PIE syllabification of sonorants

Lindeman’s option

Lindeman’s option (an extension of Edgerton’s option) attempts to explain the seemingly randomly alternating sonorant syllabification in cognates with word-initial CR. For example, reflexes reflect both PIE dyḗm and diḗm (sky/day) are reflected in daughter languages, notably Sanskrit contains reflexes of both versions (dyā́m, diā́m).

Edgerton’s explanation was that Siever’s law was in fact taking place across word boundaries, so that the form dyḗm could only occur utterance-initially or after a word ending in a light syllable, whereas diḗm would occur in other cases. Lindeman’s argued that this phenomenon can only be observed in monosyllabic words, so the formulation is

Lindeman’s option :: A monosyllabic word beginning with a CR cluster will alternate to CṚ if the previous word ends in a heavy syllable.

However, other explanations for the phenomenon are possible, for example it may be that Edgerton's option held generally but syllabified alternants were simply retained more strongly for monosyllabics in daughter languages.

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