The Inflectional Accent in Indo-European

Abstract

The following is a historical and comparative study of the accentual alternations that go with inflection in the Indo-European languages which retain the old 'free' accent.l I will use the term 'inflection' in a narrow sense, referring to person and number in the arerb, to case and number in the noun. A thorough synchronic analysis of Sanskrit, Greek, or Lithuanian accentuation, even if limited in this way to inflectional processes, would be a major undertaking in itself. However, we do not have to wait for this work to be completed before starting our reconstruction. The outlines of the synchronic systems can be made sufficiently clear so that basic conclusions can be drawn about the proto-system that underlies them. My procedure will be to sketch a synchronic analysis of the inflectional accent of the three branches of IE that preserves the old accentual mobility, and in the process to draw whatever historical conclusions are possible. §1 provides a sketch of the classical Greek accent system, with special emphasis on the alternation between acute and circumflex in the declension. §2 gives an analysis of Sanskrit accentuation, and its complex interrelationship with ablaut and other segmental processes. §3 then outlines how the Balto-Slanc accent systems can be derived from the same system that underlies Greek and Sanskrit. §4 deals with the phonetic realization of accent, which turns out to have interesting systematic consequences, but has so far been unjustly neglected by comparativists. The IE accent systems show some pervasive systematic properties, explanation of which is a basic requirement for any theory of IE accentuation: (i) There is a definite relationship between accentual mobility ('free' accent) and the existence of contour accents ('intonation', i.e. the contrast between acute and circumflex accent). As Table 1 shows, distinctiare contour accents