Linguistic Society of America

Pa, ΔEΔAE, ΔAΣϒΣ and the Semivowels

Author(s): Henry M. Hoenigswald
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Language, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1953), pp. 288-292
Published by: Linguistic Society of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/410022 .
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 PA, AEAAE, AAZT2, AND THE SEMIVOWELS
HENRY M. HOENIGSWALD

University of Pennsylvania
Given the following groups of corresponding phonemes or phoneme sequences
in Sanskrit, Greek, and Germanic: (1) v/F/w, r/p/r, n/v/n, (2) u/v/u,
r/pa•--ap/ur,
a/a/un, and (3) uv/v(F)/(uw), ir(ur)/ap/ur, an/av/un: the segments of sound
lying behind group 1 were once in complementary distribution both with those
behind group 2 and with those behind group 3. For the older stages of Indo-
European, therefore, one needs to reconstruct only three entities: w, r, n (and
likewise y, 1, m for other sets not listed here), each with three positional variants
of varying syllabicity. The argument has been most fully presented by Franklin
Edgerton.' In connection with that argument there has been some discussion
whether the syllabic element in group 3 above should or should not be written
b.2 Assuming for the moment that t has to be reconstructed in the neighborhood
of stops to account for quattuor,rnivpes, and the like, the dilemma resembles
that posed by the [k] of length in the description of some types of English: if we
are impressed by its similarity to other [k]-like segments in environments where
it is not automatically present, we say that there are some environments in
which [k] is automatic but is phonemically /k/ nevertheless; but if we are more
impressed by the automatic nature of its presence in length, we seize upon any
phonetic detail that may distinguish this [k] from other [k]-like sounds else-
where and see in the sequence [ok] merely the allophone of /i/ before /6/.2a If
b is not recognized in quattuor,the problem hardly arises in the case of the nasals
and liquids. For (i)y and (u)w it still exists, in a somewhat different form; but
this question is here left out of account.
Even granting the possible need for b in the phonemic inventory of Proto-
Indo-European, Edgerton refuses to recognize it before liquids and nasals under
the conditions that gave rise to group 3 above-that is, after two nonsyllabics
(or vowel length or pause plus nonsyllabic) and before a syllabic. Of the two
alternative solutions mentioned for the [k] of length, he prefers the second. The
so-called converse of Sievers' Law, or the treatment of two like semivowels
coming together at a morphological seam, may not absolutely exclude the use
of b (since one could still say that the first of the pair is lost after a light syllable
and replaced by b after a heavy syllable); but the interpretation of the data is
incomparably more elegant without the use of b. In fact, semivowels turn out to
behave simply like consonants. As *es-si 'thou art' became *esi within Indo-
1 Lg. 10.235-65,19.83-124.See also G. S. Lane, JEGP 50.522-8.
2 See E. H. Sturtevant, Lg. 19.293-312.
2a Or of
/0/ after /ij/. It would still have to be shown in what sense the [k] of strength
is more automatic than the weak-stressed vowel of (he) longeth or the like: both sounds
occur between /i/ and /8/ (and so do countless other sequences, especially longer ones);
zero does not.
288
 PA, AEAAE,AAZT2;,AND THE SEMIVOWELS 289

European (Skt. dsi, Gk. e), so Skt. *cakr-reappears as cakre. Whether we have
r or ir in Sanskrit depends automatically on the weight of the preceding syllable
(light in this example), not on the number of r's in some earlier stage of the
form.2b
The sandhi variants that arise 'when a semivowel before a vowel occurs
either at the beginning of a word or preceded only by a single consonant ... de-
pending on the nature of a preceding word final' are still close to their original
distribution in the Rigveda, although generalization has begun.3Other languages
are said to show traces of the original distribution in their suffixes (Gk.
but AypLos,Xav~Ovw) Kow•s,
but not in sentence sandhi, where only generalized
KaI•Ve,
doublets survive (Sbbw but 6tbeKa,without regard to the context). On the border-
line between morphology and syntax, however, is the case of the Greek post-
positive particle apa, ap, with its enclitic by-form "a. This case merits some
attention.
"Apamay be an adverb like rTxa or /aXa; in that case we would be dealing
with a semivowel (r) before a vowel. "Ap, rare except in abrip, yp (not
counting the elided aip'before a vocalic initial), may well show apocope on the
model of aripand aiv.Leaving aipaside, we find that &paand ap' seem to occur
quite freely in Homer. 'Pa, on the other hand, does not. Of 91 instances of the
unelided form in the first twelve books of the Iliad, only 8 are found after a
heavy word-final syllable (e.g. A 430 rnV 'a ln ~iKOVTros &lirbpwv),and of 95
instances of the elided X', not one occurs in this position; in fact, there is only
one such occurrence in the two epics together (N 85 r7v Y' ua apyax&tM Kad&rq).
Of course, elided "' after a heavy syllable is metrically without effect, while
Pa makes a difference. That the avoidance of Pa and Y' after heavy syllables is
not an accident is confirmed by a countercheck: of 32 instances of aipa and
atp'in one book of the Iliad (M), as many as 9 follow an unelided heavy syllable
such as E', cis, or aS.4
Grammont has dealt with "a, though in a somewhat different sense to be dis-
cussed below.' Curiously enough, in explaining the variant forms as going back
to possible sandhi doublets, he seems to be unaware that he need not speak of
this theory as mere speculation, and that the statistical data strongly favor it.
He was perhaps misled by an old article by Hiller, whose whole aim had been to
stress the fact that ba is somewhat restricted to occurrence after monosyllables,
and to explain away, more or less plausibly, examples to the contrary.6 Hiller
did not see the significance of the scarcity of heavy syllables before ba.
This may cast a different light on some of Grammont's other arguments,
which have so far evoked only very restrained enthusiasm.7 For Grammont, ba
represents *", not *ra. "Apalso comes from *r, while a5pais a blend of the two
2b Somewhat differently Sturtevant, op.cit. 312.
3 Lg. 19.91.
'4Pa and A'occur freely enough after long diphthongs.
5 Phonetique du grec ancien 285-6.
6 Hermes 21.563-9.
1 See E. Risch, Museum helveticum6.244.
290 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 29, NUMBER 3

forms. Here he is in agreement with Brugmann, who adduced Lith. ir, with strong
semantic support.8 Such a view is of course entirely possible. If it is correct, the
distribution of 'a in Homer (as described above) gives substance to an old idea9
taken up by Grammont, namely that the difficult vacillation between ap and pa
for (i.e. for that allophone of the semivowel which is found, roughly, between
*,"
pauses or consonants) is also due to the structure of the preceding syllable-in
other words, that something like Sievers' Law holds good in Greek not only if a
vowel, but also if a consonant (or a pause) follows. As a matter of fact, most
neuters in -ap from *-r have, or had prehistorically, a heavy syllable before the
*r:otOap,"ap < On the other hand, brrb&pa from *bvro5paK(r)had a light
*ws.r(t). be due to sandhi, with com-
syllable there. Doublets like Kapila :KpaSLawould
plete generalization of both variants. Initial to
*r seems be always represented by
ap-, a fact which may be ultimately related in some obscure way to the presence
of a laryngeal before it.1o
Those who have thought of explaining the difference between ap and pa as
a result of syllabic rhythm seem to have envisaged it as a specifically Greek
development: when *r was given up as a homogeneous syllabic segment, it is
supposed to have gone either to ap or to pa, depending on its environment. But
the development may just as well have been in the opposite direction. If so,
an automatic vowel segment developed before the semivowel where two con-
sonants preceded, but after the semivowel where only one consonant preceded:
aktrt but atret, to use the customary notation." In Greek the distinction con-
tinues, with the automatic vowel becoming phonemic through merger with other
vowels in the language and also through the generalization of sandhi variants.
In Sanskrit, er and re fall together in r. With regard to the liquids, Sanskrit
behaves as all the IE languages do in the case of y and w: nowhere do we find
any distinction made between the semivowels in /aktwt/ and /atwt/; both
positions show the vowel u (aktut, atut).
What about the nasals? In Indo-Iranian and in Greek, the allophones n and
mn
(i.e. the phonemes /n/ and /m/ between pauses or consonants) appear as a/a;
in the other languages they fall together with sequences of vowel plus n or m.
Yet it is not impossible that here too Greek may have preserved a trace of the
allophonic difference between 6n after a heavy syllable and n, after a light one.
Here, in fact, may lie the solution of the controversy which has attached itself
to the etymology of 3aobvs 'thick'. There is no good reason to doubt that this word
has the s of Lat. dinsus, except that one would have to assume that the so-called
a of *dosus was not yet a at the time that s was lost between vowels.'2 And yet
8 Verhandlungend. Sdchs. Ges. d. Wiss., Phil.-hist. Kl. 35.36-70.
9 See Brugmann himself, op.cit. 67.
10 The relation between semivowels and laryngeals needs more investigation. A laryngeal
would have to be expected in &paas well, especially if it belongs with appapiaKo'join' etc.;
see Boisacq s.v. And see W. P. Lehmann, Lg. 27.13-7.
11F. Edgerton,
Lg. 19.83-124 passim. We use italics for a notation in which the allophones
of the semivowels are distinguished, slant lines where they are not.
12 W. Schulze, Kleine Schriften 116-7.
IIpd-ov 'leek' proves little for r preceding s. Ernout-
Meillet3 s.v. porrum consider it a Mediterranean loanword in both Greek and Latin.
 PA, AEAAE,AA~LT,AND THE SEMIVOWELS 291

tebae 'he taught' is almost certainly from *dednse(t). The material is naturally
scanty. Schwyzer lists on the one hand bacs and &TLs'mud' (cf. Skt. dsita), and
on the other 5avXbs'dense', which one would like to link with 5aubs;and finally
a 'I was' from *"esp.13Of these, only be'ae and 'a are safe from sandhi variation.'4
If there was an automatic vowel, it cropped up after the n in and before
*dedneset
the m in *jsem; in both cases the s came to stand between vowels and was lost.
On the other hand, if an initial nasal developed its automatic vowel in front of
its consonantal component rather than after it (as the development of r suggests),
we expect *ensi- (whence ~cLs)and not *nesi-. Then wavX6s would represent the
sandhi doublet generalized from positions after a world-final short vowel (*...a
dnesulos), with its counterpart bao-bssimilarly generalized from other positions
(*...at densus). All this is offered with the utmost caution. The few ascertainable
facts at least permit the interpretation that has been sketched here.
We have in fact been debating the merits of a different notation for the syllabic
allophones of the IE liquids and nasals. In one sense the difference is purely nota-
tional and nothing more, in that Edgerton's . for group 2 (and r I nn for group 3)
has merely been replaced by , and that this e is considered just as automatic as
the mark of syllabicity. In another, a phonetic sense, the difference has more
reality. We seem to see a linguistic structure in which a nondistinctive vocalic
element turns up before consonants and pauses under particular conditions:
before a liquid or nasal if two consonants (etc.) precede, and after a liquid or
nasal if only a single consonant intervenes after the last preceding vowel. As
the Greek evidence seems to show, this is true both for group 2 (,r, re = 'r';
,n, n, = 'n') and for group 3 (,r = 'rr', 6n = 'nn')-in other words regardless
of whether a consonant or a vowel follows in turn. (In the latter case the
automatic segment e can occur only after a heavy syllable or before the nasal or
liquid.) Under the conditions that call for sounds of group 3, the daughter lan-
guages have kept the vowel segment in place, merely letting it fall together with
one of the already existing vowel phonemes. Before consonant or pause, where
sounds of group 2 are called for, only Greek may preserve traces of the location
of the vowel segment, more clearly in oiOap and brtrbpa than in &Ttsand ibase;
in Indo-Iranian, ,r and r, gave r, and ,n and n, both fell together with a (as in
historical Greek). The other languages also allowed the two variants to coincide
with existing or possible sound sequences, with special problems arising here and
there.
The semivowels proper, /y/ and /w/, may well have had a similar history, but
it must be more remote. No trace of a distinction between ey and y, seems to
exist anywhere: i (iy) and u (uw) appear uniformly in all the languages.'5
Edgerton quotes with sympathetic interest a view according to which b itself,
in the environment of a stop or spirant (or pause), may at one time have been
is GriechischeGrammatik1.307.
14It is true that the reduplicated forms all come from the Odyssey.
15Even advocates of b believe that b before y and w became respectively i and u; see
Sturtevant, op.cit.
292 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 29, NUMBER 3

automatic in its occurrence.'" Scholars who incline to this view have had to
admit their inability to state the precise conditions under which such consonant
sequences develop the segment b. If this could be shown to have taken place
after every cluster of two consonants (provided no vowel followed), all would be
simple: , and b would be identical, and neither would be phonemic. There are
some indications pointing in that direction, especially if the laryngeals are taken
into account. But we cannot hope to reconstruct this uncomplicated state of
affairs in all rigorousness, even for the oldest attainable stage of Indo-European.
16Lg. 10.264. Perhaps it should be pointed out that our being automatic, has nothing
e,
to do with similar notations used for a true reduced grade, where the location of the remnant
vowel is determined by the location of the full-grade vowel in other forms of the paradigm.
It is Edgerton's contention (and of course we agree) that such a true reduced vowel cannot
be found in the neighborhood of semivowels. (See also J. Kurylowicz, Etudes indo-euro-
pdennes 1.80-1 and 255-7.)