(204)regular sound correspondences

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REGULARSOUNDCORRESPONDENCESAND LONG-DISTANCE GNE COMPARISON

BERNARD CO RIEUniversty / Southe Cai fo ia

1. Nost rat ic and Al taic prono ns, 1Linguists advocating wide-ranging genetic affili ations of languages are dividedinto two groups ther at ti t de to one of the mainstays of t radi tionalcomparative linguistics: the reg larity of sound change, the so-called Neo-Grammarian hypothess. the one hand, Joseph . Greenberg and hisfollowers denied the irnportanceof reg lar sound correspondences informulatinghypothesesaboutgeneticre atedness; see, for instance, chapter 1 ofGreenberg (1987). contrast, ling ists of theMoscow School of comparativelinguistics adhereto thesamecriteriaof reg lar sound correspondence in therwork wide-ranging genetic hypotheses like Nostratic as when they work Indo-E ropean and its branches - certa nly in principle, if not aways inpractice; see, for instance, review of Sarostin 1991 (Comrie 1993). Oneofthe staunchest proponents of the Neo-Grammarian hypothess in long-rangecomparisoni sAlexander Vovin, andit is hiscontributionto this vol methat hasinspired to thepresent reflections.More specifically, thereisoneparticularpointof Vovin' spaper that seems to to of great methodologica1mportance.As will clear, 1 disagreewith theconcluson that Vovin himsef draws, but 1 that even those whosde with Vovin rather than with wi ll f ind i t useful to work through reservations, to clarify ourrespectivepos tions.

Scholars who noted smilarities among Indo-European, Uralic, andAltaic languages usually commentedin particu1ar thesmilarities in thepersonal pronouns. And as Vovin shows, in particular for thefir st and secondpersonss ngular, thereare strikingsmilarities: For '1' Proto-Indo-EuropeanandProto-Uralic initia1*, while Proto-Altaic has an alternationof initia1*and * . For 'thou', Proto-Indo-EuropeanandProto-Uralic initia1*t, whileAltaic shows split between Proto-Mongolicwith initia1*t versus Proto-T rkicandProto-Manchu-Tunguswithi nitia1*s. But Vovin goes to show that theProto-Altaicformscannot reated reg lar sound change to those of Proto-


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OldEn l ish ModemEn lishic m w w r your him his him hiss hire herhit

272 BERNARD COMRlE REGULAR SOUND CORRESPONDENCES 273

Indo-European or Proto-Uralic: In the f t person, the voiced plosve is theorigina1form in Altaic, andi snot regularly reatableto thenasa1 of Proto-Indo-European andProto-Ura1ic.In thesecond person,theinit ia1*s is not reatable tothe initia1*t of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Ura1ic, and indeed even theinitia1*t of Proto-Mongolicis perhapsnot regularly reatableto theiniti a1*t ofProto-Indo-European and Proto-Ura1ic. (1 will, incidenta11y,for the sake ofargument assume the tn ss of the Indo-European-Ura1ic-Altaiccognates ssu ).d Vovin andthe.soundchanges reating them.) concluson thatVovin draws from this is that, unequivoca11y,theAltaicformsare not genetically reated to those 01I ndo-European and Ura1ic. hereare, however, other conclusons that one might concevably draw. First, onemight conclude that the smilarities are stillsufficiently striking to justifymaintainingthat thepronounsarecognate in all threegroups of languages, andlet thei g larity in so nd s ndn s pass; thisisthepostionthat 1co ldimagine Greenbergian taking. Second, onemight say that it is impossble toreach concl son the bass of the evidence avai lable: he forms ares ffi ci entl y smi lar t hat they might r eated, b t t he lack of reg lar s ndn throwssomedo btat least thisclaim. In section 2, 1ana1yze smilar set of formsin two lang ages separated very sha110wtimedepth,namey Old and Modem English, arg ing that here the weght of additiona1consderationsfavorsmaintainingthat itemsarecognates even in theabsenceofperfect sound s ndn s - thefirst of thetwo a1temativessuggested inthis paragraph. In section 3, 1 s ggest that the second a1temative, nameyagnosticism, is themost we can safey ass me for thedatapresented Vovin,even accepting thebasc tnss of theNostratichypothess.

s o rthem. the r 1: OldE glish a dMode E glishperso al pro ou s

2. Old E gli sh a d Moder E gli sh pro ou sFor comparison, 1 will consder the etymology of the persona1 prono ns ofModem English, in comparisonwith those of OldEnglish. (Most of thecrucia1changes had taken place iddleEnglish, so it is t all the passage fromOld to iddleEnglish that isatissue.) formsto consdered areset o t intable 1.Notethat theOldEnglish formsdonot necessarily s nd exactly infunct ion to the Modem Engl ish ref lexes, snce 1 am taking for grantedmorphologica1andsemantic shifts that donotaffect theso ndchanges involved,such as thefact that OldEnglish w is acc sative-dativeplura1while ModemEnglish " " iscase- andn mber-ne tra1,or that Old English s is t all demonstrativerather than persona1prono n. For the same reason, the clearlyana1ogica1ModemEnglish genitive"i ts" is noti ncl ded.

l..et s now s bject these formsto thekindof ana1yssVovin proposes forthe Altaic pronouns. he question is smple: Do the Modem English formsderivefrom theOld English forms? 1will excl dethethird person plura1formsfrom f rther consderation, snceit is widey accepted that they are loans fromOldNorse, or at least been inflenced in ther forms Old Norse, andthereforeindeeddonot descend directly from ther OldEnglish s ndnts.Exarninationof acco ntsof thehistoryof English would s ggest that of theother Modem English prono ns has traditiona11ybeen taken to deriveetymologica11yfrom theOldEnglish s ndnt given in table 1. B t if weimpose therequirementthat such reationshipsm st shown to consstentwith established reg lar so ndchanges, thepict rechanges. he fol lowing forms derive reg lar ly: " " , " ", "yo r", " " , "him","his", "her", "we", "o r"; for thedeveopment of wt " ", comparethat ofOldEnglish ow ( homophone) to "yew" and of Old English w to "ewe",even if ModemEnglish speling has rather s ccessfully disg ised thethree-wayhomophonyin Modem English. hisleaves five Modem English formsthat do not derive reg lar so ndchange from ther Old English etyma. hefina1 of Old English ic sho ld not dropped to give Modem Engl ish " ' ; compare the Modem Engl ishplacenameending"-wich", deriving fromOldEnglish wIc 'abode. In thecaseof OldEngl ish In, reg lar so nd change wi ll deete the [ 1 , whichsurvives, of course, in "mine", with the same etymologica1 origin. ModemEngl ish "she" does not derive reg lar ly from s ; compare the reg lardeveopment of the same initia1seq ence in Old English s ] to ModemEnglish "seethe". No reg lar so nd changewill deetetheword-initia1h of OldEnglish hit to give Modem English "it". (In dia1ectsthat drop word-initia1hreg larly - and this incl desmost regiona1dia1ectsof England - there is theres ltingimpressonthat "it" is reg lar reflex of Old English hit. B t of co rse


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274 BERNARD COMRIE REGULAR SOUND CORRESPONDENCES 275

,i,

even herethisis ill sory: loss of theinitia1consonantof theprono nhit is earlier than thegenera1loss of word-initia1h in the regiona1 speech ofEngland.) In thecase of Modem English " s", the short vowe cannot derivereg larly from theOld English long vowe, which has, incidenta11y,its reg larreflex in thepossessve adjective "o r".In other words, if we takereg lar so nd correspondences to essentia1forestablishing cognates, wewo ld forced to concl dethat these fo r ModemEnglish forrnsarenot ty 1010gi 11eated to theOld English correspondentsin table 1. This is precisey theconcl son that Vovin reaches in comparingtheAltaic andNostraticpersona1prono ns:'' h s, theinescapable concl son is that [roto-]A[ltaic] prono ns are nreated to Indo-E ropean or Ura1ic personalprono ns."1noted above that thetraditiona1view of thefive etymologica11yanoma1o sModem English prono nsis that they do indeed deveop historica11yfrom therOld English correspondentsin table 1. And 1 think this traditiona1view iscorrect. n mber of factors conspire to lead to this concl son. First, theModem English forrnsareonly minima11ydifferent from what wo ld have beentheo tcomeof reg lar so ndchange, and thedifferences are readily describablein terrnsof pla sble isolated changes. Prono nsareoften nstressed, whichco ldacco ntfor theshorteningof thevowe of " s" andtheloss of initia1h inhit. In "she" we have pla sbly shift in then cle sof thediphthongfrom thefirst to the second component fol1owed thefreq ent a11egrophenomenonof/sy/ becoming/8/. When " " is matchedwith "rnine", and this pair para11eed thearchaic "thy" - "thine", when oneobserves that in earlier stages of thelang age thedifference between themembersof pair was phonologica11y,rather thanmorphologica11ycondit ioned,para11eing hatbetween preconsonantal"" and prevoca1ic"an", one is ready to take the sight leap stil1remainingtoreatetheModem English andOld English forms. ic to '' , shift is perhapssomewhat less readily explainable, tho gh it is para11eed thedeveopment oftheadjectives ffix "-ly" from OldEnglish li/ . Second, a1tho ghwe have good knowledge of thelang ages that rnightpla sbly havebeen expected to a1temative so rces for theetymologicaly irreg lar prono ns - in partic lar, OldNorseandFrench - these lang ages donotprovidepla sbleetyma.

p tativebranches of Nostratic, namey Indo-E ropean and Ura1ic? onlyhonest answer 1can give is: 1do not know. Ther reatedness is certainly castinto do bt the lack of reg lar correspondence, ass rning that the reevantreg lar correspondences areestablished thebass of large eno gh n mberof lexica1 items. he differences, however, are not that great phonetica11y:Both sets of first-person sng lar prono nshave an initia1voiced labia1,tho ghit is plosve in Altaic and nasa1 in Indo-E ropean and Ura1ic. Both sets ofsecond-person prono nshavean initia1voiceess denta1obstr ent, tho gh it isfricative in Altaic (except Mongolic) and plosve in Indo-E ropean and Ura1ic.So thes rnilaritiesare act a yq itestriking. However, it is diffic lt to see anypla sblereason why s ch discrepancy in nasa1izationor ploson sho ld havearisen - b t even if there were some motivation, it is not nlikey that the greatt ime depths involved wo ld have obliterated trace of the conditioningmechanism. Onecan certainly with spec lative scenarios that wo ldgive the c rrent distrib tion, e.g. that the differing initia1swere origina11ymorphologica11yconditioneda1temantswithin the commonproto-lang age, withdifferent branchesgenera1izingdifferent a110morphs.We don't know eno gh ofthedetails of other lang ages that rnighthavebeen aro ndat thetime to know iftherearepla sblenon-Nostraticetymologies. So we certainly cannot say withany degree of certainty that the Altaic and other Nostratic prono ns aregenetically reated,noteven with thedegreeof certaintywithwhichwe clairnthegenetic reatedness of the Indo-E ropean and Uralic forrns. B t eq al1y, 1don't see how we can say that the Altaic prono nsare def ini tey l t detymologica y to ther Indo-E ropean and Ura1ic co nterparts. Indeed,additiona1evidence (which is, a1as, nlike y to forthcorning)rnight we111ead sto accept ther genetic reatedness, j st as we accepted thetraditiona1acco ntof the etymology of the Modem English prono ns. B t the evidence that isavailable to sj stifies post ionstronger thanagnosticism.At this point, 1 can see an advocate of wide-ranging genetic comparisonacc sng of do blestandards.1smply a110wexceptions to proposed reg larso ndchanges to stand in thecase of sha110wtimedepths, witho t affecting theacceptanceof hypothesesof genetic reatedness. B t as the time-depthincreases,exceptions to proposed reg lar so ndchanges arereason at least for agnosticism( post ion, whi le for Vovin they are reason for reect ing proposedetymologies). B t 1 think the differing postions smply reflect the differentweght of evidence in thetwo kindsof cases. With shallow time-depths, s ch asthat'separating OldEnglish fromModem English, where therei s an ab ndanceof clear-c t evidence for genetic reatedness that does fol1ow reg lar so ndchanges, thefew irreg laritiesdo not s bstantia11ya1terthepict re: Modem

3. Nostrat ic a d Altaic pro o s, 2In thecase of theseEnglish prono ns,then, the r etymologica1reatedness tother OldEnglish correspondentsseems incontrovertible.B t let s now ret mto the Altaic and Nostrat ic prono ns disc ssed Vovin. r the Altaicprono ns (excl dingMongolic) reatableetymologica11yto those of the other


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276 BERNARD English basc vocabulary derives primarily from Old English; where there areapparent sight exceptions to regular sound changes, the most reasonablesolution - after consdering the a1tematives (often there are ), andespecia1ly where phonetic plausbility can invoked for the deviations fromregular sound change - is to hypothesze that indeed the item in questionderives, a1be ti rregularly, from its OldEnglish counterpart.

But where theevidence is less substantia1,whether for the regular soundchanges or for perturbingfactorsthat might upset those regular deveopments, itwill often impossble to decide whether close smilarity is perturbedcognate or freak coincidence. h wide-ranging genetic hypothess is ofcourse ether trueor fa1se. hepity is: Thereis guarantee that we will everknow.

REFERENCESComrie, Bemard. 1993. Review of Sarostin (1991). Language 69.828-832.Greenberg, Joseph . 1987. Language in the Aer icas. Sanford: Sanford

Univers ty Press.Sarostin, Serge . 1991. Altaskaa proble a i proisxoide ie japo skogo jazyka.

Moscow: Nauka.

(204)regular sound correspondences

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