notes

  • This page was last modified on September 7, 2004 .

INDO-EUROPEAN STUDIES 205

Advanced IE Phonology and Noun Morphology

Fall Quarter 2000
Thursday, 2:00–4:50 p.m., Dodd 52

Instructor: Prof. Vyacheslav Ivanov
Office Hours: Wednesday, 12:00–12:50 p.m. and by appointment, Kinsey 191

SYLLABUS

Each student has to read at least one of the works connected to the main parts of the course enumerated below or another article/book bearing on the subject (one can add to the suggested tentative list any of the recent or important previous publications). By the end of October each participant has to select a topic for a short paper/oral presentation on a topic related (directly or indirectly) to the themes of the course (it is advisable to use language material and special works on a history of separate IE languages according to the linguistic knowledge of the student).

1. IE Phonology

1.1 System of stops. Typological considerations. Glottalic Theory. Arguments for and against reinterpretation of traditional PIE stops as glottalized (ejective) stops; Winter's Law. Possible reevaluation of voiced aspirates (dialectal differences of their reflexes). Bartholomae's Law. Reasons for abolishing the fourth series of stops (voiceless aspirates). Dialectal systems of stops. Views on the Anatolian development. Tocharian palatalization and its typology. Nostratic view of the problem (two variants of Nostratic phonological reconstruction).

From the literature:

  • Joseph S. Salmons. The Glottalic Theory. Journal of Indo-European Studies: Monograph Series. 10. McLean, Virginia: Institute for the Study of Man, 1993 (with full bibliography).

1.2 Centum-satem isogloss. Difference between Hittite (N. Anatolian) and Luwian (S. Anatolian). Phonological features of affricates/fricatives that can be traced back to palatals: differences between Indo-Iranian dialects (Old Persian/E. Iranian ~ Sanskrit ~ Nuristani). Languages reflecting three rows of velars: Albanian, Armenian, Luwian. Dialectal palatalization of labiovelars. Traces of labiovelars in Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic. Depalatalization of palatals before a sonant in Albanian and Balto-Slavic. Traces of palatals in cultural terms common to IE and Caucasian.

From the literature:

  • H. Craig Melchert. “PIE Velars in Luvian.” Studies in Memory of Warren Cowgill. Ed. by C. Watkins. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
  • Johann Tischler. “Hundert Jahre kentum-satem Theorie.” Indogermanische Forschungen 95 (1990): 63–98.
  • G. Morgenstierne. “Indo-European k̑ in Kafiri.” Norsk Tidsskrit for Sprogvidenskal 13 (1945): 225–238.

1.3 Fricatives. Number of sibilants; s-mobile; its S. Anatolian (Luwian) correspondences. The question of an original symmetry of the rows of ancient sibilants and stops. Development of s in satem languages; Nuristani facts and their possible explanation. Brugmann's spirants. Possibility of explaining them away in terms of phonotactics (*dental stop + *velar stop : dhg'h > g'hdh ~ g'h ~ dh); peculiarity of Hittite and Tocharian forms (names of ‘earth’, ‘fish’ and ‘bear’).

From the literature:

  • André Martinet. “Concerning Some Slavic and Aryan Reflexes of IE s.” Word 7 (1951): 91–95.
  • Jochem Schindler. “A Thorny Problem.” Indo-European Studies II. Ed. by C. Watkins. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Department of Linguistics, 1975. 28–47.

1.4 Laryngeals as “sonant coefficients” in Saussure‘s sense. Ablaut of the long vowel roots and schwa indogermanicum primum (*<schwa>; its possible phonological interpretation). The question of the nasal infix verbal class in Sanskrit according to Benveniste. Origin of long sonants. Hittite, Palaic, Luwian and Armenian evidence on laryngeals in initial, middle and final positions. The problem of traces of laryngeals in other dialects. Relative and absolute chronology of the disappearance of laryngeals. Indo-Aryan voiceless aspirates (cf. §1.1 above). The origin of Balto-Slavic tones. Tocharian verbal forms in k-. Possible Indo-Uralic, Kartvelian and Afro-Asiatic correspondences to laryngeals.

From the literature:

  • Edward Sapir. “Glottalized Continuants in Navaho, Nootka and Kwakiutl (With a Note on Indo-European).” Language 13.4 (1938): 248–274. Also reprinted in:
  • D. Mandelbaum, ed. Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1958.
  • Sapir’s Complete Works. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Edgar H. Sturtevant. The Indo-Hittite Laryngeals. Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America, 1942. (The best introduction to the history of the subject and its state by the middle of the century.)
  • W. Winter, ed. Evidence for Laryngeals. The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1965.
  • R. S. P. Beekes. The Development of the Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals in Greek. The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1969.
  • O. Lindeman. Einführung in die Laryngaltheorie. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970.
  • A. R. Keiler. A Phonological Study of Indo-European Laryngeals. The Hague/Paris: Mouton.
  • Alfred Bammesberger. Studien zur Laryngaltheorie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.
  • Alfred Bammesberger, ed. Die Laryngaltheorie und die Rekonstruktion des indogermanischen Laut- und Formensystems. Indogermanische Bibliothek. Reihe 3: Untersuchungen. Heidelberg: C. Winter.
  • Jorma Koivulehto. “Die Laryngale und die finnisch-ugrische Evidenz.” Jorma Koivulehto: Verba Mutuata. Ed. by Klaas Ph. Ruppel. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura, 1999. 295–308.

1.5 Sonants in different positions. Sievers-Edgerton’s Law. Sonants and the IE ablaut. Phonological status of u and i at the oldest chronological stage. Phonotactics of nasals, liquids and vibrants: the peculiarity of final position in different dialects. Final -r and the place of accent/tone.

From the literature:

  • E. Sievers. “Zur Akzent und Lautlehre der germanischen Sprachen.” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur [ed. by H. Paul, W. Braune and E. Sievers] 5(1878): 63–163.
  • F. Edgerton. “The Indo-European Semivowels.” Language (1943): 83–123.
  • Jerzy Kurylowicz. “Zur altpersicschen Keilschrift.” Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 17 (1964): 563–569.
  • Gregory Nagy. Greek Dialects and the Transformation of an IE Process. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  • Jochem Schindler. “Notizien zum Sieversschen Gesetz.” Sprache 23.1 (1977): 56–65.
  • I. Ickler. “Bemerkungen zum ‘Sieversschen Gesetz’ unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des RV.” Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 71.2 (1976): 117–128.
  • Jorma Koivulehto. “Die Sieverssche Regel im Lichte der germanisch-finnischen Beziehungen.” Jorma Koivulehto: Verba Mutuata (see above, §1.4). 245–271.

1.6 Vowels. Qualitative ablaut. The origin of IE *o grade and its possible link to the reduced grade. Grammatical categories expressed by this grade. Quantitative ablaut and its probable origin. Phonological status of schwa indogermanicum secundum. Vowel length before the fall of laryngeals (Hittite evidence). Later development of long vowels. Brugmann's Law. The problem of short a : dialectal and lexical restrictions of its use.

From the literature:

  • J. Kurylowicz. L'’pophonie en indo-européen. Prace jazykoznawcze. 9. Wroclaw: Polska Akademia Nauk.
  • J. Kurylowicz. Indogermanische Grammatik. Vol. 2 (Akzent, Ablaut). Heidelberg: C. Winter.
  • R. Schmitt-Brandt. Die Entwicklung des indogermanischen Vokalsystems: Versuch einer inneren Rekonstruktion. Heidelberg: Julius Gross.

1.7 Root structure. Limitations on the co-occurrence of the initial and final stops of different series. Probable bearing of these rules on glottalic theory. Sanskrit set vs. anit roots/stems and “two-syllable bases” of the Junggrammatikers’ period. The connection between a root and a determinative/suffix in Benveniste's binoms. Comparison to Kartvelian structures and possible explanations of similarities (typological ~ areal ~ genetic). Hysterokinetic, proterokinetic, amphikinetic forms and their dialectal development. IE Paradigmatic accent and the idea of accentual “valency”. Interdependence of tone/accent and vowels in a word-form. Vowel reduction as due to an ancient accent. Phonological shape of a word. The beginning and end of a word.

From the literature:

  • Émile Benveniste. Origines de la formation des noms en indo-européen. Paris: Librairie Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1935.
  • Raimo Anttila. Proto-Indo-European Schwebeablaut. University of California Publications in Linguistics. 58. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.
  • Jochem Schindler. “The Ablaut of the -r/n- Stems.” IE Studies II (see above, §1.3). 211–225. (In French: BSL 70.1 (1975): 1–10.)
  • Paul Kiparsky. “The Inflectional Accent in IE.” Language 49.4: 794–849.
  • Paul Kiparsky and Morris Halle. “Towards a Reconstruction of the IE Accent.” Studies in Stress and Accent. Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics. 4. 209–238.
  • A. J. Nussbaum. Head and Horn in IE. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1986.

2. Nominal Morphology

2.1 Types of nominal suffixes and their origin. Root nouns. Heteroclitic nominal classes in Hittite, Luwian and Vedic. Traces of heteroclitic formations in separate dialects. Structure of Tocharian nominal paradigms and their possible explanations (archaism or innovation). Heteroclitic declension as the oldest possible type of declension (probable Nostratic parallels). Determinatives. Word derivation. Nominal composition. The structure of compounds and rules for word composition; obligatory substitution of suffixes in compounding--Caland's Law. Types of nominal compounds (Sanskrit classification and some other semantic types found in other dialects: Tocharian, Luwian). Compounds as a possible trace of the ancient "preflectional" stage of Pre-Proto-IE; typological arguments for the hypothesis.

From the literature:

  • Franz Specht. Der Ursprung der indogermanischen Deklination. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1947.
  • J. Tischler. “Zum Wurzelnomen in Indogermanischen.” MSS 35 (1976): 121–132.
  • R. Ködderizsch. “Zu einigen idg. Diphtongstämmen.” Commentationes linguisticae et philologicae Ernesto Dickenmann lustrum claudenti quintum decimum. Ed. by P. Scholz, W. Woesler and P. Gerlinghoff. 199–201.
  • H. M. Hoenigswald. “Diminutives and Tatpurusas: The IE Trend toward Endocentity.” Journal of IE Studies 5.2 (1971): 9–13.
  • Françoise Bader. “Adjectifs verbaux hétéroclitiques (*i/nt/u) en composition nominale.” Revue de philologie 49.1 (1975) 19–48.

2.2 Case system and its origin. Heteroclitic nominal clases and ergative, nominative and accusative. Asymmetries in the case forms of the masculine and neutra *-o- stems as a main reason for reconstructing ergative/active type for Proto-IE. Other possible arguments in its favor. Parallelism of the ergative-absolutive grammatical opposition and that of the two genders (animate-inanimate = neutrum) and two verbal series. Ergative and genitive as its semantic variant in ergative languages: typological explanation of the coincidence of later nominative and genitive forms (Hittite thematic declension). Hittite quasi-ergative in -nt- and its origin: conflicting theories (Benveniste vs. Garrett). Luwian forms of the animated neutra in -sa/-za : archaism or borrowing? Ergativity as a feature of the linguistic league or zone (Sprachbund) of the ancient oriental languages and explanation of Anatolian quasi-ergatives.

From the literature:

  • C. C. Uhlenbeck. “Agens und Patiens im Kasussystem der indogermanischen Sprachen.” Indogermanische Forschungen 12 (1901) 170–171. (Also in a Russian translation in a collection __________,1950, 101–102, together with other important classic articles on ergativity and its place in the Proto-IE system.)
  • H. Schuchardt. “Über den aktivischen und passivischen Charakter des Transitives.” Indogermanische Forschungen 18: 528–531. (Also in a Russian translation in __________, 103–106.)
  • Edward Sapir. “Review of C. C. Uhlenbeck, Het passieve karakter van het verbum transitivum of van het verbum actionis in de talen van Noord-America.” International Journal of American Linguistics 1.1: 82–86. (Reprinted in Sapir’s Complete Works.)
  • André Vaillant. “L’ergatif indo-européen.” Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris 137 (1936): 93–108.
  • K. H. Schmidt. “Active and Ergative Stages of Pre-IE.” Ergativity 1979: 333–345.
  • William R. Schmalstieg. Indo-European Linguistics: A New Synthesis. Pennsylvania, 1980.
  • S. Luraghi. “Proto-IE as an Ergative Language.” JIES 15 (1988): 359–379.
  • Onofrio Carruba. “Le notazioni dell’agente animato nelle lingue anatoliche (e l’agente animato nelle lingue anatoliche e l’ergativo).” Per una grammatica ittita/Toward a Hittite Grammar. Ed. by O. Carruba. Studia Mediterranea. 7. Pavia: Gianni Iuculano editore. 61–98.
  • A. Garrett. “The Origin of NP Split Ergativity.” Language 66 (1990): 261–296.
  • R. M. W. Dixon. Ergativity. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics. 69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

2.3 Instrumental and Dative-Ablative. The -m-/-bhi- isogloss in the formation of these cases. The possibility of tracing back the *-m- case (probably also in Anatolian enclitics as well as in Tocharian) to the ancient element found in Indo-Uralic or Nostratic (Greenberg’s Eurasiatic). The syntactic independence of the morph *-bhi > Mycenaean -pi (controversial Tocharian and S. Anatolian parallels).

From the literature:

  • Bogdan Cop. “Indogermanisch-Anatolisch und Uralisch.” Hethitisch und Indogermanisch. Ed. by E. Neu and W. Meid. Innsbruck, 1979. 9–24 (especially 11–14).
  • Joseph H. Greenberg. IE and its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Vol. 1 (Grammar). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000. (Particularly 139–144.)

2.4 Dative and Locative. Locative without ending (zero flection) and casus indefinitus: vocative and possibilities of reconstructing IE “absolute” case and its traces in Hittite (Neu’s hypothesis). Local cases and their typology (Hjemslev). Ablative and genitive. Possessive adjectives substituting genitive as an isogloss uniting Tocharian, (S.) Anatolian, Slavic. Old Hittite directive and possibilities of its comparison to the *-__ case in Latin and other dialects. Tocharian and Old Lithuanian local cases: possible Uralic influence. Hittite-Kartvelian isoglosses in the subsystem of local cases.

From the literature:

  • Erich Neu. “Einige Überlegungen zu den hethit. Kasusendungen.” Hethitisch und Indogermanisch. 176–196.
  • Kenneth Schields, Jr. “More on Early Indo–European Nominal Inflection: The Origin of the -r-/-n- Stems.” JIES 7.3–4 (1979): 213-226.
  • Gordon H. Fairbanks. “Case Inflection in IE.” JIES 5.2–3 (1977): 101–132.
  • Adolf Erhart. Studien zur idg. Morphologie. Brno, 1970.
  • R. S. P. Beekes. The Origin of the IE Nominal Inflection. Innsbruck, 1985.
  • I. F. Villar. Origen de la flexión nominal indoeuropea. Madrid, 1974.

2.5 Plural cases. Plural of IE neutra and recent work on IE collective nouns. Plural in -nt- of the names of parts of the body as a Luwian-Tocharian isogloss. Typical forms of the names of the two (paired) parts of the body. Tocharian dual and Paralis. Dual as a category of small number (examples from the ancient texts).

From the literature:

  • Johannes Schmidt. Die Pluralbildungen der indogermanischen Neutra. Weimar: Böhlau, 1889.
  • H. Eichner. “Das Problem des Ansatzes eines urindogermanischen Numerus ‘Kollektiv’ (‘Komprehensiv’).” Grammatische Kategorien: Akten der VII Fachtagung der indogermanischen Gesellschaft. Ed. by B. Schlerath. Wiesbaden: Reichert. 134–169.
  • E. Neu. “Zum Kollektivum im Hethitischen.” Per una grammatica ittita (see above, §2.2). 197–212.
  • Norbert Oettinger. “Der Akzent des indogermanischen Kollektivums im Lichte des Hethitischen.” MSS 54: 207–214.
  • J. Hilmarsson. The Dual Forms of Nouns and Pronouns in Tocharian. Tocharian and Indo-European Studies Supplementary Series. 1. Rejkjavik, 1989.

2.6 Two-partite gender system and its development. The two-gender structure of nominal paradigms in Lydian (N. Anatolian). The attempts to reconstruct traces of the feminine gender in Anatolian on the basis of vowel alternations. The function of the Luwian (S. Anatolian) suffix -i-. Compounds in *-e/osor- and the origin of the suffixes of the names of females and Indo-Iranian and Celtic feminine forms of numerals. Adjectives, their relative age (Anatolian data) and their connection to gender agreement. Development of the determined adjectives in Balto-Slavic from combinations with relative words; Indo-Iranian and Hittite parallels. Germanic type of two adjectival paradigms as an isogloss shared by Balto-Slavic.

From the literature:

  • Antoine Meillet. “Essai de chronologie des langues indo-européennes.” BSL 32 (1931): 1–28.
  • Emmanuel Laroche. “Le problème de feminin.” Revue hittite et asianique 28 (1970): 50–57.
  • Paul Brosman. “The Hittite Gender of Cognates of PIE Neuters.” JIES 6.1-2 (1978): 93–106.
  • Paul Brosman. “Designation of Females in Hittite.” JIES 10.1–2: 65–71.