Bartholomae's Law
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Bartholomae's law, sometimes referred to as the Buddha rule, is a
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...
sound law affecting consonant clusters, most clearly in the Indo-Iranian languages. It states that in a cluster of two or more obstruents ( stops or the
sibilant Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate 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 w ...
), any one of which is a voiced aspirated stop anywhere in the sequence, the whole cluster becomes voiced and aspirated. Thus, to the
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...
root ' 'learn, become aware of', the participle ' 'enlightened' loses the aspiration of the first stop (following Grassmann's law) and with the application of Bartholomae's law and regular vowel changes gives
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
'enlightened'. The law is named after German linguist Christian Bartholomae, who first described it in 1883.


Further developments

In both the Indic and the
Iranian Iranian () may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Iran ** Iranian diaspora, Iranians living outside Iran ** Iranian architecture, architecture of Iran and parts of the rest of West Asia ** Iranian cuisine, cooking traditions and practic ...
subgroups, further developments partially obscured the operation of the law; thanks to the falling together of plain voiced and voiced aspirated stops in Iranian, Bartholomae's law appears synchronically as progressive voicing assimilation after roots that originally ended in voiced aspirates, for example Old Avestan 'he said' from Proto-Indo-European . This is not true for roots with plain voiced stops, for example Old Avestan 'yoked' from Proto-Indo-European , where Bartholomae's law does not apply. In Indic, voiced ''*z'' as resulting from Bartholomae's law was devoiced to ''s'', although there is some evidence from the Rigvedic language that a voiced aspirate ''*z'' once existed in Indic as well. This is shown by forms like ''gdha'' 'he swallowed' and ''dudukṣa-'' 'want to give milk' (see below).


Interpretation

A written form such as ''-ddh-'' (a literal rendition of the
devanāgarī Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...
representation) presents problems of interpretation. The choice is between a long voiced stop with a specific release feature, aspiration, symbolized in transliteration by -''h''-, or else a long stop (or stop cluster) with a different
phonation The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defi ...
al state, " murmur", whereby the breathy release is an artifact of the phonational state. The latter interpretation is rather favored by such phenomena as the Rigvedic form ''gdha'' 'he swallowed', which is morphologically a middle aorist (or, more exactly, injunctive) to the root ''ghas''- 'swallow', as follows: ''ghs-t-a'' > *''gzdha'', whence ''gdha'' by the regular loss of a sibilant between stops in Indic. While the idea of voicing affecting the whole cluster with the release feature conventionally called aspiration penetrating all the way to the end of the sequence is not entirely unthinkable, the alternative – the spread of a phonational state (but murmur rather than voice) through the whole sequence – involves one less step and therefore via Occam's razor counts as the better interpretation. Bartholomae's law intersects with another Indic development, namely what looks like the deaspiration of aspirated stops in clusters with ''s'': descriptively, Proto-Indo-European 'you lick' becomes *''leyksi'', whence Sanskrit . However, Grassmann's law, whereby an aspirated stop becomes non-aspirated before another aspirated stop (as in the example of ''buddha'', above), suggests something else. In late Vedic and later forms of Sanskrit, all forms behave as though aspiration was simply lost in clusters with ''s'', so such forms to the root ''dugh-'' 'give milk' (etymologically *-) show the expected devoicing and deaspiration in, say, the desiderative formation ''du-dhukṣ-ati'' (with the root-initial ''dh''- intact, that is, undissimulated). But the earliest passages of the Rigveda show something different: desiderative ''dudukṣati'', aorist ''dukṣata'' (for later ''dhukṣata'') and so on. Thus, it is apparent that what went into Grassmann's law were forms like ''*dhugzhata, dhudhugzha''- and so on, with aspiration in the sibilant clusters intact. The deaspiration and devoicing of the sibilant clusters were later and entirely separate phenomena (and connected with yet another suite of specifically Indic sound laws, namely a "rule conspiracy" to eliminate all voiced – and murmured – sibilants). Even the example 'swallowed' given above contradicts the usual interpretation of devoicing and deaspiration: by such a sequence, *''ghs-to'' gave, first, *''ksto'' (if the process was already Indo-European) or *''ksta'' (if Indo-Iranian in date), whence Sanskrit *''kta'', not ''gdha''.


Relative chronology

There is no evidence that Bartholomae's law predated Indo-Iranian, that is, that it was a feature of Proto-Indo-European. The
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
form 'couch' and
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
'bed' are differently formed but both continue the Proto-Indo-European root 'lie' (the English word being from the same root). But because the Latin would otherwise have resulted in a forbidden cluster (**''gt''), it may well just be a case of voicing assimilation. In similar combinations arising within Greek, the pattern is for the whole cluster to become aspirated, thus **''lékhthron''. It obviously does not in this formation, which for other reasons as well is likely to be very old. This may be because the consonant cluster is more complex. In the case of Latin , it is significant that the Proto-Indo-European root does not otherwise survive in Latin at all, so that there can be no history of analogical remodeling or other disturbances. It is not completely clear what the result of a sequence would have been in Latin, but other evidence suggests lengthening of the vowel plus simplification, so **''lēgus'' (cf. ''co-āgulum'' 'rennet' < , ''tēgula'' 'roofing tile' < ).


See also

* Sandhi


References


External links

* William H. Bennet
The Germanic Evidence for Bartholomae's Law
''Language'', Vol. 42, No. 4 (Dec., 1966), pp. 733–737 {{Proto-Indo-European language Indo-European sound laws Indo-Iranian sound laws