Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-2n9c9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T08:28:02.739Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Prothetic Vowel in Greek

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

William M. Austin
William M. Austin*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

[The so-called prothetic vowel in Greek finds its ultimate explanation in Indo-Hittite. In Indo-Hittite bases beginning with the first, third, or fourth laryngeal, the first syllable was retained everywhere if it was in the full grade. If it was in the reduced grade, it was lost everywhere except in Hittite, Greek, and Armenian. If the second consonant was w, the first three laryngeals could unite with it to form a long voiceless hw which appears as spiritus asper in Greek; this accounts for the Attic and Homeric alteration of δvov and δvov. If the initial syllable began with the second laryngeal (;) and was in the reduced grade, it was lost everywhere, but the laryngeal united with a following liquid or nasal to give the long voiceless λ, , which ‘make position’ in Homer.]

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 17 , Issue 2-Part1: April-June , June 1941, pp. 83 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © 1941 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 Cf. particularly F. de Saussure, Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (Leipzig, 1879); H. Möller, Die semitisch-vorindogermanischen Laryngalen Konsonanten, Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter 5.4.1–91 (1917); A. Cuny, Études indo-européennes I (Krakow, 1935); W. Couvreur, De Hettitische (Leuven, 1937); and the recent articles by E. H. Sturtevant, Lang. 16.81–7, 179–82, 273–84 (1940).

The present article is a reworking of material included in my doctoral dissertation (Princeton University, 1938). I wish to thank Professors Harold H. Bender and Edgar H. Sturtevant for their many kindnesses.

2 J. A. Kerns and B. Schwartz in JAOS 60.181–92 (1940) argue that the second must have been a voiced velar spirant. This theory, however attractive from the standpoint of Gestalt, is not in accord with the facts (cf. sections II and III below).

3 Cf. E. H. Sturtevant, Lang. 16.81–7.

4 Origines de la formation des noms en indo-européen 152 (Paris, 1935).

5 ‘Der erste Vokal mit dem Spiritus lenis is zuweilen altertümlich (ursprünglich als Schwa-vokal, dann aber quantitativ mit dem ursprünglichen e zusammengefallen), besonders im Griechischen, noch erhalten’ (Laryng. Kons. 9).

6 The usual explanation (cf. Buck, Comp. Gr. of Gk. and Lat. 246) is that ασι is after τιθασι; rather, the two words have a similar origin, shwa + consonant + αντι.

7 Edward Sapir has treated the subject in his article Glottalized Continuants in Navaho, Nootka, and Kwakiutl (with a note on Indo-European), Lang. 14.248–74 (1938). The present investigation, however, was quite independent of Sapir's.

8 There is no space here to go into the proof. Suffice it to say that no laryngeals survive per se in any IE language, and that their disappearance leaves exactly the same results in all the IE languages.

9 The existence of this phoneme in Germanic was discovered by H. L. Smith Jr. See his article, The Verschärfung in Germanic, below.

10 Cf. Sturtevant, Lang. 16.85, fn. 3.

11 Griechische Lautstudien 83–136.

12 Origines 155.

13 Cf. Sturtevant. A Hittite Glossary2 s.v.

14 De Hettitische 14, 24 f.

15 Cf. F. Solmsen, Untersuchungen zur griechischen Laut- und Verslehre 236.

16 Cf. K. Brugmann, IF 16.492, and F. Sommer, Griechische Lautstudien 107–8.

17 A complete catalog can be found in La Roche, Homerische Untersuchungen 49 ff. There are a few exceptions in stereotyped phrases such as χρυσοισΐ νφ∈σσιν (N 525) and δ∈ινὸν δ λόφον (∧ 40). Mάσπιξ, with no sure etymology, probably belongs here, and μγαs also makes position, though there is no other evidence for an initial laryngeal. (This word may have had σ-movable after σμικρόν).

18 Cf. The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin2 63–4 (Linguistic Society, 1940).