User:ThaesOfereode/Szemerényi's law

Szemerényi's law is a controversial sound law that describes a process in which, at some early period in the Proto-Indo-European language, vowels underwent compensatory lengthening after the loss of a word-final fricative in some contexts. In short, when a vowel was followed by a sonorant and then a fricative word-finally, the final fricative is dropped and the vowel is lengthened. The law serves as an explanation for several otherwise unexplainable phenomena in Proto-Indo-European nominals, namely the behavior of vowels in a word's final syllable and the seemingly inexplicable absence of a final *-s in the nominative case, called the sigmatic nominative. The law is named after Hungarian-British linguist Oswald Szemerényi, who first proposed the process in 1956.

Terminology

The Proto-Indo-European language is the hypothetical parent language of the Indo-European languages. The language is believed to have been spoken around the 4th millennium BC, though some linguists argue that the 6th or 7th millennia BC are more likely. No record of the language exists, but its forms have been reconstructed through the comparative method.

Discourse surrounding the law makes a distinction between two kinds of nominative case markers: the sigmatic nominative and the asigmatic nominative. A grammatical case denotes a form of a word inflected to demonstrate its grammatical relationship to other words in the sentence. In particular, the nominative case is used to mark the subject of a verb, whereas the accusative case typically marks the direct object of a verb. In the Proto-Indo-European language and several of its daughter languages, many nouns are marked with what is called the sigmatic nominative. This term describes the marking of singular nouns in the nominative case with a final *-s. Many daughter languages demonstrate the a reflex of this marking, such as Latin -us, Ancient Greek -ος (-os), Sanskrit -अः (-aḥ), and Old Norse -r.

History

Szemerényi at a panel for the University of Freiburg in 1966

Oswald Szemerényi first described the law in 1956 in a paper published in the Journal of Comparative Linguistic Research in the Field of Indo-European Languages (German: Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der Indogermanischen Sprachen) entitled "Latin rēs and the Indo-European long-diphthong stem nouns". In it, he disputes the reconstruction of several terms, both following his proposed law and not. For those following the law, Szemerényi argues that there is a disparity between certain Ancient Greek and Sanskrit nouns that could not be accounted for with contemporary reconstructions. For example, some monosyllabic words in Proto-Indo-European had exhibited both a *-s marked nominative form, called the sigmatic nominative, and vṛddhi, a morphophonological process which affected vowels in certain environments.

Several terms found in different branches of the Indo-European language family had well-established relationships with one another, but linguists could not agree on how the forms were related precisely. For example, Vedic Sanskrit [क्षास्] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |variant= (help) kṣā́s 'ground, earth' and Greek χθών khthṓn 'soil, land' both derived from a common Proto-Indo-European root word, but Szemerényi objected to the constructions put forth, namely those of Karl Brugmann.

Szemerényi dismissed F. B. J. Kuiper's claim that χθών khthṓn 'soil, land' and χιών khiṓn 'snow' were "new formations that have supplanted the old nominatives in -ως [-os]", arguing that disagreement about the original term was that linguists were attempting to pattern the terms on the idea that a stem would end in a "long-diphthong" – that is, one where the initial vowel is long and the glide vowel is short – and the nominative *-s, while insisting the final *-m-m̥ in the accusative.

Szemerényi argued instead that if this were true, then Greek terms such as χθών and χιών would correspond to Indo-Iranian cognates that are unattested, such as Sanskrit *kṣā and *h(i)yā, respectively. These unattested forms must have existed at one point, but were ultimately changed to align with the other declensions based on analogical similarity, leading to nominative forms such as क्षाः kṣāḥ.

For example, he argued that Vedic Sanskrit [क्षास्] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |variant= (help) kṣā́s 'ground, earth' was indeed cognate with Greek χθών khthṓn 'soil, land', but rather than deriving from a **dʰéǵʰomm̥ source – as Karl Brugmann had postulated in 1897 – an earlier **dʰéǵʰoms was a better fit, given full evidence. This explained the long vowel in the nominative of Greek words like χθών khthṓn and χιών khiṓn 'snow', where a sigmatic nominative would produce a short vowel (i.e., -ων -ōn). In other words, Szemerényi argued that the loss of -s, followed by compensatory lengthening, followed by the Greek sound change m → n / _# adequately and simply explained the Greek form, the long vowel, and the otherwise unexplained absent sigmatic nominative form.

He proposes that some of the long vowels used to reconcile Latin and Sanskrit cognates are not the result of accent or morphology, but are the result of phonological processes alone. He explains:

We must conclude then that not even the monosyllabic nasal (or liquid) stems are capable of justifying the assumption of vṛddhi combined with -s in the nominative, and that is for very good reason. [...] The difference between the nominative of r l m n stems on the one hand, and y w stems on the other, is not due to accent or morphological factors, but is purely phonetic: the vṛddhi is, as it were, compensation for the absence of -s.

Szemerényi defended the law several times throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Traditional view

The law is triggered when *s or any of the three laryngeal sounds represented by *h₁, *h₂, and *h₃ is lost word-finally after a sonorant – which includes liquids such as *r or nasals such as *m – itself preceded by a vowel which is thereby lengthened. In other words, in a cluster where "V" represents any vowel, "R" represents any sonorant, and "H" represents either *s or one of the three laryngeals, the law is only demonstrated in the sequence "VRH". In this context, the fricative *s or laryngeal is lost and the vowel is lengthened to compensate. One example includes the following, explaining the long *ē in *méh₂tēr 'mother':

**méh₂ters → **méh₂terr → *méh₂tēr

Most linguists, including Szemerényi himself, agree that it is likely that the sounds represented by "H" were not dropped altogether, but rather assimilated to the preceding sonorant, leading to a geminate, the shortening of which is what actually led to the vowel lengthening to compensate. Some linguists prefer this explanation because the gemination followed by the compensatory lengthening is typologically common, though Robert S. P. Beekes – admitting the typological frequency of the sound change – calls this intermediate gemination unnecessary.

This law helps to demonstrate why Proto-Indo-European nominal inflections depart from their expected values. For one, the final *-s is often nominative case marker, whereas *-m̥ is associated with the accusative. Many words in the language lack the sigmatic nominative, but retain an accusative-marking final *-m̥. In these cases, however, the accusative form's vowel is short and Szemerényi's law thereby explains this discrepancy by explaining that the nominative form's vowel is long by a regular phonological process. For example, the word *h₂nḗr 'man', shown here in the nominative case, has the long vowel *ē. However, in its accusative form, the reconstructed form is *h₂nér-m̥, with a short vowel and the accusative-marking final *-m̥. In Proto-Indo-European, a noun like *ph₂tḗr 'father' is not marked with the sigmatic nominative, but the law explains irregularities like this by arguing that at a previous stage, sometimes termed "Pre-Proto-Indo-European", the term for 'father' would have been **ph₂térs. After Szemerényi's law took effect, the final *s was lost and the *é became lengthened.

The law largely affects the nominative singular forms of many masculine and feminine nouns, as well as the nominative and accusative forms of neuter collective nouns. Often, this law is followed by the loss of the sonorant as well, particularly *n when the preceding vowel is an unaccented *ō. For example, *ḱwō 'dog' is often derived from an earlier *ḱwōn with the long vowel explained by the application of Szemerényi's law to the Pre-Proto-Indo-European form **ḱwōns. Some linguists have argued that the assimilation may convert sounds like *m to *n before *s before Szemerényi's law is applied. Still, other linguists have described this process as distinct from Szemerényi's law entirely.

Objections

Frederik Kortlandt has criticized Szemerényi's law as "an instance of circular reasoning".

In 1975, Frederik Kortlandt argued that, at least in some cases, it is an assumption that Szemerényi's Proto-Indo-European examples must have had a final *-s to mark the nominative case. Kortlandt attacked the law again in 2018, calling it "an instance of circular reasoning" because the long vowel can only be accounted for by the loss of a consonant in order to account for a long vowel. Similarly, in 1990, building on work from 1988, Robert S. P. Beekes echoed Kortlandt's earlier criticism, arguing that "there is no necessity to assume an original nominal -s", further dismissing the law entirely as a "hypothesis" which "has always seemed to me most improbable". Beekes also points to the largely domineering role of *s, which usually devoices sounds around it – rather than being assimilated to voiced [z] in voiced environments – except in narrow circumstances, making this kind of assimilation less probable. Instead, he supports Kortlandt's proposition, which built on earlier work by Jacob Wackernagel, which states that vowels are lengthened before a word-final resonant. According to Beekes, this position is more defensible because it is more phonetically likely and explains the facts more simply without any further assumptions, namely that there is cause to assume a nominative final *-s.

Some disputants point to the lengthening of some monosyllabic terms which preserve the final *-s and have a phoneme other than a sonorant in the "R" position, including *wṓkʷs 'voice'.

Recent scholarship

Szemerényi's law is accepted by most linguists, but the law does not enjoy universal acceptance and what agreement exists often differs in the details.

In 2014, Ryan Sandell and Andrew Miles Byrd defended the law in a presentation at a conference on Indo-European linguistics. In it, they point out several issues with what they call the "Wackernagel–Kortlandt hypothesis", which is the combined points of Wackernagel's 1896 paper, Kortlandt's 1975 paper, and Beekes's 1990 paper. They take issue with Kortlandt's supposition that vṛddhi affects the vowel of all monosyllabic words, which fails to account for monosyllabic words with short vowels like *nókʷts 'night'.

Sandell and Byrd admit, however, that Szemerényi's formulation still needs revision and thereby reanalyze the law with what they called a "broad" or "final" form of Szemerényi's law, presented as follows:

${\text{*VC(C)F →}}$ ${\begin{cases}\mathrm {{\bar {V}}C} {\text{ }}/{\text{ }}\_\#\\{\text{VCC}}{\text{ }}/{\text{ }}\_\#\\{\text{VC}}{\text{ }}/{\text{ }}\_\${\text{C}}_{0}\end{cases}}$

The Pre-Proto-Indo-European on the left preceding the arrow demonstrate the syllable structure involved: vowel (V), consonant (C), optional consonant (C in parentheses), and fricative (F), meaning that the context must either be VCF or VCCF. The right half demonstrates the result of the law (following the bracket) in three different environments (following the forward slashes). In short, this updated form of the law states that the fricative is deleted word-finally in VCF or VCCF contexts and the vowel is lengthened to compensate for the loss if the loss occurs after a single consonant.

Klein, Joseph, and Fritz prefer the simpler */F/ → ∅ / VR_]_σ to explain.

As part of a larger process

Other linguists have attempted to expand Szemerényi's law to explain other cases of word-final or syllable-final phenomena as a part of a larger phonological process, especially those related to compensatory lengthening. Examples include the loss of *n after *ō, the loss of *d after *r, and as an explanation for nominal plurals ending in *ōs through a previous **os-s.

Relative chronology

The law is thought to have affected early Proto-Indo-European for a few reasons. First, the lengthened vowel spread by analogy in forms that would be unaffected by the law, such as in *pṓds 'foot'. Next, word-final sonorants other than *n were dropped in nominative singular forms, seemingly following the law even where it was not justified, such as in *sókʷh₂ō 'companion', which was originally an i-stem.

See also

• Stang's law – a similar rule affecting word-final sonorants in Proto-Indo-European

References

Sources

• Beekes, Robert S. P. (1990). Eichner, Heiner [in Catalan]; Rix, Helmut (eds.). Wackernagel's explanation of the lengthened grade (PDF). Wiesbaden, Germany: Reichert Verlag. ISBN 3882264837.
• Byrd, Andrew Miles (2010). Reconstructing Indo-European Syllabification (Ph.D. thesis). University of Kentucky. Retrieved 26 July 2024.
• Byrd, Andrew Miles (2015). The Indo-European Syllable. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-29302-1.
• Clayton, John (14 December 2022). "Labiovelar loss and the rounding of syllabic liquids in Indo-Iranian". Indo-European Linguistics. 10 (1). Brill: 33–87. doi:10.1163/22125892-0000010021. ISSN 2212-5892.
• Collinge, N. E. (1985). The Laws of Indo-European. Amsterdam: Benjamin. ISBN 978-0-915027-75-0.
• Fortson IV, Benjamin W. (2010). Ido-European Language and Culture: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-8895-1. OCLC 276406248.
• Fries, Simon (2021). Hill, Eugen; Kümmel, Martin Joachim [in German]; Schumacher, Stefan (eds.). "Lengthening before Two Word-Final Dentals in Early Proto-Indo-European" (PDF). International Journal of Diachronic Linguistics and Linguistic Reconstruction. 18. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag: 3–12. doi:10.29091/9783752001013. ISBN 978-3-7520-0101-3.
• Jasanoff, Jay H. (2 December 2019). "The sigmatic forms of the Hittite verb". Indo-European Linguistics. 7 (1). Brill: 13–71. doi:10.1163/22125892-00701001. ISSN 2212-5884.
• Stausland Johnsen, Sverre (2021). "The origin of the Proto-Indo-European nominal plural ending *-ōs". Historische Sprachforschung / Historical Linguistics. 134: 186–195. ISSN 0935-3518. JSTOR 27211719.
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• Kleiner, Kurt (19 February 2024). "New Linguistics Technique Could Reveal Who Spoke the First Indo-European Languages". Scientific American. Retrieved 1 August 2024.
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• Sandell, Ryan; Byrd, Andrew Miles (6 June 2014). In Defense of Szemerényi's Law. East Coast Indo-European Conference. Blacksburg, Virginia.
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• Wackernagel, Jacob (1896). Altindische Grammatik [Old Indian Grammar] (in German). Vol. 1 Lautlehre. Göttingen, Germany: Dandenhoed und Ruprecht. doi:10.17192/eb2021.0025 – via Philipps University of Marburg's University Library.