Siebs's law ( ) 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 ...

(PIE)

phonological Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often prefer ...

rule named after the German linguist

Theodor Siebs Theodor Siebs (; 26 August 1862 – 28 May 1941) was a German linguist most remembered today as the author of '' Deutsche Bühnenaussprache'' ('German stage pronunciation'), published in 1898. The work was largely responsible for setting the st ...

. According to this law, if an s-mobile is added to a root that starts with a voiced or aspirated stop, that stop is allophonically devoiced. Compare: :PIE >

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 ...

'' fragor'', :but > PIE >

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 ...

''sphūrjati''.

Discussion

Siebs proposed this law in the ''Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen'' ('Journal for Comparative Linguistic Research in the Field of Indo-European Languages'), as ''Anlautstudien'' ('Initial Sound Studies'). Oswald Szemerényi rejected this rule, explaining that it is untenable and cites the contradiction present in

Avestan Avestan ( ) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family and was First language, originally spoken during the Avestan period, Old ...

''zdī'' from PIE "be!" as counterproof. However, the PIE form is more accurately reconstructed as from (so not an s-mobile) and thus Siebs' law appears to demand that the sibilant and aspirated stop are both adjacent and

tautosyllabic Two or more segments are tautosyllabic (with each other) if they occur in the same syllable. For instance, the English word "cat", , is monosyllabic In linguistics, a monosyllable is a word or utterance of only one syllable. It is most commonly ...

, something which is known to only occur in word-initial position in Proto-Indo-European anyway.

References

Sources

* * * Indo-European sound laws {{ie-lang-stub