![Centum Satem map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Centum_Satem_map.png)
Languages of the
Indo-European family
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the
dorsal consonant
Dorsal consonants are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum). They include the palatal, velar and, in some cases, alveolo-palatal and uvular consonants. They contrast with coronal consonants, articulated with the flexibl ...
s (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed
Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
(PIE) developed. An example of the different developments is provided by the words for "hundred" found in the early
attested Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
(which is where the two branches get their names). In centum languages, they typically began with a sound (
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
''centum'' was pronounced with initial /k/), but in satem languages, they often began with (the example ''satem'' comes from the
Avestan language
Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...
of
Zoroastrian
Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheistic on ...
scripture).
The table below shows the traditional reconstruction of the PIE dorsal consonants, with three series, but according to
some more recent theories there may actually have been only two series or three series with different pronunciations from those traditionally ascribed. In centum languages, the palatovelars, which included the initial consonant of the "hundred" root, merged with the plain velars. In satem languages, they remained distinct, and the labiovelars merged with the plain velars.
[J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams (eds.), ''The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture'' (1997), p. 461.]
The centum–satem division forms an
isogloss
An isogloss, also called a heterogloss (see Etymology below), is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Major d ...
in
synchronic
Synchronic may refer to:
* ''Synchronic'' (film), a 2019 American science fiction film starring Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie
* Synchronic analysis, the analysis of a language at a specific point of time
*Synchronicity
Synchronicity (german: ...
descriptions of Indo-European languages. It is no longer thought that the Proto-Indo-European language split first into centum and satem branches from which all the centum and all the satem languages, respectively, would have derived. Such a division is made particularly unlikely by the discovery that while the satem group lies generally to the east and the centum group to the west, the most eastward of the known IE language branches,
Tocharian, is centum.
Centum languages
The canonical centum languages of the Indo-European family are the "western" branches:
Hellenic,
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
* Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Fo ...
,
Italic and
Germanic. They merged Proto-Indo-European palatovelars and plain velars, yielding plain velars only ("centumisation") but retained the labiovelars as a distinct set.
The
Anatolian
Anatolian or anatolica may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the region Anatolia
* Anatolians, ancient Indo-European peoples who spoke the Anatolian languages
* Anatolian High School, a type of Turkish educational institution
* Anatol ...
branch probably falls outside the centum–satem dichotomy; for instance,
Luwian
The Luwians were a group of Anatolian peoples who lived in central, western, and southern Anatolia, in present-day Turkey, during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. They spoke the Luwian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian sub-fa ...
indicates that all three dorsal consonant rows survived separately in
Proto-Anatolian
Proto-Anatolian is the proto-language from which the ancient Anatolian languages emerged (i.e. Hittite and its closest relatives). As with almost all other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstruc ...
.
The centumisation observed in
Hittite is therefore assumed to have occurred only after the breakup of Proto-Anatolian.
However,
Craig Melchert
Harold Craig Melchert (born April 5, 1945) is an American linguist known particularly for his work on the Anatolian branch of Indo-European.
Biography
He received his B.A. in German from Michigan State University in 1967 and his Ph.D. in Lingui ...
proposes that proto-Anatolian is indeed a centum language.
While
Tocharian is generally regarded as a centum language,
it is a special case, as it has merged all three of the PIE dorsal series (originally nine separate consonants) into a single phoneme, ''*k''. According to some scholars, that complicates the classification of Tocharian within the centum–satem model. However, as Tocharian has replaced some Proto-Indo-European labiovelars with the labiovelar-like, non-original sequence ''*ku''; it has been proposed that labiovelars remained distinct in
Proto-Tocharian
Proto-Tocharian, also spelled Proto-Tokharian ( or ), is the reconstructed proto-language of the extinct Tocharian branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Tocharian is the unattested reconstructed ancestor of an Indo-European eponymous ...
, which places Tocharian in the centum group (assuming that Proto-Tocharian lost palatovelars while labiovelars were still phonemically distinct).
In the centum languages, PIE roots reconstructed with palatovelars developed into forms with plain velars. For example, in the
PIE root
The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) are basic parts of words that carry a lexical meaning, so-called morphemes. PIE roots usually have verbal meaning like "to eat" or "to run". Roots never occurred alone in the lang ...
''*'', "hundred", the initial palatovelar * became a plain velar /k/, as in Latin ''centum'' (originally pronounced with /k/, although most modern descendants of Latin have a
sibilant
Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...
there),
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
''(he)katon'',
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
''cant'',
Tocharian B
Kuchean (also known as Tocharian B or West Tocharian) was a Western member of Tocharian branch of Indo-European languages, extinct from ninth century. Once spoken in the Tarim Basin in Central Asia. Tocharian B shows an internal chronological de ...
''kante''. In the
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
, the /k/ developed regularly by
Grimm's law
Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Grim ...
to become /h/, as in Old English ''hund(red)''.
Centum languages also retained the distinction between the PIE labiovelar row (*, *, *) and the plain velars. Historically, it was unclear whether the labiovelar row represented an innovation by a process of labialisation, or whether it was inherited from the parent language (but lost in the satem branches); current mainstream opinion favours the latter possibility. Labiovelars as single phonemes (for example, ) as opposed to biphonemes (for example, ) are attested in Greek (the
Linear B
Linear B was a syllabic script used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of Greek. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries. The oldest Mycenaean writing dates to about 1400 BC. It is descended from ...
series), Italic (Latin ), Germanic (
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
''
hwair
Hwair (also , , ) is the name of , the Gothic letter expressing the or sound (reflected in English by the inverted '' wh''-spelling for ). Hwair is also the name of the Latin ligature (capital ) used to transcribe Gothic.
Name
The name of the ...
'' and ''qairþra'' ) and Celtic (
Ogham
Ogham (Modern Irish: ; mga, ogum, ogom, later mga, ogam, label=none ) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions, 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish langua ...
''ceirt'' ) (in the so-called
P-Celtic
The Gallo-Brittonic languages, also known as the P-Celtic languages, are a subdivision of the Celtic languages of Ancient Gaul (both '' celtica'' and '' belgica'') and Celtic Britain, which share certain features. Besides common linguistic in ...
languages developed into /p/; a similar development took place in the
Osco-Umbrian
The Osco-Umbrian, Sabellic or Sabellian languages are an extinct group of Italic languages, the Indo-European languages that were spoken in Central and Southern Italy by the Osco-Umbrians before being replaced by Latin, as the power of Ancient Rom ...
branch of Italic and sometimes
in Greek and Germanic). The
boukólos rule
The boukólos rule is a phonological rule of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). It states that a labiovelar stop () dissimilates to an ordinary velar stop () next to the vowel or its corresponding glide .
The rule is named after an exampl ...
, however, states that a labiovelar reduces to a plain velar when it occurs next to or .
The centum–satem division refers to the development of the dorsal series at the time of the earliest separation of Proto-Indo-European into the
proto-language
In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattest ...
s of its individual daughter branches. It does not apply to any later analogous developments within any individual branch. For example, the conditional palatalization of
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
to or (often later ) in some
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
(which means that modern
French ''cent'' is pronounced with initial /s/) is satem-like, as is the merger of with in the
Gaelic languages
The Goidelic or Gaelic languages ( ga, teangacha Gaelacha; gd, cànanan Goidhealach; gv, çhengaghyn Gaelgagh) form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages.
Goidelic languages historically ...
; such later changes do not affect the classification of the languages as centum.
Satem languages
The satem languages belong to the Eastern sub-families, especially
Indo-Iranian and
Balto-Slavic
The Balto-Slavic languages form a branch of the Indo-European family of languages, traditionally comprising the Baltic and Slavic languages. Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branc ...
(but not
Tocharian), with Indo-Iranian being the major Asian branch and Balto-Slavic the major European branch of the satem group. It lost the labial element of Proto-Indo-European labiovelars and merged them with plain velars, but the palatovelars remained distinct and typically came to be realised as
sibilant
Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...
s. That set of developments, particularly the
assibilation
In linguistics, assibilation is a sound change resulting in a sibilant consonant. It is a form of spirantization and is commonly the final phase of palatalization.
Arabic
A characteristic of Mashreqi varieties of Arabic (particularly Levantine ...
of palatovelars, is referred to as satemisation.
In the satem languages, the reflexes of the presumed PIE palatovelars are typically
fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
or
affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...
consonants, articulated further forward in the mouth. For example, the
PIE root
The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) are basic parts of words that carry a lexical meaning, so-called morphemes. PIE roots usually have verbal meaning like "to eat" or "to run". Roots never occurred alone in the lang ...
''*'', "hundred", the initial palatovelar normally became a
sibilant
Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...
or
as in
Avestan
Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...
''satem'',
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
''sad'',
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
''śatam'', ''sto'' in all modern
Slavic languages,
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language.
Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with Standard language, standardizing the lan ...
''sъto'',
Latvian ''simts'',
Lithuanian ''šimtas''. Another example is the Slavic prefix ''sъ(n)-'' ("with"), which appears in Latin, a centum language, as ''co(n)-''; ''conjoin'' is cognate with Russian ''soyuz'' ("union"). An
is found for PIE in such languages as
Latvian,
Avestan
Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...
,
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
and
Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
, but
Lithuanian and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
have (''š'' in Lithuanian, ''ś'' in Sanskrit transcriptions). For more reflexes, see the
phonetic correspondences section below; note also the effect of the
ruki sound law
The ruki sound law, also known as the ruki rule or iurk rule, is a historical sound change that took place in the satem branches of the Indo-European language family, namely in Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian. According to this sound la ...
.
"Incomplete satemisation" may also be evidenced by remnants of labial elements from labiovelars in Balto-Slavic, including Lithuanian ''ungurys'' "eel" < ''*'' and ''dygus'' "pointy" < ''*''. A few examples are also claimed in Indo-Iranian, such as Sanskrit ''
guru
Guru ( sa, गुरु, IAST: ''guru;'' Pali'': garu'') is a Sanskrit term for a "mentor, guide, expert, or master" of certain knowledge or field. In pan-Indian traditions, a guru is more than a teacher: traditionally, the guru is a reverentia ...
'' "heavy" < ''*'', ''kulam'' "herd" < ''*'', but they may instead be secondary developments, as in the case of ''kuru'' "make" < ''*'' in which it is clear that the ''ku-'' group arose in
post-Rigvedic language. It is also asserted that in Sanskrit and Balto-Slavic, in some environments, resonant consonants (denoted by /R/) become /iR/ after plain velars but /uR/ after labiovelars.
Some linguists argue that the
Albanian
Albanian may refer to:
*Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular:
**Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans
**Albanian language
**Albanian culture
**Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the country ...
[Matasović, Ranko (2012)]
"A Grammatical Sketch of Albanian for students of Indo-European"
Page 13:"It has been claimed that the difference between the three PIE series of gutturals is preserved in Albanian before front vowels. This thesis, sometimes referred to as Pedersen’s law, is often contested, but still supported by the majority of Albanologists (e. g. Hamp, Huld, and Ölberg). In examining this view, one should bear in mind that it seems certain that there were at least two palatalizations in Albanian: the first palatalization, whereby labiovelars were palatalized to s and z before front vowels and *y, and the second palatalization, whereby all the remaining velars (*k and *g) were palatalized to q and gj, in the same environment. PIE palatalized velars are affected by neither palatalization (they yield Alb. th, d, dh, cf. Alb. thom ‘I say’ < *k’ensmi, cf. OInd. śa m s- ‘praise’, L c e nse o ‘reckon’). It may be that th yielded f before a consonant, if Alb. ënfle ‘sleep’ is from *nthle < *n-k’loye- (cf. G klínō ‘recline’). " and
Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
branches are also to be classified as satem, but some linguists argue that they show evidence of separate treatment of all three dorsal consonant rows and so may not have merged the labiovelars with the plain velars, unlike the canonical satem branches.
Assibilation of velars in certain phonetic environments is a common phenomenon in language development (compare, for example, the initial sounds in
French ''cent'' and
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
''cien'', which are fricatives even though they derive from Latin /k/). Consequently, it is sometimes hard to establish firmly the languages that were part of the original satem diffusion and the ones affected by secondary assibilation later. While extensive documentation of Latin and Old Swedish, for example, shows that the assibilation found in French and
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
were later developments, there are not enough records of
Dacian and
Thracian
The Thracians (; grc, Θρᾷκες ''Thrāikes''; la, Thraci) were an Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Eastern and Southeastern Europe in ancient history.. "The Thracians were an Indo-European people who occupied t ...
to settle conclusively when their satem-like features originated.
In
Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
, some assert that /kʷ/ is distinguishable from /k/ before front vowels. Martin Macak (2018) asserts that the merger of *''kʷ'' and *''k'' occurred "within the history of Proto-Armenian itself".
In
Albanian
Albanian may refer to:
*Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular:
**Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans
**Albanian language
**Albanian culture
**Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the country ...
, the three original dorsal rows have remained distinguishable when before historic front vowels.
Labiovelars are for the most part differentiated from all other Indo-European velar series before front vowels (where they developed into ''s'' and ''z'' ultimately), but they merge with the "pure" (back) velars elsewhere.
[ The palatal velar series, consisting of Proto-Indo-European *''ḱ'' and the merged *''ģ'' and ''ģʰ'', usually developed into ''th'' and ''dh'', but were depalatalized to merge with the back velars when in contact with ]sonorant
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...
s.[ Because the original Proto-Indo-European tripartite distinction between dorsals is preserved in such reflexes, Demiraj argues Albanian is therefore to be considered neither centum nor satem, like Luwian, but at the same time it has a "satem-like" realization of the palatal dorsals in most cases.] Thus PIE *''ḱ'', *''kʷ'' and *''k'' become ''th'' (Alb. ''thom'' "I say" < PIE *''ḱeHsmi''), ''s'' (Alb. ''si'' "how" < PIE. ''kʷiH1'', cf. Latin ''quī''), and ''q'' (/c/: ''pleq'' "elderly" < *plak-i < PIE *''plH2-ko-''), respectively.
History of concept
Schleicher's single guttural row
August Schleicher
August Schleicher (; 19 February 1821 – 6 December 1868) was a German linguist. His great work was ''A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages'' in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European languag ...
, an early Indo-Europeanist, in Part I, "Phonology", of his major work, the 1871 ''Compendium of Comparative Grammar of the Indogermanic Language'', published a table of original ''momentane Laute'', or "stops", which has only a single velar row, *k, *g, *gʰ, under the name of ''Gutturalen''. He identifies four palatals (*ḱ, *ǵ, *ḱʰ, *ǵʰ) but hypothesises that they came from the gutturals along with the nasal *ń and the spirant *ç.
Brugmann's labialized and unlabialized language groups
Karl Brugmann
Karl Brugmann (16 March 1849 – 29 June 1919) was a German linguist. He is noted for his work in Indo-European linguistics.
Biography
He was educated at the universities of Halle and Leipzig. He taught at the gymnasium at Wiesbaden and at Le ...
, in his 1886 work ''Outline of Comparative Grammar of the Indogermanic Language'' ('' Grundriss...''), promotes the palatals to the original language, recognising two rows of ''Explosivae'', or "stops", the palatal (*ḱ, *ǵ, *ḱʰ, *ǵʰ) and the velar each of which was simplified to three articulations even in the same work. In the same work, Brugmann notices among ''die velaren Verschlusslaute'', "the velar stops", a major contrast between reflexes
In biology, a reflex, or reflex action, is an involuntary, unplanned sequence or action and nearly instantaneous response to a Stimulus (physiology), stimulus.
Reflexes are found with varying levels of complexity in organisms with a nervous s ...
of the same words in different daughter language
In historical linguistics, a daughter language, also known as descendant language, is a language descended from another language, its mother language, through a process of genetic descent. If more than one language has developed from the same pro ...
s. In some, the velar is marked with a ''u-Sprache'', "u-articulation", which he terms a ''Labialisierung'', "labialization", in accordance with the prevailing theory that the labiovelars were velars labialised by combination with a ''u'' at some later time and were not among the original consonants. He thus divides languages into ''die Sprachgruppe mit Labialisierung'' and ''die Sprachgruppe ohne Labialisierung'', "the language group with (or without) labialization", which basically correspond to what would later be termed the centum and satem groups:
The doubt introduced in that passage suggests he already suspected the "afterclap" ''u'' was not that but was part of an original sound.
Von Bradke's centum and satem groups
In 1890, Peter von Bradke published ''Concerning Method and Conclusions of Aryan (Indogermanic) Studies'', in which he identified the same division (''Trennung'') as did Brugmann, but he defined it in a different way. He said that the original Indo-Europeans had two kinds of ''gutturaler Laute'', "guttural sounds" the ''gutturale oder velare, und die palatale Reihe'', "guttural or velar, and palatal rows", each of which were aspirated and unaspirated. The velars were to be viewed as gutturals in an ''engerer Sinn'', "narrow sense". They were a ''reiner K-Laut'', "pure K-sound". Palatals were ''häufig mit nachfolgender Labialisierung'', "frequently with subsequent labialization". The latter distinction led him to divide the ''palatale Reihe'' into a ''Gruppe als Spirant'' and a ''reiner K-Laut'', typified by the words ''satem'' and ''centum'' respectively. Later in the book he speaks of an original ''centum-Gruppe'', from which on the north of the Black and Caspian Seas the ''satem-Stämme'', "satem tribes", dissimilated among the ''Nomadenvölker'' or ''Steppenvölker'', distinguished by further palatalization of the palatal gutturals.
Brugmann's identification of labialized and centum
By the 1897 edition of '' Grundriss'', Brugmann (and Delbrück
Delbrück () is a town in the east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, located in the district Paderborn.
History
The first document mentioning the town dates to 1219. In 1410, the town was destroyed by fire during a conflict between the bisho ...
) had adopted Von Bradke's view: "The Proto-Indo-European palatals... appear in Greek, Italic, Celtic and Germanic as a rule as K-sounds, as opposed to in Aryan, Armenian, Albanian, Balto-Slavic, Phrygian and Thracian... for the most part sibilants."
There was no more mention of labialized and non-labialized language groups after Brugmann changed his mind regarding the labialized velars. The labio-velars now appeared under that name as one of the five rows of ''Verschlusslaute (Explosivae)'' ( plosives/stops), comprising ''die labialen V., die dentalen V., die palatalen V., die reinvelaren V.'' and ''die labiovelaren V.'' It was Brugmann who pointed out that labiovelars had merged into the velars in the satem group, accounting for the coincidence of the discarded non-labialized group with the satem group.
Discovery of Anatolian and Tocharian
When von Bradke first published his definition of the centum and satem sound changes, he viewed his classification as "the oldest perceivable division" in Indo-European, which he elucidated as "a division between eastern and western cultural provinces (''Kulturkreise'')".
The proposed split was undermined by the decipherment of Hittite and Tocharian in the early 20th century. Both languages show no satem-like assibilation
In linguistics, assibilation is a sound change resulting in a sibilant consonant. It is a form of spirantization and is commonly the final phase of palatalization.
Arabic
A characteristic of Mashreqi varieties of Arabic (particularly Levantine ...
in spite of being located in the satem area.
The proposed phylogenetic
In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...
division of Indo-European into satem and centum "sub-families" was further weakened by the identification of other Indo-European isogloss
An isogloss, also called a heterogloss (see Etymology below), is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Major d ...
es running across the centum–satem boundary, some of which seemed of equal or greater importance in the development of daughter languages.["...an early dialect split of the type indicated by the centum–satem contrast should be expected to be reflected in other high-order dialect distinctions as well, a pattern which is not evident from an analysis of shared features among eastern and western languages."] Consequently, since the early 20th century at least, the centum–satem isogloss has been considered an early areal phenomenon rather than a true phylogenetic division of daughter languages.
Alternative interpretations
Different realisations
The actual pronunciation of the velar series in PIE is not certain. One current idea is that the "palatovelars" were in fact simple velars , and the "plain velars" were pronounced farther back, perhaps as uvular consonant
Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provi ...
s: . If labiovelars were just labialized
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...
forms of the "plain velars", they would have been pronounced but the pronunciation of the labiovelars as would still be possible in uvular theory, if the satem languages first shifted the "palatovelars" then later merged the "plain velars" and "labiovelars".
The uvular theory is supported by the following evidence.
*The "palatovelar" series was the most common, and the "plain velar" was by far the least common and never occurred in any affixes. In known languages with multiple velar series, the normal velar series is usually the most common, which would imply that what have been interpreted as "palatovelars" were more probably simply velars but the labiovelars were most likely still just due to them being the second most common.
*There is no evidence of any palatalisation in the early history of the velars in the centum branches, but see above for the case of Anatolian. If the "palatovelars" were in fact palatalised in PIE, there would have had to be a single, very early, uniform depalatalisation in all (and only) the centum branches. Depalatalisation is cross-linguistically far less common than is palatalisation and so is unlikely to have occurred separately in each centum branch. In any case it would almost certainly have left evidence of prior palatalization in some of the branches. (As noted above, it is not thought that the centum branches had a separate common ancestor in which the depalatalization could have occurred just once and then have been inherited.)
*Most instances of the rare to non-existent /a/ phoneme without the /h₂/ laryngeal appear before or after *k, which could be the result of that phoneme being a-coloring, particularly likely if it was uvular /q/, similar to the /h₂/ laryngeal which may have been uvular /χ/. Uvulars coloring and lowering vowels is common cross-linguistically as in languages such as Quechuan or Greenlandic where /i/ and /u/ lower to /e/ and /o/ when next to uvulars meaning the lowering of /e/ and /o/ to or would be possible, and also occurs in Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
.
On the above interpretation, the split between the centum and satem groups would not have been a straightforward loss of an articulatory feature (palatalization or labialization). Instead, the uvulars (the "plain velars" of the traditional reconstruction) would have been fronted to velars across all branches. In the satem languages, it caused a chain shift
In historical linguistics, a chain shift is a set of sound changes in which the change in pronunciation of one speech sound (typically, a phoneme) is linked to, and presumably causes, a change in pronunciation of other sounds as well. The sound ...
, and the existing velars (traditionally "palatovelars") were shifted further forward to avoid a merger, becoming palatal: > ; > . In the centum languages, no chain shift occurred, and the uvulars merged into the velars. The delabialisation in the satem languages would have occurred later, in a separate stage.
Related to the uvular theory is the glottalic theory
The glottalic theory is that Proto-Indo-European had ejective stops, , instead of the plain voiced ones, as hypothesized by the usual Proto-Indo-European phonological reconstructions.
A forerunner of the theory was proposed by the Danish lingu ...
. Both these theories have some support if Proto-Indo-European was spoken near the Caucasus, where both uvular and glottal consonants are common and many languages have a paucity of distinctive vowels.
Only two velar series
The presence of three dorsal rows in the proto-language has been the mainstream hypothesis since at least the mid-20th century. There remain, however, several alternative proposals with just two rows in the parent language, which describe either "satemisation" or "centumisation", as the emergence of a new phonematic category rather than the disappearance of an inherited one.
Antoine Meillet
Paul Jules Antoine Meillet (; 11 November 1866 Moulins, France – 21 September 1936 Châteaumeillant, France) was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. He began his studies at the Sorbonne University, where he was ...
(1937) proposed that the original rows were the labiovelars and palatovelars, with the plain velars being allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
s of the palatovelars in some cases, such as depalatalisation before a resonant.
The etymologies establishing the presence of velars in the parent language are explained as artefacts of either borrowing between daughter languages or of false etymologies. Having only labiovelars and palatovelars would also parallel languages such as Russian or Irish, where consonants can be either broad and unpalatalized, or slender and palatalized, and is also seen in some Northwest Caucasian languages
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Cauc ...
.
Other scholars who assume two dorsal rows in Proto-Indo-European include Kuryłowicz (1935) and Lehmann
Lehmann is a German surname.
Geographical distribution
As of 2014, 75.3% of all bearers of the surname ''Lehmann'' were residents of Germany, 6.6% of the United States, 6.3% of Switzerland, 3.2% of France, 1.7% of Australia and 1.3% of Poland.
In ...
(1952), as well as Frederik Kortlandt
Frederik Herman Henri (Frits) Kortlandt (born 19 June 1946) is a Dutch former professor of descriptive and comparative linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He writes on Baltic and Slavic languages, the Indo-European languages in gen ...
and others. The argument is that PIE had only two series, a simple velar and a labiovelar. The satem languages palatalized the plain velar series in most positions, but the plain velars remained in some environments: typically reconstructed as before or after /u/, after /s/, and before /r/ or /a/ and also before /m/ and /n/ in some Baltic dialects. The original allophonic distinction was disturbed when the labiovelars were merged with the plain velars. That produced a new phonemic distinction between palatal and plain velars, with an unpredictable alternation between palatal and plain in related forms of some roots (those from original plain velars) but not others (those from original labiovelars). Subsequent analogical processes generalised either the plain or palatal consonant in all forms of a particular root. The roots in which the plain consonant was generalized are those traditionally reconstructed as having "plain velars" in the parent language in contrast to "palatovelars".
Oswald Szemerényi
__NOTOC__
Oswald John Louis Szemerényi, FBA (; 7 September 1913 in London – 29 December 1996 in Freiburg) was a Hungarian Indo-Europeanist with strong interests in comparative linguistics in general.
Biography
He was educated in Hungary, at ...
(1990) considers the palatovelars as an innovation, proposing that the "preconsonantal palatals probably owe their origin, at least in part, to a lost palatal vowel" and a velar was palatalised by a following vowel subsequently lost. The palatal row would therefore postdate the original velar and labiovelar rows, but Szemerényi is not clear whether that would have happened before or after the breakup of the parent-language (in a table showing the system of stops "shortly before the break-up", he includes palatovelars with a question mark after them).
Woodhouse (1998; 2005) introduced a "bitectal" notation, labelling the two rows of dorsals as ''k1, g1, g1h'' and ''k2, g2, g2h''. The first row represents "prevelars", which developed into either palatovelars or plain velars in the satem group but just into plain velars into the centum group; the second row represents "backvelars", which developed into either labiovelars or plain velars in the centum group but just plain velars in the satem group.
The following are arguments that have been listed in support of a two-series hypothesis:
*The plain velar series is statistically rarer than the other two, is almost entirely absent from affixes and appears most often in certain phonological environments (described in the next point).
*The reconstructed velars and palatovelars occur mostly in complementary distribution (velars before *a, *r and after *s, *u; palatovelars before *e, *i, *j, liquid/nasal/*w+*e/*i and before o in o-grade forms by generalization from e-grade).
*It is unusual in general for palatovelars to move backwards rather than the reverse (but that problem might simply be addressed by assuming three series with different realizations from the traditional ones, as described above).
*In most languages in which the "palatovelars" produced fricatives, other palatalisation also occurred, implying that it was part of a general trend;
*The centum languages are not contiguous, and there is no evidence of differences between dialects in the implementation of centumization (but there are differences in the process of satemisation: there can be pairs of satemized and non-satemized velars within the same language, there is evidence of a former labiovelar series in some satem languages and different branches have different numbers and timings of satemization stages). This makes a "centumisation" process less likely, implying that the position found in the centum languages was the original one.
*Alternations between plain velars and palatals are common in a number of roots across different satem languages, but the same root appears with a palatal in some languages but a plain velar in others (most commonly Baltic or Slavic, occasionally Armenian but rarely or never the Indo-Iranian languages). That is consistent with the analogical generalisation of one or another consonant in an originally-alternating paradigm but difficult to explain otherwise.
*The claim that in late PIE times, the satem languages (unlike the centum languages) were in close contact with each other is confirmed by independent evidence: the geographical closeness of current satem languages and certain other shared innovations (the ruki sound law
The ruki sound law, also known as the ruki rule or iurk rule, is a historical sound change that took place in the satem branches of the Indo-European language family, namely in Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian. According to this sound la ...
and early palatalization of velars before front vowels).
Arguments in support of three series:
*Many instances of plain velars occur in roots that have no evidence of any of the putative environments that trigger plain velars and no obvious mechanism for the plain velar to have come in contact with any such environment; as a result, the comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
requires three series to be reconstructed.
*Albanian and Armenian are said to show evidence of different reflexes for the three different series. Evidence from the Anatolian language Luwian
The Luwians were a group of Anatolian peoples who lived in central, western, and southern Anatolia, in present-day Turkey, during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. They spoke the Luwian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian sub-fa ...
attests a three-way velar distinction > ''z'' (probably ); > ''k''; > ''ku'' (probably ). There is no evidence of any connection between Luwian and any satem language (labiovelars are still preserved, the ruki sound law
The ruki sound law, also known as the ruki rule or iurk rule, is a historical sound change that took place in the satem branches of the Indo-European language family, namely in Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian. According to this sound la ...
is absent) and the Anatolian branch split off very early from PIE. The three-way distinction must be reconstructed for the parent language. (That is a strong argument in favor of the traditional three-way system; in response, proponents of the two-way system have attacked the underlying evidence by claiming that it "hinges upon especially difficult or vague or otherwise dubious etymologies" (such as Sihler 1995).) Melchert originally claimed that the change > ''z'' was unconditional and subsequently revised the assertion to a conditional change occurring only before front vowels, /j/, or /w/; however, that does not fundamentally alter the situation, as plain-velar apparently remains as such in the same context. Melchert also asserts, contrary to Sihler, the etymological distinction between and in the relevant positions is well-established.
*According to Ringe (2006), there are root constraints that prevent the occurrence of a "palatovelar" and labiovelar or two "plain velars", in the same root, but they do not apply to roots containing, for example, a palatovelar and a plain velar.
*The centum change could have occurred independently in multiple centum subgroups (at the very least, Tocharian, Anatolian and Western IE), as it was a phonologically natural change, given the possible interpretation of the "palatovelar" series as plain-velar and the "plain velar" series as back-velar or uvular (see above). Given the minimal functional load of the plain-velar/palatovelar distinction, if there was never any palatalisation in the IE dialects leading to the centum languages, there is no reason to expect any palatal residues. Furthermore, it is phonologically entirely natural for a former plain-velar vs. back-velar/uvular distinction to have left no distinctive residues on adjacent segments.
Phonetic correspondences in daughter languages
The following table summarizes the outcomes of the reconstructed PIE palatals and labiovelars in the various daughter branches, both centum and satem. (The outcomes of the "plain velars" can be assumed to be the same as those of the palatals in the centum branches and those of the labiovelars in the satem branches.)
See also
*Hard and soft C
In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, including English, a distinction between hard and soft occurs in which represents two distinct phonemes. The sound of a hard often precedes the non-front vowels , and , and is that ...
*Hard and soft G
In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, the letter is used in different contexts to represent two distinct phonemes that in English are called hard and soft . The sound of a hard (which often precedes the non-front vowel ...
*Hittite language
Hittite (natively / "the language of Neša", or ''nešumnili'' / "the language of the people of Neša"), also known as Nesite (''Nešite'' / Neshite, Nessite), is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people ...
* Illyrian languages
The Illyrian language () was an Indo-European language or group of languages spoken by the Illyrians in Southeast Europe during antiquity. The language is unattested with the exception of personal names and placenames. Just enough information ...
* Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
* Isogloss
An isogloss, also called a heterogloss (see Etymology below), is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Major d ...
* Proto-Indo-European phonology
The phonology of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) has been reconstructed by linguists, based on the similarities and differences among current and extinct Indo-European languages. Because PIE was not written, linguists must rely on the evi ...
References
Sources
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Further reading
* Kortlandt, Frederik.
Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian
. In: ''Baltistica'' 2016, t. 51, Nr. 2, p. 355-364. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15388/Baltistica.51.2.2284
* Mayer, Harvey E. (1980). "Baltic membership in the West Satem subgroup". In: ''Journal of Baltic Studies'', 11:4, pp. 356–366. DOI: 10.1080/01629778000000351
* Mottausch, Karl-Heinz. "Eine Neue Lösung Für Ein Altes Problem: Kentum Und Satəm". In: ''Historische Sprachforschung'' istorical Linguistics119 (2006): 35-76. www.jstor.org/stable/40849375.
External links
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{{Proto-Indo-European language
Indo-European languages
Linguistic typology
Sound laws
Isoglosses
Comparison of Indo-European languages