Grassmann's Law
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Grassmann's law, named after its discoverer
Hermann Grassmann Hermann Günther Grassmann (, ; 15 April 1809 – 26 September 1877) was a German polymath known in his day as a linguist and now also as a mathematician. He was also a physicist, general scholar, and publisher. His mathematical work was littl ...
, is a dissimilatory phonological process in
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 ...
and
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 ...
which states that if an aspirated consonant is followed by another aspirated consonant in the next syllable, the first one loses the aspiration. The
descriptive In the study of language, description or descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past) by a speech community. François & Ponsonnet (2013). All aca ...
version was given for Sanskrit by
Pāṇini (; , ) was a Sanskrit grammarian, logician, philologist, and revered scholar in ancient India during the mid-1st millennium BCE, dated variously by most scholars between the 6th–5th and 4th century BCE. The historical facts of his life ar ...
. Here are some examples in Greek of the effects of Grassmann's law: * 'I sacrifice (an animal)'; 'it was sacrificed' * 'hair'; 'hairs' * 'to bury (present)'; 'a grave' In
reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The cla ...
, which forms the perfect tense in both Greek and Sanskrit, if the initial consonant is aspirated, the prepended consonant is unaspirated by Grassmann's law. For instance 'I grow' : 'I have grown'. The fact that deaspiration in Greek took place after the change of
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 ...
to (PIE ''*bʰn̥ǵʰús'' > (''pakhús'') not ''bakhús'' but Sanskrit (''bahú'')) and the fact that all other Indo-European languages do not apply Grassmann's law both suggest that it was developed separately in Greek and Sanskrit (although quite possibly by areal influence spread across a then-contiguous
Graeco-Aryan Graeco-Aryan, or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan, is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family that would be the ancestor of Hellenic, Armenian, and the Indo-Iranian languages, which spans Southern Europe, Armenian highlands and Southern Asi ...
–speaking area) and so it was not inherited from Proto-Indo-European. Also, Grassmann's law in Greek also affects the aspirate < developed specifically in Greek but not in Sanskrit or most other Indo-European. (For example, > > "I have", with dissimilation of , but the future tense > "I will have" was unaffected, as aspiration was lost before .) The evidence from other languages is not strictly negative: many branches, including Sanskrit's closest relative,
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 ...
, merge the Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated and unaspirated stops and so it is not possible to tell if Grassmann's law ever operated in them. According to Filip De Decker, Grassmann's law had not operated in
Mycenaean Greek Mycenaean Greek is the earliest attested form of the Greek language. It was spoken on the Greek mainland and Crete in Mycenaean Greece (16th to 12th centuries BC). The language is preserved in inscriptions in Linear B, a script first atteste ...
yet, and it is almost certain that it occurred later than 1200 BC; it might even postdate the
Homeric Greek Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used in the ''Iliad'', ''Odyssey'', and ''Homeric Hymns''. It is a literary dialect of Ancient Greek consisting mainly of an archaic form of Ionic, with some Aeolic forms, a few from Ar ...
period.


In Greek

In
Koine Greek Koine Greek (, ), also variously known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek, Septuagint Greek or New Testament Greek, was the koiné language, common supra-regional form of Greek language, Greek spoken and ...
, in cases other than reduplication, alternations involving labials and velars have been completely levelled, and Grassmann's law remains in effect only for the alternation between and , as in the last two examples above. (It makes no difference whether the in question continues Proto-Indo-European or .) Thus, alongside the pair 'fast' : 'faster', displaying Grassmann's law, Greek has the pair 'thick' : 'thicker' from the Proto-Indo-European etymon (established by cognate forms like Sanskrit 'abundant' since is the only point of intersection between Greek and Sanskrit ) in which the in the comparative is a result of levelling. Similarly, ~ 'come to know' from PIE has the future . However, only dissimilates before aspirated affixes like the aorist passive in and the imperative in ; and do not, as in 'speak!'.


Diaspirate roots

Cases like ~ and ~ illustrate the phenomenon of ''diaspirate roots'' for which two different analyses have been given. In one account, the
underlying In finance, a derivative is a contract between a buyer and a seller. The derivative can take various forms, depending on the transaction, but every derivative has the following four elements: # an item (the "underlier") that can or must be bou ...
diaspirate theory, the underlying roots are taken to be and . When an , a word edge, or various other sounds immediately follow, the second aspiration is lost, and the first aspirate therefore survives (, ). If a vowel follows the second aspirate, the second aspirate survives unaltered, and the first aspiration is thus lost by Grassmann's law (, ). A different analytical approach was taken by the Indian grammarians. They took the roots to be underlying and . The roots persist unaltered in and . If an follows, it triggers an aspiration throwback and the aspiration migrates leftward, docking onto the initial consonant (, ). In his initial formulation of the law, Grassmann briefly referred to aspiration throwback to explain the seemingly aberrant forms. However, the consensus among contemporary historical linguists is that the former explanation (underlying representation) is the correct one, as aspiration throwback would require multiple root shapes for the same basic root in different languages whenever an aspirate follows in the next syllable ( for Sanskrit, for Greek, for
Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic languages, Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from ...
and
Proto-Italic The Proto-Italic language is the ancestor of the Italic languages, most notably Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages. It is not directly attested in writing, but has been reconstructed to some degree through the comparative method. ...
which have no dissimilation), but the underlying diaspirate allows for a single root shape, with for all languages. In the later course of Sanskrit, under the influence of the grammarians, aspiration throwback was applied to original mono-aspirate roots by
analogy Analogy is a comparison or correspondence between two things (or two groups of things) because of a third element that they are considered to share. In logic, it is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as oppose ...
. Thus, from the verb root ('to plunge'), the desiderative stem is formed by analogy with the forms (a desiderative form) and (a nominal form, both from the root 'to be awake', originally Proto-Indo-European ). The linguist
Ivan Sag Ivan Andrew Sag (November 9, 1949 – September 10, 2013) was an American linguist and cognitive scientist. He did research in areas of syntax and semantics as well as work in computational linguistics. Personal life Born in Alliance, Ohio on No ...
has pointed out an advantage of the ancient Indian theory: it explains why there are no patterns like hypothetical ~ , which are not ruled out by the underlying diaspirate theory. However, aspiration fails to account for reduplication patterns in roots with initial aspirates, such as Greek 'I put', with an unaspirated reduplicated consonant. Aspiration throwback thus needs to be enhanced with a stipulation that aspirates reduplicate as their unaspirated counterparts. From a diachronic standpoint, the absence of these patterns in Greek is explained by the Proto-Indo-European constraint against roots of the form .


Other languages

Processes similar to Grassmann's law continue to work in
Middle Indo-Aryan The Middle Indo-Aryan languages (or Middle Indic languages, sometimes conflated with the Prakrits, which are a stage of Middle Indic) are a historical group of languages of the Indo-Aryan family. They are the descendants of Old Indo-Aryan (OIA; ...
, although it tends to be inconsistent regarding direction, for example Sanskrit (''skandha'') → ''khandha'' → Assamese (''kandh''), but (''bhraṣṭa'') → ''bhaṭṭha'' → (''bhata''). A process similar to Grassmann's law is also known to occur in Ofo, an
extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...
and underdocumented Siouan language. The law is found in compounds such as the following: * ''óskha'' ('the crane') + ''afháⁿ'' ('white') → ''oskạfha'' ('the white egret') A similar phenomenon occurs in Meitei (a Tibeto-Burman language) in which an aspirated consonant is deaspirated if preceded by an aspirated consonant (including ) in the previous syllable. The deaspirated consonants are then voiced between sonorants. * ('pierce') + ('upward') → ('pierce upwards') * ('cow') + ('udder') → ('milk') * ('trim') + ('outward') → ('trim outwards') Hadza, spoken in Northern Tanzania, exhibits Grassmann's law in its lexicon, but most obviously in reduplication: : 'look at each other', from 'look' In Hadza, has no effect on aspiration. A similar effect takes place in Koti and other Makhuwa languages, where it was dubbed ''Katupha's law'' in Schadeberg (1999). If two aspirated consonants are brought together in one stem, the first loses its aspiration. The effect is particularly clear in reduplicated words: ''kopikophi'' 'eyelash'; ''piriphiri'' 'pepper' (cf. Swahili 'piripiri'); ''okukuttha'' 'to wipe'. This is slightly different from in Greek and Sanskrit, in that the two syllables need not be adjacent. The four
Salishan languages The Salishan languages ( ), also known as the Salish languages ( ), are a Language family, family of languages found in the Pacific Northwest in North America, namely the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washingt ...
Salish–Spokane–Kalispel,
Okanagan The Okanagan ( ), also called the Okanagan Valley and sometimes the Okanagan Country, is a region in the Canadian province of British Columbia defined by the basin of Okanagan Lake and the Canadian portion of the Okanagan River. It is part of ...
, Shuswap and Tillamook exhibit a similar process affecting ejective rather than aspirated consonants, which has been called "Grassmann's law for Salish", for example Shuswap underlying 'crutches' → surface .Laurence C. Thompson, M. Terry Thompson, "A Grassmann's Law for Salish" ''Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications'' 20:134-147 (1985)


See also

* Dahl's law and Katupha's law, similar sound laws in
Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...
*
Graeco-Aryan Graeco-Aryan, or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan, is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family that would be the ancestor of Hellenic, Armenian, and the Indo-Iranian languages, which spans Southern Europe, Armenian highlands and Southern Asi ...


References


Sources

* * Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1997). ''A Grammar of Meithei''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. . * Reuse, Willem J. de (1981). "Grassmann's law in Ofo". '' International Journal of American Linguistics'', 47 (3), 243–244. *Sag, Ivan A. (1974) "The Grassmann's Law Ordering Pseudoparadox," ''
Linguistic Inquiry ''Linguistic Inquiry'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal in generative linguistics published by the MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambri ...
''; 5, 591–607. * Czaykowska-Higgins, Ewa & Kinkade, M. Dale (1998) ''Salish Languages and Linguistics'', Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 107, 1-68. {{DEFAULTSORT:Grassmann's Law Indo-Iranian sound laws Greek sound laws