Ruki Rule

----- Original Message -----

From: Marc Verhaegen

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 1999 9:24 PM

Subject: [cybalist] Re: Odp: Odp: Cowboys on Horseback

It would take some explaining, but it is quite obvious to me that the nature of Balto-Slavic/Aryan similarities guarantees their genetic character (e.g. common phonological developments like the so-called RUKI rule), while the similarities between Germanic and Balto-Slavic (mostly lexical, in a few cases morphological) are more likely to be due to areal convergence. Germanic is not CLOSELY related to Italo-Celtic. Under my scenario, the two groups would have had about 4000 years of independent development behind them at the time of their first historical attestation.

 

MV: what is the RUKI rule?

 

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It is the pronunciation of inherited *s as a postalveolar fricative [š] after the sounds [r], [u/w], [k] and [i/y] (hence the acronymic name given to it by the ancient Sanskrit grammarians). In Slavic the postalveolar sound changed to [x] (except when palatalised). The RUKI environment is more or less the same in Baltic, Slavic and Aryan; it so unusual that it can hardly have resulted from parallel environment.

 

Piotr