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A Note on the Development of the Indo-European Dental Groups

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

M. B. Emeneau
M. B. Emeneau*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

Prof. R. G. Kent in his article, The Development of the Indo-European Dental Groups, LANG. 8. 18-26, has advanced a theory, which is undoubtedly correct, to explain the development of a non-morphological dental sibilant between the members of the morphologically-developed group dental stop + dental stop. Primitive Indo-European at the time when this development took place had in its phonemic system no long consonants. Consequently the group dental stop + dental stop could not be actualised in speech as a long dental stop (which would presumably have been simplified at once), but was actualised through analogical workings as a ‘doubled’ consonant, i.e. the breath was released after the first stop and a second stop was then formed. The breath-release is indeed audible enough in such a type of articulation. That it ‘became stronger in an effort to articulate clearly, the ultimate product being the dental sibilant’, appears doubtful. It seems more probable, from a phonetic point of view, that the sibilant fricative resulted from the manner in which the stoppage was broken by the tip of the tongue. A clean movement of the tip from the point of contact would not result in a fricative; a less complete break of the contact, whether due to comparative immobility of the organ or to lack of time to complete the break, would produce a fricative.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , September 1933, pp. 232 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © 1933 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Cf. Hirt, Indogermanische Grammatik 1. 254-7. This period antedated the separation of Hittite from the PIE stock; E. H. Sturtevant, Lang. 9. 6, shows that Hittite has the group -tst- where all the other languages have -st- or the -tt- or -ss-that resulted from analogical restoration or change.

Apart from the group dental stop + dental stop and the group ss, no morphological development of double consonants can be demonstrated for PIE. Double gutturals would appear if to a stem ending in a guttural were attached a formative suffix beginning with one, but no such case has appeared. The similar hypothetical case for labials would in any case be rare; as no regular development of plural cases had appeared before Hittite left the PIE stock (Peterson, AJP 51. 251-272), the bh-cases of stems ending in labials are all new formations. The long consonants in the ‘Koseformen’ cited by Hirt, if they are to be attributed to PIE, are the product of 'rhetorical' lengthening, which may affect both vowels and consonants in any language regardless of its phonemic system and is particularly at home in this class of words.

2 E. Sapir, The Takelma Language of Southwestern Oregon, 42-43. This grammar is in Handbook of American Indian Languages, Bulletin 40, part 2, of Bureau of American Ethnology.

3 I owe this detail to Dr. Morris Swadesh.

4 Dr. Walter Dyk gives me this information.

5 The last-published account of a Chinookan dialect is Boas, Chinook, in Handbook of American Indian Languages, Bulletin 40, part 1, of Bureau of American Ethnology 559-677; bibliography of previous publications 564, notes 1-5. The most important of those relating to Wishram is Sapir, Wishram Texts, Publications of the American Ethnological Society, 2 (1909). The language described by Boas is a Lower Chinookan dialect, different in details from Wishram but with the same fundamental structural principles. Prof. Sapir's linguistic seminar in 1933 had the benefit of working for two months with Dr. Walter Dyk's Wishram informant, Phillip Kahclamat (yanukwaikt qałlamak); he is much younger than the informants from whom Prof. Sapir obtained his Wishram Texts, and his dialect probably differs slightly from that recorded by Prof. Sapir. Mr. Dyk has given me some material beside that which was obtained in the seminar. The transcription used is that of the International Journal of American Linguistics. The palatal stops and continuant (k, g, x) of Wishram are made in the position of English k. The velar set (q, g, ) are formed very far back and are never confused with the palatal set. Both sets have labialised forms, p', t', q', t'c, t's represent glottalised consonants, and not consonant + glottal stop.

6 I shall confine myself to the stops of the language. Doubled continuants which appear in the proper morphological circumstances are actualised as long continuants differentiated from the short by syllabic distinctions.