2019/12/02 by Tijmen Pronk · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Linguistics and language evolution #Linguistics and Cultural Studies #Lexicography and Language Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1163/22125892-00701002
openalex publication_date 2019/12/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
Abstract There are around sixty Indo-European roots that are (sometimes) reconstructed with a vowel * a in the scholarly literature that otherwise fully embraces the laryngeal theory. This number is extremely low compared to the number of morphemes in which the vowels that are traditionally reconstructed as * e and * o are found. This marginal status of the vowel * a is typologically odd and has led some scholars to deny the existence of a vowel * a in Proto-Indo-European or in a precursor of Proto-Indo-European. This paper discusses the comparative evidence for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European * a . It concludes that there is insufficient evidence for the reconstruction of * a for any stage of the proto-language.