Proto-Indo-European accent

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Proto-Indo-European accent refers to the accentual system of Proto-Indo-European language.

Contents 1 Description 2 Reflexes 3 Unaccented words 4 Interpretation 5 Modern theories 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References

[edit] Description

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is reconstructed to have a pitch accent system that is usually described as a free tonal accent. This means that at most one syllable in a word was distinguished by height (rather than prominence), and that the place of accent (tone) was not predictable by phonological rules.

PIE accent could be mobile, which means that it could change place throughout the inflectional paradigm. That state of affairs can be seen in Vedic and Ancient Greek, e.g. in the declension of athematic nouns; compare:

• PIE *pṓds 'foot, step' N. sg. > Sanskrit pā́t, Ancient Greek πούς
• PIE G. sg. *pedés > Sanskrit padás, Ancient Greek ποδός
• PIE A. sg. *pódm̥ > Sanskrit pā́dam, Ancient Greek πόδᾰ

—or in the conjugation of athematic verbs (compare Sanskrit root present first-person sg. émi, first-person plural imás). Otherwise, the accent was placed at the same syllable throughout the inflection, and according to that placement nouns are divided into barytones accented on the first syllable, and oxytones accented on the last syllable. Compare:

• PIE barytone *wĺ̥kʷos 'wolf' > Sanskrit N. sg. vṛ́kas, G. sg. vṛ́kasya, N. pl. vṛ́kās
• PIE oxytone *suHnús 'son' > Sanskrit N. sg. sūnús, G. sg. sūnós, N. pl. sūnávas

PIE accent was also free which means that it could stand on any syllable in a word, which is faithfully reflected in Vedic Sanskrit accent (later Classical Sanskrit has predictable accent). Compare:

• PIE *bʰéromh₁nos 'carried' > Vedic bháramāṇas
• PIE *dʰoréyeti 'holds' > Vedic dhāráyati
• PIE *nemesyéti 'worships' > Vedic namasyáti
• PIE *h₁rudʰrós 'red' > Vedic rudhirás

As one can see, the placement of reconstructed PIE accent is reflected in Vedic Sanskrit basically intact. According to the reflex of PIE accent, Indo-European languages are divided into those with free accent preserved (either directly or indirectly), and those with fixed (or bound) accent. Free accent is preserved in Vedic Sanskrit (of modern Indo-Iranian languages, according to some, in Pashto), Ancient Greek, Balto-Slavic and Anatolian. In Proto-Germanic, free accent was retained long enough for Verner's Law to be dependent on it, but later stress was shifted to the first syllable of the word.

[edit] Reflexes

Traditionally, Vedic accent is held as most archaic, faithfully reflecting the position of the original PIE accent. Avestan manuscripts do not have written accent, but we know indirectly that in some period free PIE accent was preserved in (e.g. Avestan *r is devoiced yielding -hr- before voiceless stops and after the accent—if the accent was not on the preceding syllable, *r is not devoiced^[1]).

Ancient Greek also preserves free PIE accent, but with the limitation of accent being positioned as far as on the antepenultimate syllable from the end, penultimate if the last syllable was long. As in Vedic, in certain nominal paradigms accent could be mobile. Verbal Greek accent is completely worthless for the reconstruction of PIE accent, for it abides by the simple rule of being positioned as leftmost as possible from the end of a word, to the limit of antepenultimate syllable.

Proto-Germanic initially preserved PIE free accent, though it was generalized in its last stage and fixed on the first syllable of a word. PIE accent left its traces in Germanic in the operation of Verner's law. Additionally, in Germanic, Italic and Celtic, all of which show bound accent in historical period, traces of old free PIE accent can be seen by the developments of some sounds, shortenings of some vowels (i.e. the disappearance of laryngeals) etc.

Anatolian languages show traces of old PIE accent indirectly by lengthening of old accented syllable. Compare:

• PIE *dóru 'tree; wood' > Hittite, Luwian tāru
• Pie *wódr̥- 'water' > Hittite wātar, but PIE *wedṓr 'waters' (collective) > Hittite widār

Balto-Slavic also retains free PIE accent. For the reconstruction of Proto-Balto-Slavic accent, the most important is the evidence of Lithuanian, Latvian (traditionally Lithuianian is thought as more relevant, but that role is being increasingly taken over by Latvian^[2]), and some Slavic languages, especially West South Slavic languages and their archaic dialects. Accent alternations in inflectional paradigms (both verbal and nominal) are also retained in Balto-Slavic. Generally it was held that Balto-Slavic has innovative accentual system, but nowadays, according to some researchers, Balto-Slavic takes a pivotal role in the reconstruction of PIE accent (see below).

[edit] Unaccented words

Some PIE lexical categories could be unaccented (clitics). These are chiefly particles (PIE *-kʷe 'and' > Vedic -ca, Latin -que) and some forms of pronouns (PIE *moy 'to me' > Vedic me).

Vedic Sanskrit evidence also indicates that in some positions Proto-Indo-European verb could be unaccented in some syntactical conditions, such as in finite position in the main clause (but not sentence-initially, where verbs would bear whatever accent they would have borne in subordinate clauses). Same is valid for vocatives, which would be deaccented unless they appeared sentence-initially.

[edit] Interpretation

According to the traditional doctrine, the following can be said of PIE accentual system: PIE thematic nominals and thematic verbal stems all had fixed accent (i.e. on the same syllable throughout the paradigm), which was inherited in all attested daughter languages. Although, there exist some uncertainties regarding the simple thematic present. Some athematic nominals and verb stems also exhibited fixed accent (chiefly on the root), but most had alternating, mobile accent, exhibiting several characteristical patterns; in all of them the surface accent was to the left in one group of inflected forms (nominoaccusative of nominals, active singular of verbs), and to the right in the rest. It can be said that in PIE endings and stems could all be underlyingly accented or not, and that the leftmost underlying accent surfaced, and that the words with no underlying accent were accented by default on the leftmost syllable, but no phonological rules for determining the position of PIE accent have been ascertained for now.

[edit] Modern theories

Traditionally the PIE accent is reconstructed straightforwardly—by the comparison of Vedic, Ancient Greek and Germanic; e.g. PIE *ph₂tḗr 'father' from Sanskrit pitā́, Ancient Greek πατήρ, Gothic fadar. When the position of accent would match in these languages, that would be the accent reconstructed for "PIE proper". It was taken that the Vedic is the most archaic and the evidence of Vedic would be used to resolve all the potentially problematic cases.

It was shown, however, by Vladislav Illich-Svitych in 1963 that the Balto-Slavic accent does not match with that presupposed PIE accent reconstructed on the basis of Vedic and Ancient Greek—the Greek-Vedic barytones correspond to Balto-Slavic fixed paradigms, and Greek-Vedic oxytones correspond to Balto-Slavic mobile paradigms.^[3]. Moreover, in about a quarter of all cognate Vedic and Ancient Greek etymons accents do not match at all^[4]; e.g.

• PIE *h₂eǵros 'field' > Ancient Greek ἀγρός : Vedic ájras
• PIE *sweḱuros 'father-in-law' > Ancient Greek ἑκυρός : Vedic śváśuras
• PIE *kʷoteros 'which' > Ancient Greek πότερος : Vedic katarás

Recently Russian linguists Vladimir Dybo and Sergej Nikolayev have been reconstructing PIE accentual system as a system of two tones: + and − (probably high and low tone)^[5]. Proto-Indo-European would not thus have, as is usually reconstructed, a system of free accent more or less preserved in Vedic, but instead every morpheme would be inherently high or low (i.e. dominant or recessive, as it cannot be known for sure how those features were phonetically actually manifested), and the position of accent would be later in various daughter languages determined in various ways (depending on the combinations of (+) and (−) morphemes), whereas Vedic would certainly not be the most archaic language. Many correspondences among IE languages, as well as certain phenomena in individual daughters dependent on PIE tones, should corroborate this interpretation.^[6]

Dybo lists several shortcomings of the traditional approach to the reconstruction of PIE accent^[7]. Amongst others, wrong belief in the direct connection between PIE accent and ablaut which in fact does not actually explain the position of PIE accent at all. Usually, however, it is thought that zero-grade should be unaccented, but that is provably not valid for PIE (e.g. *wĺ̥kʷos 'wolf', *septḿ̥ 'seven' etc.) according to the traditional reconstruction. Furthermore, Dybo claims that there is none whatsoever phonological, semantic or morphological reason for the classification of certain word to a certain accentual type, i.e. the traditional model cannot explain why Vedic vṛ́kas 'wolf' is barytone and Vedic devás 'deity' is oxytone. According to Dybo, such discrepancies can only be explained by presupposing lexical tone in PIE.

[edit] See also

• Vedic accent
• Proto-Indo-European noun (see esp. section on athematic nouns and ablaut-accentual patterns)

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Ranko Matasović (2008) (in Croatian). Poredbenopovijesna gramatika hrvatskoga jezika. Zagreb: Matica hrvatska. ISBN 978-953-150-840-7. 
• Donald A. Ringe (2006). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199284139. 
• Kapović, Mate (2008) (in Croatian). Uvod u indoeuropsku lingvistiku. Zagreb: Matica hrvatska. ISBN 978-953-150-847-6. 
• S. Starostin, V. Dybo and S. Nikolaev (1978). "A tonological hypothesis on the origin of paradigmatic accent systems". Estonian papers in phonetics (Tallinnn). 
• Sergei Nikolaev (1989). "The Balto-Slavic Accentuation System and its Indo-European Origins." (in Russian). Historical Accentology and the Comparative Method (Moscow: Nauka): pp. 46-109. http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/Nikolayev_Bsl.pdf. 

v • d • e Proto-Indo-European language Phonology Accent · Glottalic theory · Laryngeal theory · s-mobile · Sound laws (Bartholomae's, kʷetwóres rule, Pinault's, Siebs', Sievers', Stang's, Szemerényi's) Morphology Ablaut · h₂e-conjugation · Root · Thematic/athematic stem Parts of speech Noun · Numeral · Particle · Pronoun · Verb (copula) See also: Proto-Indo-European religion · Proto-Indo-European society · Indo-European studies