Φωνήεντα

PIE vowel quality and accent approaches

The articles shared below are adapted from chapters in my undergraduate thesis. The research for this thesis began in spring 2010, and was first compiled into a “complete” state in December 2016. The content of these articles is best consumed in the context of the other articles, rather than separately.

Φωνήεντα·

1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5

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These articles provide a survey of approaches to explaining the accent-ablaut patterns of Proto-Indo-European, insofar as they provide insight into the surface vowel apophony *e ~ *o observed in non-root athematic nouns, specifically. You will find a discussion of paradigmatic (or templatic) approaches, compositional approaches, root-and-pattern approaches, and even semantic considerations which may be relevant in ultimately understanding the original vowel qualities of these vowels in Proto-Indo-European.

1. Introduction
• Indo-European nominal ablaut
• History
• Vowel phonemes in Proto-Indo-European
2. Innovations in paradigmatic approaches to IE accent-ablaut
• The endingless locative as a link between paradigms
• A correspondence between accent and ablaut grade
3. Compositional analyses
• Lexical free accent
• Optimality Theory – constraints on nominal accent placement
4. Root-and-pattern PIE?
5. Revisiting the PIE vowel phoneme inventory
• The semantic origins of *o
• Alternative vowel reconstructions – the return of *a
• Concluding remarks

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Abbreviations glossary

_ACC - accusative case
_ANIM - animate
_AOR - aorist tense
_DAT - dative
_dom - dominant ending
_GEN - genitive case
impf - imperfect tense
_INAN - inanimate
_INST - instrumental
_LOC - locative case
_NOM - nominative case
_OBL - oblique case(s)
[ ]_σ - encloses a syllable
[ ]_ω - encloses a prosodic word
OT - Optimality Theory
pf. - perfect tense
PIE - Proto-Indo-European
_PL - plural
pres. - present tense
prim. - primary
_rec - recessive ending
rel. - relational
second. - seconary
_SG - singular
_VOC - vocative case
1 - first person

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Φωνήεντα·

1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5

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bibliography

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philology