Did murmur spread in Pre-Proto-Indo-European?
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Charles M. Barrack
,
Daniel R. McCloy
Abstract
The reconstructed stop consonants of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) present something of an anomaly from the perspective of linguistic typology. Whereas murmured (breathy-voiced) stops are cross-linguistically rare (indeed, they are non-existent in nine of the ten historic branches of the Indo-European languages), they are more widespread in the lexicon of PIE than their plain-voiced counterparts. In this paper we present statistical evidence to establish that the preponderance of murmured stops in PIE is atypical, and propose a novel explanation for their distribution: namely, that murmur - already present in pre-Proto-Indo- European - was in the process of spreading through the PIE lexicon to the plainvoiced stops especially in initial position. We suggest some possible phonetic mechanisms that may have given rise to the spread of murmur.
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelei
- Vorwort der Herausgeber
- Contents
- A note on the functional distribution of ille in Late Latin
- The origin of the Baltic inchoative in -sta-
- Once more on Hittite ā/e-ablauting ḫi-verbs
- The long vowel in WGmc. *hlūdV
- Homeric κρείων ‘lord’ and the Indo-European word for ‘head’
- Decoding Middle Welsh clauses or “Avoid Ambiguity”
- Did murmur spread in Pre-Proto-Indo-European?
- Intensifiers and reflexives in SAE, Insular Celtic and English
- Beiträge zur Leidener Arbeitstagung 2013
- Ares the Ripper
- Tone variation in the Baltic ia-presents
- “Narten formations” versus “Narten roots”
- Surprise at length of Tocharian nouns
- From phonetics to grammar
- Notes on three “acrostatic” neuter s-stems
- Monosyllabic circumflexion or shortening?
- The augment of vowel-initial roots and vṛddhi–derivation in the Indo–Iranian languages
- The lengthened grade in Germanic hypocoristica
- The fourth makes it whole?
- Wortindex
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelei
- Vorwort der Herausgeber
- Contents
- A note on the functional distribution of ille in Late Latin
- The origin of the Baltic inchoative in -sta-
- Once more on Hittite ā/e-ablauting ḫi-verbs
- The long vowel in WGmc. *hlūdV
- Homeric κρείων ‘lord’ and the Indo-European word for ‘head’
- Decoding Middle Welsh clauses or “Avoid Ambiguity”
- Did murmur spread in Pre-Proto-Indo-European?
- Intensifiers and reflexives in SAE, Insular Celtic and English
- Beiträge zur Leidener Arbeitstagung 2013
- Ares the Ripper
- Tone variation in the Baltic ia-presents
- “Narten formations” versus “Narten roots”
- Surprise at length of Tocharian nouns
- From phonetics to grammar
- Notes on three “acrostatic” neuter s-stems
- Monosyllabic circumflexion or shortening?
- The augment of vowel-initial roots and vṛddhi–derivation in the Indo–Iranian languages
- The lengthened grade in Germanic hypocoristica
- The fourth makes it whole?
- Wortindex
