Programme

Accounting for the Absence of Expected Lengthened Grade:
Szemerényi’s Law in Word-Medial Position
Andrew Miles Byrd, University of Kentucky
Szemerényi’s Law (SzL), as is well known, was a phonological process of consonant loss
with subsequent compensatory lengthening (CL) in word-final position, reconstructed for
early PIE. While typically cited as a rule of s-loss, Szemerényi (1970) also recognized this
process to include laryngeals as target consonants, which we may conceive as taking part in a
more general process of fricative deletion.
In this paper I will demonstrate that SzL not only targeted those segments in wordfinal
position; it also targeted them word-medially. Cf. *u̯ erh 1 d h h 1 o- > Lat. verbum, Hesych.
ért h ei ‘speaks’. Of course, such laryngeal deletion is usually attributed to the CHCC > CCC
rule. However, there are a number of strong counterexamples (*ḱerh 2 srom > Lat. cerebrum
‘brain’), and as I have argued on multiple occasions, the CHCC > CCC rule was rather
PH.CC > P.CC (where P = obstruent), driven by violations of syllable structure.
SzL ceased to be a productive rule within late PIE, as evidenced by the
reconstructability of *g w énh 2 ‘woman’, *wih 1 roms, *sals ‘salt’ and *séms ‘one’. It is in this
way that the on-again, off-again reconstructability of laryngeal loss in the sequence RH$
(with < $ > marking a syllable boundary) may be directly explained. But if this truly were
SzL, should we not find lengthened grade in the initial syllables of a form such as **u̯ ērd h h 1 o-
(< *u̯ erh 1 d h h 1 o-)? It will be argued that no CL occurs due to the (P)IE tendency to avoid
superheavy syllables (syllables consisting of more than two morae) in medial position,
resulting in the loss of a mora. This tendency also underlies Schwebeablaut, Osthoff’s Law,
the replacement of certain e-grade oblique stems with ø-grade forms, and Sievers’ Law.
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