Festlig Faglig Fredag (iii)

The velars in nominal derivational morphology – and their possible relation with laryngal hardening.

Can one rely on a morpheme that is phonetically conditioned? That is the focal point of this third edition of Festive Professional Friday, which will be held on Nov. 22^nd at 16¹⁵ by Simon Poulsen based on his thesis:

A strange feature in the Proto-Indo-European phonem system is the sheer amount of velars. Traditionally we reconstruct nine phonemes, which otherwise occurs extremely rarely in the world’s languages, and the distribution of what is usually common and what is rare, is the complete opposite for PIE. If the system really was so, you would expect the phonemes to occur in all parts of the language – but the velars only show up in roots and are hence missing in the derivational and inflectional systems. 
However, there is a group of athematic derivational suffixes, which could reflect a *k, and it is those we here will be examining. They namely appear primarily in certain phonetic environments (only after long vowel and *a), but are missing where other athematic suffixes most often occur (after *e and *o). This could indicate that they are native to stems in *h₂ and therefore is phonetically conditioned and thus shouldn't be reconstructed as a *k-suffix after all.

Sign up for the event at our facebook page
- Everybody is welcome!

Festlig Faglig Fredag (Festive Aacademic Friday) is a concept where you can give a talk in an informal environment, that being e.g. about a paper you wrote, an article you're working on, or as a rehearsel for a conference talk. Afterwards there will be time for socialising and maybe a little something to drink. It takes place in the Indo-European handbook library (room 22.5.04)

If you are interested in giving a talk, contact Birgit in room 22.5.10 or at bao@hum.ku.dk