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Historical Linguistics 2017: Selected papers from the 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, San Antonio, Texas, 31 July – 4 August 2017
Edited by Bridget Drinka
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 350] 2020
► pp. 49–64

Parallel syncretism in early Indo-European

Oblique-oblique case mergers are now known to be exceedingly rare outside Indo-European, yet very common within it (Baerman, Brown, and Corbett, 2001, 2005). Explanations of these mergers given after 2001 now need to include factors that are, individually or collectively, unique to Indo-European. In this paper, a set of such Indo-European specific factors is proposed, mainly phonological and prosodic, and its implications explored, particularly for the Germanic, Italic and Celtic families. We begin with Proto-Indo-European accent and ablaut morphology and PIE’s existing syncretism of the ablative case. Timelines and examples in Proto-Germanic help flesh out the explanation.

Keywords: PIE, stress, syncretism, case mergers, ablaut, historical phonology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.How the core and oblique cases became distinct in early IE
    • 2.1How the core and oblique stems became more phonologically distinct
  • 3.Other proposed influences leading to oblique-oblique mergers
    • 3.1Syntactic and semantic grouping
    • 3.2Existing syncretism of the ablative
  • 4.Examples of case mergers
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 9 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.350.03rap
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