Glottalic theory

The glottalic theory holds that Proto-Indo-European had ejective stops, "IPA|p’ IPA|t’ IPA|k’," but not the murmured ones, "IPA|bʱ dʱ gʱ," of traditional Proto-Indo-European reconstructions.

A forerunner of the theory was proposed by the Danish linguist Holger Pedersen, but did not involve glottalized sounds. While early linguists such as André Martinet and Morris Swadesh had seen the potential of substituting glottalic sounds for the supposed plain voiced stops of Proto-Indo-European, the proposal remained speculative until substantial evidence for it was simultaneously but independently published in 1973 by Paul Hopper of the United States in the journal "Glossa" and by Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov of the Soviet Union in the journal "Phonetica".

Traditional reconstruction

The traditional reconstruction of Indo-European includes the following stop consonants:

(Here the traditional palatalized "vs." plain velar dichotomy is treated as a velar-uvular contrast, as posited by Hopper 1981. This is not required for the glottalic theory, and may have been allophonic at an early stage in the proto-language.)

Further arguments

According to its proponents, the glottalic theory neatly resolves a number of problems that it was not designed to solve, in effect giving it some empirical support. For example, in both Latin (Lachmann's law) and Balto-Slavic (Winter's law), vowels are lengthened before a "voiced" consonant. This had always been somewhat puzzling. It is the same behaviour that vowels exhibit before Proto-Indo-European laryngeals, which are assumed to have included a glottal stop. It may be that the glottalic consonants were preglottalized, or that they were ejectives that became preglottalized in Italic and Balto-Slavic before losing their glottalization and becoming voiced. It is very common in the world's languages for glottal stops to drop and lengthen preceding vowels. In Quileute, for example, the sequences IPA|VC’V, IPA|VʔC’V, and IPA|VːC’V, as found for example in "ak’a ~ a’k’a ~ āk’a," are allophones in free variation.

However, claiming that glottalic stops were responsible for intonational effects within the post-PIE history of Balto-Slavic and Italic is "ipso facto" to maintain that the change of */p’/, */t’/, */k’/ to */b/, */d/, */g/ occurred "independently" in each IE branch "after" their separation from PIE matrix.. Taking these as identical but independent innovations would according to traditional models of sound change be an astoundishing coincidence, which most linguists would find very hard to believe.

Current status

Having enjoyed a period of rather wide acceptance in the 1980s, the glottalic theory has waned again. Some long-time supporters, like Theo Vennemann, have recently changed their mind (e.g. Vennemann 2006). The most recent publication supporting the glottalic theory is Bomhard (2007) in a discussion of the controversial Proto-Nostratic hypothesis.

ources

* Robert S. P. Beekes, "Comparative Indo-European Linguistics". John Benjamins, 1995.
* Allan R. Bomhard, "Reconstructing Proto-Nostratic: Comparative Morphology, Phonology, and Vocabulary". Charleston: Signum, 2007.
* Anthony Fox, "Linguistic Reconstruction". Oxford University Press, 1995.
* Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and Vjacheslav V. Ivanov, "Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans", translated by Johanna Nichols, 2 volumes. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995.
* Paul J. Hopper, "Glottalized and murmured occlusives in Indo-European." "Glossa" 7:2:1973, 141-166.
* Theo Vennemann, "Grimm’s Law and loanwords". "Transactions of the Philological Society" 104:2:2006, 129-166.