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Proto-Indo-European accent refers to the theoretical accentual (stress) system of the hypotheticalProto-Indo-European language.
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is usuallyreconstructed as having a "pitch accent" system where one syllable of each phonological word had a higher pitch than the other syllables.[1] The placement of the Proto-Indo-European accent was not predictable from a word's phonological form.[2]
PIE accent wasfree, meaning it could stand on any syllable in a word, a feature that is preserved in theVedic Sanskrit accent system[3] (the laterClassical Sanskrit had a predictable accent):
In many descendants, the original free accent system was replaced with a system ofbound accent. Free accent is preserved in Vedic Sanskrit (of modern Indo-Iranian languages, according to some[who?] andPashto), Hellenic, Balto-Slavic and Anatolian. InProto-Germanic, free accent was retained long enough forVerner's Law to be dependent on it, but later, stress was shifted to the first syllable of the word.
In inflected words, such as nouns and verbs, the accent could either remain on the same syllable, or change position between different inflected forms. Differentparadigms of accentuation are associated with particular morphological formations.
Words where the accent remains on the same syllable are said to havefixed accent. This includes thematic nouns (nouns whose inflected stem ends in athematic vowel), and also a minority of athematic nouns.[4] Nouns with fixed accent are divided intobarytones if they are accented on the first syllable andoxytones if they are accented on the last syllable:
Words where the position of the accent changes throughout the inflectional paradigm are said to havemobile accent. This category includes most athematic nouns.[4] This quality persisted inVedic Sanskrit andAncient Greek, as in the declension of the nouns descended from PIE*pṓds 'foot, step':
or in the conjugation of athematic verbs (compare Sanskrit root present first-person sg.émi, first-person pluralimás).
Some PIE lexical categories could be unaccented (clitics).[5] These are chieflyparticles (PIE*-kʷe 'and' > Vedic-ca, Latinque, Ancient Greekτε) and some forms ofpronouns (PIE*moy 'to me' > Vedicme).
Vedic Sanskrit evidence also indicates that theProto-Indo-European verb could be unaccented in some syntactical conditions, such as in finite position in the main clause (but not sentence-initially, where verbs would bear whatever accent they would have borne in subordinate clauses). The same is true ofvocatives, which would be deaccented unless they appeared sentence-initially.
Theaccent system ofVedic Sanskrit seems to reflect the position of the original PIE accent fairly faithfully.[5]Avestan manuscripts do not have written accent, but we know indirectly that at some period the free PIE accent was preserved (e.g. Avestan *r is devoiced yielding-hr- before voiceless stops and after the accent — if the accent was not on the preceding syllable, *r is not devoiced[a]).
Ancient Greek also preserves the free PIE accent in its nouns (seeAncient Greek accent), but with limitations that prevent the accent from being positioned farther than the third syllable from the end (next from the end if the last vowel was long). However, Greek is almost completely worthless for reconstructing the PIE accent in verbs, because (other than in a few cases) it is consistently positioned as close to the start as the rules allow.
Proto-Germanic initially preserved the PIE free accent,[according to whom?] with some innovations. In the last stage of Proto-Germanic, the accent was replaced by a stress accent on the first syllable of the word, but prior to that it left its traces in the operation ofVerner's law.
Anatolian languages show traces of the old PIE accent in the lengthening of the formerly accented syllable. Compare:
SomeBalto-Slavic languages also retain traces of the free PIE accent. For the reconstruction of the Proto-Balto-Slavic accent, the most important evidence comes fromLithuanian, fromLatvian (traditionally Lithuanian is thought as more relevant, but that role is being increasingly being taken over by Latvian[6]), and from some Slavic languages, especially WesternSouth Slavic languages and their archaic dialects. The Balto-Slavic accent is continued in theProto-Slavic accent. Accentual alternations in inflectional paradigms (both verbal and nominal) are also retained in Balto-Slavic. It used to be held[by whom?] that Balto-Slavic has an innovative accentual system, but nowadays, according to some researchers,[who?] Balto-Slavic is taking a pivotal role in the reconstruction of the PIE accent (see below).[citation needed]
Indirect traces of the PIE accent are said[by whom?] to be reflected in the development of certain sounds[which?] in various branches.[vague] For the most part, however, these are of limited, if any, utility in reconstructing the PIE accent.[according to whom?][citation needed]
According to the traditional doctrine[whose?], the following can be said of the PIE accentual system:
PerRinge (2006), these patterns can be explained as resulting from a system where both stems and endings can potentially bear an underlying accent. In a word with multiple underlying accents, the leftmost underlying accent is realized as the surface accent. In a word with no underlying accent, the leftmost syllable receives the surface accent.[5]
Traditionally the PIE accent has been reconstructed in a straightforward way, by the comparison of Vedic, Ancient Greek and Germanic; e.g. PIE*ph₂tḗr 'father' from Sanskritpitā́, Ancient Greekπατήρ, Gothicfadar. When the position of the accent matched in these languages, that was the accent reconstructed for "PIE proper". It was taken for granted that the Vedic accent was the most archaic and the evidence of Vedic could be used to resolve all the potentially problematic cases.
It was shown, however, byVladislav Illich-Svitych in 1963 that the Balto-Slavic accent does not match the presupposed PIE accent reconstructed on the basis of Vedic and Ancient Greek — the Greek-Vedic barytones correspond to Balto-Slavicfixed paradigms (or barytone, or1 accent paradigm), and Greek-Vedic oxytones correspond to Balto-Slavicmobile paradigms (or2 accent paradigm, with orthotonic word-forms and forms-enclinomena).[7] Moreover, in about a quarter of all cognate Vedic and Ancient Greek etymons accents do not match at all;[7] e.g.
In 1973 (an early version of the hypothesis was presented in 1962),[8] the Moscow accentological school, headed by linguistsVladimir Dybo andSergei Nikolaev, reconstructed the PIE accentual system as a system of two tones orvalences: + (dominant) and − (recessive).[9][10][11] Proto-Indo-European would thus not have, as is usually reconstructed, a system of free accent such as is found in Vedic, but instead every morpheme would be inherently dominant or recessive, and the position of the accent would be later determined in various ways in the various daughter languages (depending on the combinations of (+) and (−) morphemes), so that Vedic would certainlynot be the most archaic language. Many correspondences among IE languages, as well as certain phenomena in individual daughters dependent on PIE tones, should corroborate this interpretation.[b]
Dybo lists several shortcomings in the traditional approach to the reconstruction of PIE accent.[c] Amongst others, incorrect belief in the direct connection between the PIE accent andablaut, which in fact does not explain the position of PIE accent at all. Usually, for example, it is thought that zero-grade should be unaccented, but that is evidently not valid for PIE (e.g.*wĺ̥kʷos 'wolf',*septḿ̥ 'seven' etc.) according to the traditional reconstruction. Furthermore, Dybo claims that there is no phonological, semantic or morphological reason whatsoever for the classification of certain word to a certain accentual type, i.e. the traditional model cannot explain why Vedicvṛ́kas 'wolf' is barytone and Vedicdevás 'deity' is oxytone. According to Dybo, such discrepancies can only be explained by presupposing lexical tone in PIE.
