Stang's law is a

Proto-Indo-European 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- ...

(PIE)

phonological Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

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 nasal. According to the law these sequences are simplified such that laryngeals and semivowels are dropped, with

compensatory lengthening Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered ...

of a preceding vowel. This rule is usually cited in more restricted form as: and ( denoting a vowel and a long vowel). Often the rules and also are added: * PIE 'sky' (accusative singular) > > Sanskrit ''dyā́m'', acc. sg. of ''dyaús'', Latin ''diem'' (which served as the basis for Latin ''diēs'' 'day'), Greek Ζῆν (''Zên'') (reformed after Homeric Greek to Ζῆνα ''Zêna'', subsequently Δία ''Día''), acc. of Ζεύς (''Zeús'') * PIE 'cow' (acc. sg.) > > Sanskrit ''gā́m'', acc. sg. of ''gaús'', Greek (Homeric and dialectal) βών (''bṓn''), acc. sg. of βοῦς (''boûs'') 'cow' * acc. sg. of PIE 'house' is , not . * acc. sg. of PIE 'grain' after laryngeal colouring is the disyllabic , not trisyllabic

References

Sound laws Proto-Indo-European language {{ie-lang-stub

Overview

See also

References