Hittite Evidence against Full-Grade o

Abstract

The familiar doctrine that Primitive Indo-European possessed a full-grade (accented) vowel o derives from Ferdinand de Saussure.1 His thesis was that in addition to ' in ablaut relation to e there was another vowel which appeared in Greek and Italic as 6 and which was due to the influence of a certain lost consonant of undefined character. He had three reasons for this assumption: (1) Greek and Italic present in certain words an 6 that is not observed to alternate with 9. (2) Greek and Italic o in open syllables corresponds to Indo-Iranian a, according to 'Brugmann's law'; but sometimes Graeco-Italic o corresponds to Indo-Iranian a in open syllables, and de Saussure held that such pairs came from the full-grade, non-ablauting o. (3) Armenian usually responds to Graeco-Italic o with o, but in certain words with a, and in these words again de Saussure found full-grade, non-ablauting o. A fourth reason was later supplied by Zubaty,2 who held that in Lithuanian full-grade 5 appears as uo while original 5 in ablaut relation with e or j appears as o. In 1900 Holger Pedersen3 showed that there is no correlation between the four lines of assumed evidence. Indo-Iranian frequently has a in an open syllable beside Graeco-Italic o in ablaut with e (e.g. Skt. katards:Gk. w6repos). Armenian a sometimes corresponds to o in ablaut with e (e.g. asr 'fleece' : Gk. I~bos 'fleece', rcKw 'comb'). Lithuanian uo sometimes appears in the e-series (e.g. Lith. suiodiiai, OIcel., OE sBt 'soot' :IE sed'sit'). Armenian a never corresponds with Indo-Iranian a in an open syllable when this represents Indo-European o. Lithuanian uo sometimes appears alongside of Armenian o (e.g. Lith. Uiodiiu 'smell' :Arm. hot 'odor'). There remains, therefore, only the fact that the relatively few languages that distinguish o