PIE phonology MOC

PIE laryngeal deletion

PIE laryngeals were deleted in a number of circumstances when not adjacent to a syllabic.¹

• A laryngeal separated from an o by a sonorant, all in the same syllable was deleted. Since in some categories the o grade is more common, this can mean an underlying H rarely surfaces.
  • e.g. terh₁- ‘bore’, tórmos ‘borehole’
  • /o-yh₁-/, the Core IE thematic optative.
• Pinault’s rule A laryngeal preceded by an (underlying) non-syllabic followed by an (underlying)_ */y/_ is deleted.²
  • e.g. imperfective stem of root werh₁- ‘to say’ is wéry(e/o)-
  • imperfective stem of root h₂arh₃- ‘to plow’ is h₂ary(e/o)-
  • contrast with imperfective stem of root snéh₁- ‘to spin’ is sneh₁ye/o-
• A laryngeal in the position C_CC is dropped i.e. /C_CC/ > /CCC/.
  • e.g. /dʰugh₂tr-/ → dʰugtr-
• An utterance-final laryngeal was deleted (after PIE *e-laryngeal colouring) if preceded by a syllabic. A vocative constitutes a complete utterance. Remains productive in Rigvedic.
  • e.g. /-ah₂/ → voc. -a.

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tidy | sembr

Footnotes

1. 2017. From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic, pp. 16–17 ↩

2. See a Wikipedia page I edited: Pinault’s Law ↩