centum and satem vidal 2013

7/23/2019 Centum and Satem Vidal 2013

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Centumand satem

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal, August 2013

Traditioally, PIE is reostruted ith three series of dorsal stops:palatovelar * * *h(plain) velar *k *g *g

h

labiovelar *kw

*gw *g

hw

In what follows, I will use the voiceless reconstruct in every series (*,*k, *kw) as shorthand for thewhole series, i.e. unless otherwise noted, everything said about *also goes for *and *h, etc.

Some scholars, starting with Meillet 1894, have questioned the validity of this three-way

reconstruction, and prefer to reconstruct just two series:

(plain) velar *k *g *gh

labiovelar *kw

*gw

*ghw

The basic arguments in favour of just two velar series are1:

1.

The plain velar series is statistically rarer than the other two and is almost entirely absent

from morphology;

2. The plain velars, to the exclusion of the palatovelars, appear most often in certain

phonological environments (before or after /u/, after /s/, and before /r/ or /a/; also before

/m/ and /n/ in some Baltic dialects);

3.

Alternations between plain velars and palatovelars are common in a number of roots across

different satemlanguages, where the same root appears with a palatal in some languages

but a plain velar in others (most commonly Baltic or Slavic; occasionally Armenian, but rarely

or never the Indo-Iranian languages). This is consistent with the analogical generalization ofone or another consonant in an originally alternating paradigm, but difficult to explain

otherwise;

4.

The traditional explanation of a three-way dorsal split requires that all centumlanguages

share a common innovation that eliminated the palatovelar series. Unlike for the satem

languages, however, there is no evidence of any areal connection among the centum

languages, and in fact there is evidence against such a connectionthe centumlanguagesare geographically non-contiguous. Furthermore, if such an areal innovation happened, we

would expect to see some dialect differences in its implementation (cf. the above differences

between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian), and residual evidence of a distinct palatalized series

(such evidence for a distinct labiovelar series does exist in the satemlanguages). In fact,

however, neither type of evidence exists, suggesting that there was never a palatovelarseries in the centumlanguages.

These are all valid points, but they cannot obscure the fact that even if we take away all the cases in

the phonological environments mentioned above, and we eliminate all forms where variations occur

within the satemlanguages (sometimes even within the same language or language family), there

still remains a solid number of etymologies where we find *kin the satem languages and *kin the

centum languages. Some of these are even important suffixal morphemes, such as the diminutive

marker *-iko-.

1Text slightly edited from the excellent introduction to the topic in the Wikipedia article onProto-Indo-

European phonology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_phonologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_phonologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_phonologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_phonologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_phonologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_phonology


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The answer to the first point above has already been arrived at, independently, by several scholars

subscribing to the traditional theory (including myself).

It consists in reassigning the phonetic quality of the three series as follows:

traditional notation alternative notation

velar * * *

h

*k *g *g

h

uvular

2 *k *g *g

h*q *G *G

h

labiovelar *kw

*gw *g

hw*k

w *g

w *g

hw

This goes a long way to answering the other objections as well. Uvular consonants are indeed

universally less frequent than velar ones, and less likely to occur in morphological material. Also, the

opposition between uvular and velar may have been neutralized already in the proto-language, as

well as at later dialectal stages, in a number of environments (especially in direct contact with

another occlusive consonant). Conversely, the frequency of *kin the neighbourhood of *ais due to

the uvular consonant colouring adjacent (short) vowels, much in the same manner as the uvular

fricative *h2.The environment is here created by the back velar itself. Note that reductionist scholars

who also do not accept PIE *amay find this aspect agreeable.

In this reinterpretation, the centumand satemphenomena are reduced to phonologically trivial

frontings uvular > velar and velar > palatal3, which may have occurred independently at several

times, as also witnessed by the satemcharacter of Luwian (see Melchert 1987, 2012), which is

certainly independent of the main satemphenomenon affecting Indo-Iranian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic

and Albanian.

As I hypothesized i y artile o Brugas la, PIE *emay reflect the merger of (at least) Pre-PIE**a, **i, **u. Such mergers are not uncommon, and we find examples of them in Tocharian and the

North Caucasian languages. Typically, the merger is accompanied by palatalizations (reflecting former

*i) and labializations (reflecting former *u) of the surrounding consonants. In PIE, the existence of

labialized consonants is indisputable (*kw, *g

w, *g

hw, *h3, and as I tried to demonstrate in my paper

on Armenian -k`, also *sw). For the dorsals, this means that the labiovelar series arose where velars

occurred in the neighbourhood of Pre-PIE **u(and **u). Strictly speaking, we should also expectuvulars in the same environment to have their own labialized uvular reflexes. Evidence for this can be

gathered from the admittedly rare etymologies where PIE *kwoccurs in the neighbourhood of *a

(e.g. *(s)kwalos- hale. o, rather tha reduig the uer of dorsal series from three to two, I

would suggest to increase it to four4:

velar *k *g *gh

uvular *q *G *Gh

labiovelar *kw *gw *ghw

labiouvular

*qw *G

w *G

hw

On the other hand, these four series reduce to two original ones (velar and uvular).

But did the loss of pre-PIE *ialso produce palatalized versions of the velar and uvular series?

Palatalizations did occur in Pre-PIE dentals, which I will discuss in a forthcoming paper. But what

about the dorsals?

2oe prefer to refer to these souds as ak elar istead of uular.

3The often asserted implausibility of a backing palatal > velar is contradicted by the Egyptian Arabic backing of

Arabic *to g. It is true, however, that such cases are rarer than the opposite process.4One may wonder whether this also extended to the fricatives, where we might expect velar *x, uvular *

(with labialized variants *xw

and *w

). We have evidence for only two: *(=*h2) and *w

(=*h3).


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Perhaps a case can be made, at least for the inherently unstable palatalized uvular series. Note that

we stated above that *kcoloured an adjacent *eto *a. While this undoubtedly happened in a

considerable number of cases, there is still uncontroversial evidence for *kin the neighbourhood of

*e, even if we factor out cases of Ausgleich due to Ablaut variations *o~ *e ~ . We cannot allow for

arbitrariness in the outcome of PIE *qe: it must either give *kaor it must give *ke, but not both at

random. One possible way out of this is to explain the variants as deriving from two different Pre-PIEprototypes: *kacomes from **qa, while *kecomes from **qi

5(and of course *k

wacomes from

**qu). This solution allows for an elegant re-formulation of the centum~ satemsplit.

Diagrammatically:

ka ki ku qa qi qu

centum ke ke kw

e ka ke kwa

satem ce ce k(w)e ka ke k(

w)a

All Indo-European languages eliminated the uvular stops. The centumlanguages are those languages

where **qi> *kemerged with **ka/**ki. The satemlanguages are the languages where the

development **qi> *kepushed **ka/**kito become palatovelars (at least in some environments,cf. Luwian). Both developments are quite natural, and could have occurred independently in

different branches of the IE family.

5Cf. for instance, Melcherts undisputable example of *k in a fronting environment: CLuw. ii- to o

centum and satem vidal 2013

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