by the weight of the preceding syllable. For instance, Proto-Indo-European (PIE) became Proto-Germanic *''harjaz'', Gothic ''harjis'' "army", but PIE became Proto-Germanic *''hirdijaz'', Gothic ''hairdeis'' "shepherd". It differs from ablaut in that the alternation has no morphological relevance but is phonologically context-sensitive: PIE followed a heavy syllable (a syllable with a diphthong or long vowel, or ending in more than one consonant), but would follow a light syllable (a short vowel followed by a single consonant). History Discovery This situation was first noticed by the Germanic philologist Eduard Sievers (1859–1932), and his aim was to account for certain phenomena in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bartholomae's Law
Bartholomae's law, sometimes referred to as the Buddha rule, is a Proto-Indo-European sound law affecting consonant clusters, most clearly in the Indo-Iranian languages. It states that in a cluster of two or more obstruents ( stops or the sibilant ), any one of which is a voiced aspirated stop anywhere in the sequence, the whole cluster becomes voiced and aspirated. Thus, to the Proto-Indo-European root ' 'learn, become aware of', the participle ' 'enlightened' loses the aspiration of the first stop (following Grassmann's law) and with the application of Bartholomae's law and regular vowel changes gives Sanskrit 'enlightened'. The law is named after German linguist Christian Bartholomae, who first described it in 1883. Further developments In both the Indic and the Iranian subgroups, further developments partially obscured the operation of the law; thanks to the falling together of plain voiced and voiced aspirated stops in Iranian, Bartholomae's law appears synchronicall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of Proto-Slavic
The Proto-Slavic language, Proto-Slavic language, the hypothetical ancestor of the modern-day Slavic languages, developed from the ancestral Proto-Balto-Slavic language, Proto-Balto-Slavic language ( 1500 BC), which is the parent language of the Balto-Slavic languages (both the Slavic and Baltic languages, e.g. Latvian language, Latvian and Lithuanian language, Lithuanian). The first 2,000 years or so consist of the pre-Slavic era, a long period during which none of the later dialectal differences between Slavic languages had yet emerged. The last stage in which the language remained without internal differences that later characterize different Slavic languages can be dated around AD 500 and is sometimes termed ''Proto-Slavic proper'' or ''Early Common Slavic''. Following this is the Common Slavic period ( 500–1000), during which the first dialectal differences appeared but the entire Slavic-speaking area continued to function as a single language, with sound changes t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slavic Second Palatalization
The Slavic second palatalization is a Proto-Slavic sound change that manifested as a regressive palatalization of inherited Balto-Slavic velar consonants that occurred after the first and before the third Slavic palatalizations. Motivation The second palatalization of velars is a direct consequence of the monophthongization of diphthongs, or more precisely, the change *aj > ē.Mihaljević 2002:157 While *kaj, *gaj and *xaj were in accordance with the principle of so-called ''intrasyllabic synharmony'' that operated during the Common Slavic period, the resulting *kē, *gē, and *xē defied the intrasyllabic synharmony. Namely, the velars ended up in front of the front vowel ē, and this contradicted the Proto-Slavic phonotactical constraints. This anomaly was resolved by palatalizing the velars, just as during the first palatalization. However, the results of the second palatalization were different and not completely uniform across Slavic territory, indicating one of the fir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slavic First Palatalization
The Slavic first palatalization is a Proto-Slavic sound change that manifested as regressive palatalization of inherited Balto-Slavic velar consonants. Motivation An important tendency in Proto-Slavic—one which also operated throughout the Common Slavic period (ca. 300–1000 CE) and was the direct cause of the first palatalization—was so-called ''intrasyllabic synharmony''. Such intrasyllabic synharmony is said to be violated if a velar consonant occurs before a front (palatal) vowel, as the former is articulated in the region of the soft palate (or velum) near the back of the mouth and the latter in a region closer to the front of the mouth. Historically, speakers have resolved this opposition by assimilating the place of articulation of the velar consonant to that of the front vowel, thereby palatalizing it. This phenomenon is very common in the phonetic history of languages and marks the evolution of almost all modern Romance languages, as just one example. Form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Osthoff's Law
Osthoff's law is an Indo-European sound law which states that long vowels shorten when followed by a resonant (Proto-Indo-European language (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 Hermann Osthoff, 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 ''dyā́us'', but Ancient Greek , 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 and other Indo-European languages. However, the term is often used loosely as a c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cowgill's Law (Greek)
Cowgill's law says that a former vowel becomes between a resonant (, , , ) and a labial consonant (including labiovelars), in either order. It is named after Indo-Europeanist Warren Cowgill. Examples: * 'night' < ' (cf. , < , , gen. sg. ) * 'leaf' < ' (cf. ) * 'mill' < ' (cf. ) * 'nail' (stem ) < early [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cowgill's Law (Germanic)
Cowgill's law says that a PIE laryngeal , and possibly , turns into in Proto-Germanic when directly preceded by a sonorant and followed by . This law is named after Indo-Europeanist Warren Cowgill. This law is still controversial, although increasingly accepted. Donald Ringe (2006) accepts it; Andrew Sihler (1995) is noncommittal. Examples are fairly few: * Proto-Germanic ' "alive" (whence English ''quick'') < ' (cf. ') * Proto-Germanic ' acc. du. "us two" (cf. , , ) < ' (cf. '; Ved. ' acc. du. "us two" < ') * Possibly ' "husband's brother" < |
