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According to a phonetic rule commonly referred to as Eichner's law, the quality of a long *ē was not affected by an adjacent laryngeal *h2 or *h3 in the prehistory of the individual Indo-European languages: Latin spērāre 'hope' < *spēh2-s- (desiderative), Old Slavic spěti 'be successful' < *spēh2- (cf. *sph2-ró- in Ved. sphirá- and Lat. prosperus; *speh2-i-s- in Old Slavic spěxŭ); Tocharian B yerpe < *h3ērbh-o- 'disk, orb' (without colouration) versus Latin orbis < *h3orbh-i- 'circle'. The purpose of the article is not to reassess the value of all reconstructions involving Eichner's law, but to focus primarily on two neglected examples supporting its validity: Latin īdūs < *h2ēid- 'Ides', a term originally referring to the full moon, for which a connection with aemidus < *h2eid- (a term glossed as tumidus) can plausibly be argued; Greek ἔγκατα < *h2ēnk- 'mass of the inner organs of the thorax and of the upper part of the abdomen' related to ὄγκος 'swelling, tumour, bulk' (from an older meaning 'curvature'; the word constantly refers to volume, not to weight). The striking structural parallelism between ἔγκατα < *h2ḗnk-r/n- 'pluck' (with Osthoff-shortening) and ἧπαρ < *(H)yḗkw-r/n- 'liver' requires a close reexamination of the latter word and a detailed discussion of the puzzling vocalism of Lat. iecur, gen. iocineris. The study aims at offering a careful analysis of these items, taking into account their precise semantics and the relevant comparative data. Particular emphasis will be laid upon the derivational processes responsible for the morphological shape of the lexemes under discussion. It will appear that the Classical languages, especially Latin, can make a decisive contribution to the understanding of the morphology of lengthened-grade formations, which in turn offer new insights into the history of the Latin and Greek lexicons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gk. στωμύλος 'chatty' (Old Com.+) belongs with στόμα 'mouth'; yet the serious formal problem with the -ω-, often acknowledged, remains without explanation. Part of the conundrum: despite the connection with στόμα (a synchronic n -stem and historically a men -stem), an n -stem or men -stem basis for στωμύλος is not workable. Two different solutions, however, can be proposed, on the basis of hitherto neglected Greek data; these point to the existence of forms that can support analyses in terms of vr̥ddhi (Solution #1) or in terms of a different type of morphological lengthened grade (Solution #2). These analyses, in turn, may shed light on the anomalous o -grade of Gk. στόμα itself, with broader implications for the study of PIE nominal morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a critical review of the evidence regarding the reflexes of Proto-Indo-European long vowels in Baltic and Slavic. It is argued that in Balto-Slavic, inherited long vowels receive circumflex intonation in all positions in the word. Examples like Lith. várna ‘raven’, žvėrìs ‘wild animal’ and grė́bti ‘to rake’ that are traditionally thought to show that an Indo-European long vowel obtained acute intonation must be explained differently. A number of verbal roots forming a yod-present can be shown to have undergone metatony rude in Lithuanian and Latvian and metatony douce in Lithuanian. There is no evidence for the thesis that Balto-Slavic monosyllables always had circumflex intonation. Lithuanian examples that would show this development can be shown to be due to inner-Lithuanian innovations. Finally, Balto-Slavic ā-stems and intensive verbs with long vocalism generally have circumflex intonation and can be shown to reflect Proto-Indo-European formations containing a long vowel.

There is still no scholarly consensus about the origin of the Balto-Slavic intonations. The traditional view is that all long vowels and diphthongs receive the acute in Balto- Slavic, while short vowels and diphthongs are circumflexed. On the other hand, according to the Leiden school, the only source of the Balto-Slavic acute is the glottal stop, which is either a reflex of the PIE laryngeals, or of the following glottalized stops (traditional voiced stops) in syllables that underwent Winter's law. We believe that the traditional view that PIE lengthened grade vowels receive the acute in Balto-Slavic can no longer be defended. It is contradicted by such examples as PIE *dhugh2tēr 'daughter' > Lith. dukt, PIE *(H)rēk-s-o-m 'I said' > Croat. rijêh, PIE *h2ōwyom 'egg' > Croat. jâje. It should also be taken as proved that syllables closed by laryngeals and voiced stops (or glottalics, by Winter's law) received the acute intonation in Balto-Slavic. However, the fact that the PIE lengthened grade long vowels are circumflex in Balto-Slavic does not prove that all lenghtened grade long vowels in Balto-Slavic are circumflex. In the present paper we attempt to show that a number of Vddhi formations, that were not inherited from PIE, received the acute in Balto-Slavic. These are the words with reflexes in both Baltic and Slavic languages, derived from PIE roots by means of Vṛddhi, which remained a productive pattern of derivation during the period of Balto-Slavic unity, and probably later. Such words have the lengthened grade only in Balto-Slavic, but not in other IE languages, which shows that their Vṛddhi is not inherited from PIE. This paper systematically analyzes such material in order to show that the Balto-Slavic Vddhi formations, in contradistinction to the inherited PIE long vowels, received the acute intonation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author argues that Szemerényi's Law operated in the proto-language and that its operation should be restricted to *- V̆Rs# and *- V̆RH# sequences only. Moreover, it is shown that the development of *- V̆Ts# > *- V̆ss# > *- V̄s#, often assumed as part of Szemerényi's Law (cf. Neri 2003: 2035; Lipp 2009: 2, 93) as in PIE *pód-s > *póss > *pṓs > Doric Greek πώς 'foot' (Hesych.), is hardly credible (cf. also Kim 2001: 12724 but without further discussion). The length of the vowel in the Doric form is not certain (cf. LSJ⁹: 1456) and surely secondary in Attic poús as the short vowel is found in compounds (cf. Homeric trípos). Furthermore, if Szemerényi's Law operated as *- V̆Rs# > *- V̄R# we would expect such sequences to appear as *- V̄T# < *- V̆Ts#. I will show that such cases are secondary rather than direct outcomes of Szemerényi's Law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the best established cases of lengthened grade is the nominative singular of many athematic paradigms, where lengthened grade (LG) in the last predesinential element is opposed to full grade (FG) in other forms and is normally reconstructed for PIE (distinctive LG). However, the exact original distribution and the explanation of the phenomenon are controversial. Different theories also make different predictions about the original distribution of distinctive LG, and these may be checked in order to assess these theories. In Indo-Iranian, Brugmann's Law turned many cases of o grade into synchronic LG, thus removing potential cases of distinctive LG. The distribution of LG in Proto-Indo-Iranian (PIIr) strong stem forms is investigated, with the conclusion that distinctive LG in the nominative singular is only found in endingless nominatives. Elsewhere all forms of the strong stem show the same ablaut. Therefore, LG in the nominative singular can (but need not) largely be secondary, either leveling by strong stem forms with Indo-Iranian ā grade from o grade, or by analogy to such paradigms. The isolated form Vedic véṣ 'bird' < PIIr *(h)wáy-š is a counterexample to a general LG rule for monosyllabic stems. Indo-Iranian thus, while not excluding original distinctive LG in some s-marked nominatives, does not support it. However, evidence from Western IE languages appears to show distinctive LG in some nominatives of monosyllabic nouns. Possible explanations are discussed at the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The common reconstruction of *eh2- and devī́-type *ih2-stem singular nominatives as *-ah2 (< *-eh2) and *-ih2 includes no overt marking of the nonneuter nominative singular. Instead of taking this for granted and searching for a motivation in the history of those stems, we raise the possibility of a reconstruction with overt marking (*-āh2, *-īh2). In the second part, the distribution of some word-final vowel shortenings in the Rigveda is analysed in order to determine whether they correlate with the different origins of the vowels or not. The distributions prove interesting, and call for further investigation, but since shortening seems possible irrespective of the origin of the vowel, the Vedic evidence cannot help decide between the two possible reconstructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Germanic a group of nouns belonging to the n-stems display a long *ē followed by geminate voiced stops, MHG tāpe 'paw' (*dēbban-), OHG tāpe, MHG hā(c)ke 'hook' (*hēggan-), OHG chrācco 'uncinus: barb, fuscina: trident' (*krēggan-), OHG chrāppo 'aspidius, uncinus: barb' (*krēbban-), MHG snācke snōcke 'midge' (*snēggan-). While Kluge explained geminate voiceless stops as lengthening before *n, he attributed geminate voiced stops to analogy. But the investigation about whether geminate voiceless stops are allowed following long vowels in Proto-Germanic reveals that Kluge's opinion is indefensible. As sound symbolism and expressivity are present in the Germanic lexicon, it is assumed that mental phenomena caused these sounds. In this regard the status of the long *ē will be clarified. It is postulated that the long vowels in front of geminate voiced stops have the function of reinforcing expressivity by creating this phonetically odd mixture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]