Programme

On the Phonetics and Phonology of Stang's and Szemerényi's Laws
Ryan Sandell, UCLA
This paper works towards a better understanding of the phonetic and phonological processes
in Proto-Indo-European that bear the labels of Stang’s Law (Stang 1965: 292 ff.) and
Szemerényi’s Law (Szemerényi 1970: 106-11). Descriptively, both laws appear to involve the
the loss of certain consonants in auslaut when preceded by certain other consonants, with
consequent compensatory lengthening of the vowel in the final syllable (e.g., **di̯ eu̯ -m >
*di̯ ēm; **ph 2 ter-s > *ph 2 tēr). Principally, two questions require an account:
1. why are those certain word-final consonants lost?
2. why does the loss of those consonants result in compensatory lengthening?
Answers to the first question seem largely straightforward with respect to Stang's Law:
assimilation of segments, coupled with the well-known constraint against adjacent identical
segments in PIE, leads to loss of a consonant (cf. Mayrhofer 1986 [2012]: 171-2). In the case
of Szemerényi's Law, already Szemerényi (1970: 109) advanced a similar explanation based
on assimilation (e.g., *-rs#>*-rr#) and degemination, but some more recent work (e.g., Byrd
2010: 88-94) has instead suggested that a general ban on word-final resonant + fricative
sequences was operative in PIE. The fact that cases involving both *s and *h 2 , despite the
divergent phonetic properties of those segments, have been adduced as instances of
Szemerényi's Law (cf. Szemerényi 1970: 155, 159), raises the further question of whether the
all Szemerényi's Law phenomena reflect the same process.
The second question is more troubling, in light of the fact that a plausible model of
compensatory lengthening (Moraic Theory; see Hayes 1989) does not predict compensatory
lengthening of the type VC 1 C 2 # > V̄ C 1 #, and that the typological study of Kavitskaya (2002)
does not find evidence for compensatory lengthening of such a type. Evidence from Greek,
Latin, and Indo-Iranian, however, suggests that word-final consonants may have been
extrametrical (i.e., did not bear a mora) in PIE (a not uncommon situation cross-linguistically;
cf. Hayes 1995: 56-60). Thus, when a formerly weight-bearing consonant became word-final,
its mora was transferred to the preceding vowel, and so produced the lengthened vowel.
References:
Byrd, A. M. (2010). Reconstructing Indo-European Syllabification. Ph.D. thesis, University
of California, Los Angeles.
Hayes, B. (1989). Compensatory Lengthening in Moraic Phonology. Linguistic Inquiry 20,
253--306.
Hayes, B. (1995). Metrical Stress Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kavitskaya, D. (2002). Compensatory Lengthening: Phonetics, Phonology, Diachrony. New
York: Routledge.
Mayrhofer, M. (1986 [2012]). Indogermanische Grammatik I 2: Lautlehre. Heidelberg: Carl
Winter.
Stang, C. (1965). Indo-Européen *G w ŌM, *D(I)I̯ ĒM. In: Symbolae linguisticae in honorem
Georgii Kuryłowicz (Polska Akademia Nauk. Prace Komisji Językoznawsta, ed.).
Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich.
Szemerényi, O. (1970). Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
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