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‘Initial’ Indo-European */y/ in Armenian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Robert Minshall
Robert Minshall*
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Abstract

[An Indo-European cluster composed of an originally initial voiced laryngeal and an immediately following */y/ coalesced in Armenian to yield the voiced palatal affricate /ǰ/. This development resembles a similar change in Greek.]

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 31 , Issue 4-Part1: October-December , December 1955, pp. 499 - 503
Copyright
Copyright © 1955 by the Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Antoine Meillet, Esquisse d'une grammaire comparée de l'arménien classique 2 51-2 (Vienna, 1936).

2 Heinrich Hübschmann, Armenische Grammatik 454 (Leipzig, 1897).

3 WP 2.412; WH 728. Arm. luc indicates IE *lyugom existing beside IE *yugom, according to E. Z. Zupitza, Die germanischen Gutterale 13 (Berlin, 1896).

4 It has been assumed that IE */kw/ seen in Skt. yákṛt and Gk. hệpar would be retained as /k'/ in Armenian, cf. Brugmann, Gr.1 1.337-8. W. Winter has recently investigated this problem, but his findings are not available to me at the present time.

5 Wilhelm Schulze, Kleinere Schriften 59 (Göttingen, 1933).

6 Emile Benveniste, Origines de la formation des noms en indoeuropéen 182 (Paris, 1935).

7 Julius Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch 504 (Bern, 1947 ff.). See also WH 673.

8 Georges Dumézil, BSL 39.185-9 (1938).

9 Related to Gk. lágnos ‘libertine’ by N. Adontz, Mélanges Boisacq 11 (Brussels, 1937).

10 Esquisse 2 52.

11 Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch 501.

12 MSL 25.251 (1920).

13 Not directly to Gk. humeîs ‘you (pl.)', which corresponds to Hitt. sumes < *usme ‘you'.

14 Vittore Pisani, Lezioni di Armeno 43 (Milan. 1945-6).

15 Holger Pedersen, KZ 38.209 (1905), at first accepts L. Patrubany's suggestion in IF Anz. 10.49 that Arm. ǰur ‘water’ is related to Gk. phtheírō ‘I destroy’ and Skt. kṣárati ‘flows’, but discards it in KZ 39.428-9 (1906), preferring to see Arm. ǰur as compounded from IE *dhy-, a reduction of IE *dhēi- ‘suck’, and a suffix *-ōr. Although Pedersen thinks this phonologically possible, Arm. ǰur < *dhyōr is rejected in WP 1.830. See also Hermann Güntert, Indogermanische Ablautprobleme 133 (Strassburg, 1916), who sees Arm.ǰur as a Reimwortbildung to Arm. hur ‘fire’.

16 MSL 21.251-2 (1920).

17 E. Berneker, IF 10.162 (1899). See also WP 1.268.

18 WP 1.268-9.

19 E. H. Sturtevant, The Indo-Hittite laryngeals 41 (Baltimore, 1942).

20 The meaning of the word is not entirely certain, according to Sturtevant, Mélanges Pedersen 61 (Copenhagen, 1937). ‘Sprinkle’ is accepted by Johannes Friedrich, Hethitisches Wörterbuch 76 (Heidelberg, 1952).

21 IHL 42.

22 MSL 8.165 (1894).

23 Lezioni di Armeno 45.

24 W. P. Lehmann, Proto-Indo-European phonology 76 (Austin, 1952).

25 A. Cuny, Recherches sur le vocalisme, le consonantisme et la formation des racines en nostratique 64 (Paris, 1943), maintains that ‘emphatic’ initial */y/ produced Gk. /z/, as well as Arm. /ǰ/.

26 See fn. 15.

27 Gordon M. Messing discusses this matter and cites other opinions on the origins of Vedic lengthening' in Harvard studies in classical philology 61-2.178-9 (1947).