Programme

Lengthened grade in Vedic root nouns: Szemerényi's Law and some of its implications
Götz Keydana, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
The lengthened grade in the nom.sg. of non-neuter root nouns and some primary derivatives is
often explained as a result of compensatory lengthening. The most prominent case in point is
Szemerényi's Law. In this talk I discuss the methodological premises of this law and look into
possible explanations for the alleged change.
In the first part I show that due to its logical structure Szemerényi's Law is not a sound
law sensu stricto. I then proceed to discuss various phonological scenarios for the law given
in the literature. Compensatory lengthening being the most promising I give a detailed
account of this process in word-final Vrs-sequences. Clusters of this type are indeed prone to
undergo change based on hypocorrection and often resulting in a lengthened preceding vowel.
However, hypocorrection is only possible if the target of the deletion is adjacent to the vowel.
Thus, the only outcome a phonological change can account for is † V̅ s. I propose a solution to
this problem based on a morphophonological repair triggered by recoverability issues and / or
paradigm uniformity. In this scenario, lengthening became opaque and could easily be
reanalyzed, thus starting a new career as a morphological marker for the n.sg.
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