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Lachmann's law is a somewhat disputed phonological sound law for Latin named after German Indo-Europeanist Karl Lachmann who first formulated it in 1850. [1] According to it, vowels in Latin lengthen before Proto-Indo-European voiced stops which are followed by another (unvoiced) stop.
According to Paul Kiparsky, [2] Lachmann's law is an example of a sound law that affects deep phonological structure, not the surface result of phonological rules. In Proto-Indo-European, a voiced stop was already pronounced as voiceless before voiceless stops, as the assimilation by voicedness must have been operational in PIE (*h₂eǵtos → *h₂eḱtos 'forced, made'). Lachmann's law, however, did not act upon the result of the assimilation, but on the deep structure *h₂eǵtos > *agtos > āctus.
Jay Jasanoff defends the Neogrammarian analysis of Lachmann's law as analogy followed by sound change. [3] (*aktos ⇒ *agtos > *āgtos > āctus). Although this formulation ultimately derives from Ferdinand de Saussure, Jasanoff's formulation also explains problems such as:
Because Lachmann's law also does not operate before PIE voiced aspirate stops, glottalic theory reinterprets the law as reflecting lengthening before glottalized stops, not voiced stops.
