On Indo-European tones, accentuation and ablaut

Abstract

Several Indo-European branches point to the existence of (possibly subphonemic) tones in Proto-Indo-European. These tones can be connected to Indo-European root-structure and are clearly connected with the Indo-European place of the accent and Indo-European ablaut. Those cases in which root-structure, accentuation and ablaut do not agree provide evidence about the rise of the ablaut system. The paper first gives an overview of the known evidence for the tones in Sanskrit, Greek and Slavic and their relation to Indo-European root-structure. This is followed by a discussion of the relation between the tonal characteristics of Proto-Indo-European and its accentuation and ablaut. The article finally explores how Indo-European ablaut may have arisen and how this could explain some irregularities of Indo-European ablaut (e.g. the o-grade of proterodynamic nouns like Greek δόρυ ‘wood’ and γόνυ ‘knee’) and some of its derivational patterns (e.g., Greek μένος ‘mind’ next to -μενής).