Asno law

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In historical linguistics, the asnolaw is a sound law in Proto-Indo-European where word-medial consonant clusters containing underlying *-Cmn- tend to lose one of the nasal consonants *m or *n. This sound change was first documented by Johannes Schmidt in 1895 and is named for the Avestan reflex 𐬀𐬯𐬥𐬋asnō. [1] The asno law, along with Stang's law, is one of Proto-Indo-European's manifestations of a phonotactic restriction against multiple adjacent sonorants in the coda of a syllable. [2]

Contents

Affected affixes

The asno law is usually invoked to explain the disappearance of *-m- in the oblique case forms or thematic derivatives of animate-gender *-men- and *-mon- nouns, which have cases where a sequence *-mn- should appear. Thematic derivatives of neuter *-mn̥ nouns were also affected.

Phonological conditioning

The conditions under which the asno law is triggered remain controversial and unsettled. It is usually supposed to be triggered when the *-mn- sequence follows a consonant; if the *-mn- is preceded by a short vowel, the asno rule does not apply.

Byrd has *-Cmn- losing the *m if the preceding syllable was accented and the *n if the following syllable has the accent. [1] This account is rejected by Tijmen Pronk. [3] Alexander Nikolaev also rejects the post-tonic *n-loss part of this account but instead posits that asno rule applied to delete either one of *m or *n (more often *n) when the next syllable is accented. The asno law would also be generalized to thematized derivatives of any nasal-stem noun, including *r/n-heteroclitic nouns, where the base noun would lose the stem-final nasal in composition. [4]

Dissimilatory loss of *-m- in *-mn- when the root contained a labial consonant has been used to explain many cases of the asno rule. [5] Pronk posits this dissimilation as the sole mechanism of the asno rule. [3]

Adiego alternatively proposes that the asno rule was conditioned not by the accent, as Byrd believes, but instead by the ablaut grade of the root; the zero grade would cause the deletion of *-m- but with other grades, the *-n- would be lost instead. [2]

References

  1. 1 2 Byrd, Andrew Miles (2018). "121. The phonology of Proto-Indo-European". In Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian; Fritz, Matthias (eds.). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter. pp. 2057–2079. ISBN   978-3-11-054052-9.
  2. 1 2 Adiego, Ignasi-Xavier (2023). "A little-known law on the root and syllable structures of Proto-Indo-European". In Melanie Malzahn; Hannes Fellner; Theresa-Susanna Illés (eds.). Zurück zur Wurzel – Struktur, Funktion und Semantik der Wurzel im Indogermanischen. Akten der Tagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft vom 13. bis 16. September 2016 in Wien. Reichert Verlag. pp. 1–14.
  3. 1 2 Pronk, Tijmen (2014). "Proto-Indo-European mn-stems in Balto-Slavic". In Norbert Oettinger; Thomas Steer (eds.). Das Nomen im Indogermanischen. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag. pp. 318–326.
  4. ↑ Nikolaev, Alexander (2021). "YAv. Spitiiura- and the Compositional Form of PIE *u̯r̥h1-en- 'Lamb' in Indo-Iranian". Indo-Iranian Journal. 64 (2): 145–162. doi:10.1163/15728536-06402003. ISSN   0019-7246.
  5. ↑ Kroonen, Guus [in Lithuanian] (2011). The Proto-Germanic n-stems: A study in diachronic morphophonology. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi. p. 65. ISBN   978-90-420-3292-7.
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