2025/01/29 by Gašper Beguš · 2 voices
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Linguistics and Cultural Studies #Linguistics and language evolution #Phonetics and Phonology Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/1467-968x.12311
openalex publication_date 2025/01/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract The development of voiced sibilants is a long‐standing puzzle in Indo‐Iranian historical phonology. In Vedic, all voiced sibilants are lost from the system, but the details of this loss are complex and subject to debate. The most intriguing development concerns the word‐final ‐ aḥ to ‐ o in sandhi. This paper presents a new account of the development of voiced sibilants from the Proto‐Indo‐Iranian period to Vedic with a special emphasis on Iranian comparative data. I propose a new explanation for the peculiar development of word‐final voiced fricatives and motivate the new proposal with a phonetic explanation. I argue that * ‐s lenited and voiced to *‐ ɦ word‐finally which colours the preceding short vowel ă to * ɔ ( o after lengthening). Word‐internally, no debuccalisation occurs. Voiced dental fricative * z colours the preceding a ‐vowel to * ε ( e after lengthening). The voiced retroflex fricative * ẓ , on the contrary, is central enough to cause no colouring. Voiced fricatives thus colour the preceding vowels with respect to their place of articulation. Dental fricatives cause fronting, while breathiness causes backing, which is supported by typological data. This proposal explains several unusual aspects of Vedic and Avestan data.