Re: Odp: Odp: Ruki Rule

Yes, I see your point & agree it's an exceptional combination of sounds, but do we now exactly how r-u-k-i were pronounced in PIE? (did all k's undergo the RUKI rule? are there exceptions in Balto-Slavic or Aryan to the RUKI rule? Aryan=Indo-Iranian?) My problem is: aren't there linguistic innovations common to Greek and Aryan but not Balto-Slavic, though Greek does not have the RUKI rule?   --Marc

Piotr: There is no reason to suppose that there was anything unusual about the PIE pronunciation of the sounds thus reconstructed. Of course, fine details may prove unreconstructible. We are reasonably certain, for instance, that *u was a high back vowel with some degree of lip rounding. Whether it was strongly of slightly rounded cannot be known, but who cares, as long as we know the rounding was its distinctive feature? Sometimes there is uncertainty over more serious things, like the nature of the three-way contrast traditionally symbolised thus: *t vs. *d vs. *dh. Here the phonetic reality is differently reconstructed by different linguists and no consensus has been reached yet. For example, one version of the so-called glottalic hypothesis claims that the three series should be represented as respectively *t vs.*t'  vs.*d, the second symbol standing for an ejective (glottalised) stop. Nobody questions the fact that the three sounds were different or that they were "coronal", that is, pronounced with the tip or the blade of the tongue against the upper teeth and/or the upper gum. We can't know everything, but at least we keep trying to learn as much as possible.

 

But to return. Yes, all *ks combinations undergo the RUKI law. Of course, the rule is not infallible. There are certain exceptions, irregularities due to analogical levelling and cases of different treatment in the language groups in question (Baltic shows the greatest number of such deviations, same as in the case of the satem palatals) -- the usual quota, I'd say, and not very disturbing.

 

There are linguistic features common to Greek and Aryan (yes, Aryan = Indo-Iranian) but not found in Baltic or Slavic; these are mostly morphological, e.g. the use of the so-called augment (past-tense prefix) *e with the aorist of verbs (e.g. *e bheret 'he took up', or the regular use of the reduplicated perfect (like *ghwe-ghwon-e for 'he has struck'), or the use of *me: as a negative particle in sentences expressing prohibition. Most of them, however, are considered to be shared archaisms inherited from PIE, not innovations, and as such can't testify to a close genetic relatedness of Greek and Aryan. On the other hand, the absence of those features from both Baltic and Slavic IS an innovation (like the absence of mammalian hair in whales) and supports the hypothesis of their special relationship.

 

(A lot of mammalian groups have independently lost their fur: whales, seacows, elephants, humans, babirusas... --Marc)

 

I can't think of any phonological peculiarities unique to Greek and Aryan. Grassmann's Law operates in both groups but in a different way in each -- it is demonstrably a parallel, rather than common, innovation. Traces of a similar change can also be seen in Tocharian, which otherwise looks like a very distant cousin. The vocalisation of syllabic nasals to a is too trivial to be of much value (they end up as a in some Slavic languages as well). The change *s > *x > *h (in Greek and Iranian, but also e.g. in Brythonic Celtic) is again a rather common process. As it doesn't affect Indic, it can't be Proto-Aryan anyway.