obligatory contour principle effects in indo-european phonology: statistical evidence and the...

Stephanie W. Jamison, H. Craig Melchert, and Brent Vine (eds.). 2015.

Proceedings of the 26th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Bremen: Hempen. ###–###.

Obligatory Contour Principle Effects in Indo-European Phonology: Statistical Evidence

and the Morphology-Phonology Interface* RYAN SANDELL

University of California, Los Angeles

1. OCP-SYLLABLE (OCP-σ) and “long-vowel” preterites

As a crucial ingredient in his analysis of Attic reduplication (i.e., the variety of

reduplication seen in the formation of Greek perfects to some vowel-initial roots;

see example (2) below), Zukoff (2014) has recently proposed the existence of a

high-ranking phonological constraint, OCP-SYLLABLE (OCP-σ), active at least in

the grammar of Proto-Greek. Zukoff’s constraint is a particular extension of the

OBLIGATORY CONTOUR PRINCIPLE, which penalizes the adjacency of phonologi-

cally similar segments.1 OCP-SYLLABLE specifically forbids identical segments

within the same syllable; Zukoff (p.267) defines the constraint as follows:

(1) OCP-SYLLABLE (OCP-σ)

Assign one violation mark * for every syllable that contains two identical

segments (= *[CiVCi]σ ).

The role of this constraint emerges clearly in the derivation of Proto-Greek

1.sg.perf.mid.ind *[h2ə.géh2.ger.mai] (> Att.-Ion. ἀγήγερμαι to ἀγείρω ‘gather’):

* I wish to thank here audiences of the UCLA Indo-European Graduate Seminar and the 26th

Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference for comments on related presentations. Discussion

with Andrew Byrd, Tony Yates, and Sam Zukoff on aspects of this material has been very

helpful. All errors of fact and judgment are my own.

1 For a thorough general discussion and validation of the OCP, see McCarthy 1986; the notion

of the principle itself, in work on lexical tone, goes back at least to Leben 1973. Based on

McCarthy’s discussion, I formulate the OCP as follows:

OBLIGATORY CONTOUR PRINCIPLE (OCP)

At the X level, where X refers to a prosodic tier or phonological tier in feature geometry

(e.g., vocalic, consonantal, place, laryngeal, melodic), adjacent identical elements are

prohibited.

Discussion below will make clear that the OCP is neither wholly inviolable, nor strictly local

—evidence exists for progressively weaker OCP effects at increasingly greater distances be-

tween the relevant elements.

Ryan Sandell 2

(2)

*σ[

HC

OC

P-σ

DE

P-V

-IO

AL

IGN

RO

OT-L

RED(e)-h2ger-mai

a. h2e.h2ger.mai *! **

b. h2eh2.ger.mai *! **

c. ☞ h2ə.geh2.ger.mai * ****

d. h2ə.ge.h2ger.mai *! * ****

The optimal candidate, c., satisfies both higher-ranked OCP-σ and a constraint

against laryngeal + consonant onsets *σ[HC, at the cost of inserting an anaptyctic

vowel [ə] (violating DEP-V-IO) and incurring multiple violations against a con-

straint that prefers to align the left edge of the input root with the left edge of the

output prosodic word (ALIGNROOT-L). Losing candidates a. and d., on the other

hand, both contain illict [HC-] onsets, while candidate b. contains a syllable

[h2eh2]σ , which is excluded by its violation of OCP-σ. Attested ἀγήγερμαι then

follows directly from the winner *[h2ə.géh2.ger.mai], upon the loss of the *[h2]

segments.

Zukoff (pp.274–5) further suggests that OCP-σ or a similar constraint may be

responsible for Vedic perfect weak stems of the form C1eC2- (e.g., 3.pl. bhejúr to

√bhaj ‘apportion’; see Sandell 2015:Ch.8 for further discussion of such forms),

the preterite plural of Classes IV and V of Germanic strong verbs (e.g., Goth.

1.pl. gebum ‘we gave’), and Old Irish long-vowel preterites (e.g., 3.pl. génair ‘they were born’); easily added to this list of possible connections could be Latin

perfects such as 1.pl.act. lēgimus ‘we gathered’. These forms could then reflect

virtual “underlyingly reduplicated” forms */g̑ʰe-gʰbʰ-/, */le-lg̑-/, etc., which would produce surface forms with long vowels, *[g̑(ʰ)ēbʰ-], *[lēg̑-], etc., with de-

letion and compensatory lengthening of the root’s initial consonant.2 Perhaps

OCP-σ and its high ranking are reconstructable for PIE.

2 The connection of the Vedic C1eC2- forms clearly cannot be direct, in the sense that a PIE

surface *[ē], which could give Goth. e, Lat. ē, and OIr. é as cited here, cannot give Ved. e. The

lexicalized Vedic perfect participles sāhvā́m̐s- ‘conqueror’ and dāśvā́m̐s- ‘worshipper’, con-

taining an otherwise difficult-to-explain ā, might reflect PIE *[sēg̑ʰu̯ós-] and *[dēk ̑ u̯ós-] ← */se-sg̑-u̯os-/ and */de-dk ̑ -u̯os-/.

Obligatory Contour Principle Effects in Indo-European Phonology 3

The notion that these preterite formations across the IE family are directly

connected in some fashion is hardly novel. Streitberg (1900:292) insists upon the

linkage of all the above material; Prokosch (1938:161–3) gives the idea a thor-

ough hearing. The assumption in this older literature appears to be that perfect

weak stems in PIE showed transparent reduplication, thus *[g(ʰ)eg(ʰ)bʰ-], *[lelg̑-],

etc., but, across many languages, independently lost the root-initial consonant,

with compensatory lengthening. More recently, Schumacher (2005:602) has for-

mulated a synchronic rule of PIE (the “bigētun-Rule”), which he writes as

*T1eT1T2- → *T1ēT2- and restricts to the formation of perfect weak stems.3 Inso-

far as Zukoff’s comparanda all involve perfect weak stems, his OCP-σ and

Schumacher’s bigētun-Rule make very similar, perhaps identical, predictions.

Jasanoff (2012), on the other hand, rejects any possible appurtenance of the Ve-

dic material, and proposes that the other Indo-European “long-vowel” preterites

instead reflect the strong stem of imperfects to “Narten” presents (cf. Narten

1968), in which a long vowel would have been morphologically specified in

some fashion.4

We thus have at hand four reasonably distinct hypotheses that attempt to ac-

count for Indo-European “long-vowel” preterites:

1. they reflect transparently reduplicated forms in PIE, and develop long

vowels in the daughter languages (Streitberg).

2. they reflect a morphophonological rule applied to perfect weak stems of a

particular phonological shape (Schumacher).

3. they result from a repair in reduplicated formations to satisfy a strong

phonological constraint (Zukoff).

4. they are independent of any reduplicated formation, and are morphologi-

cally specified for showing a surface long vowel (Jasanoff).

Accounts 1.–3. all agree that the “long-vowel” preterites, including Vedic

perfect weak stems, are effectively the weak stems of reduplicated perfects to

certain roots; accounts 2.–4. agree that those long vowels were present in surface

3 Schumacher (2005:604) also suggests that, similarly, the Vedic desideratives śīkṣa- (to √sah

‘conquer’) and dīkṣa- (to √daś ‘worship’) might show the exact same process. Given the ab-

sence of expected retroflex ḍ, I am inclined to add Ved. pres. sī́dati ‘sits’ (not ×sīḍati < PIIr.

*[siždati]) here as well; Av. ni-šhiδaiti similarly lacks an expected ž, though Gk. ἵζω would

necessarily reflect some difference in realization of */si-sd-o-/, such that a fatal violation of

OCP-σ would not be incurred.

4 On the notions “Narten formations” and “Narten roots,” see now Melchert 2014.

Ryan Sandell 4

forms, though 4. would assign the long vowel to the underlying representation.

Among these options, I see Zukoff’s approach (3.) as the most promising. Ac-

count 1. presumes a widespread degree of independent and parallel phonetic

and/or phonological change; 4. attributes the forms to morphology outright, de-

spite the fact that they tend to be found among roots of the shape /TeT-/ or /ReT-

/, and excludes a workable connection with the Vedic perfect (cf. Sandell

2015:Ch.8). In contrast to 2., 3. rests on a general and well-understood phonolog-

ical principle, and has potentially greater predictive power.

The principal objective of this paper is now to assess the evidence for and

domain of a constraint like OCP-σ in the oldest Indo-European daughter lan-

guages and the grammar of Proto-Indo-European. Section 2 first reviews the need

for an OCP constraint to account for some uncontroversial facts of Indo-Euro-

pean phonology. I then turn in §3 to statistical evidence from the Indo-European

root as a source of data on Indo-European phonotactics; this data suggests that a

constraint yet broader and more powerful than Zukoff’s constraint given in (1)

may be justified. I then adduce typological and experimental evidence in §4 to

argue that the distributional facts discussed in §3 are not merely inert historical

artifacts reflecting channel bias, but plausibly point to learnable constraints. I fi-

nally consider under §5 why the evidence for OCP-σ would appear to be limited

to reduplicated formations.

2. Uncontroversial OCP effects in Indo-European phonology

In its least restrictive form, an OCP constraint may prohibit the direct adjacency

of segments that are featurally identical. This basic variety of the OCP prohibits

geminate consonants or long vowels that do not result from the spreading of a

single segment’s features over multiple prosodic nodes (cf. McCarthy 1986:209–

10).5 Evidence for a ban on adjacent identical consonants in the grammar of PIE

is well-known. Mayrhofer (1986 [2012]:110–1; 120–1) mentions the “double

dental” rule, which shows epenthesis of an [s] between two underlying dental

segments (e.g., */h1ed-ti/ → *[h1ét.sti] > Hitt. [ḗtstsi]), and simplification of two

adjacent /s/’s (e.g., */h1es-si/ ‘you are’ → *[h1é.si] > Skt. ási). Byrd (2010:16–22;

128–9 and 2015:2.1.1) rightly sees these processes as repairs to avoid the adja-

5 To take a simple example, if a lexeme consists of a consonantal tier with two segments, say,

/ft/, a vocalic tier with one segment, say, /i/, and but five prosodic slots /CVCCV/, and permits

rightward spreading of features, then this hypothetical lexeme could surface as [fitti]. Here, the

geminate [t] is projected from the single underlying /t/, linked to two /C/ nodes.


cency of identical consonants in the surface linear string, driven by a simple OCP

constraint.

There remain several questions about the domain and conditioning of even

this basic OCP effect, however. For one, as Byrd (loc. cit.) notes, good evidence

exists for reconstructable Lallwörter with geminate consonants (e.g., *[át.ta]

‘daddy’, *[ák.ka] ‘mommy’). The parallel existence of forms like *[át.ta] but re-

pairs to underlying sequences like */h1es-si/ admits of numerous plausible expla-

nations. Byrd correctly notes that all of the instances of geminate segments occur

internal to morphological simplexes, whereas consonant deletion and “double

dental” effects apply in morphologically complex contexts. The absence of gemi-

nate simplification in the derivation */atta/ → *[át.ta] might then be described as

a straightforward instance of non-derived environment blocking (NDEB; cf.

Kiparsky 1973).6

To derive *[h1é.si], in turn, would require a restriction on identical adjacent

segments on the consonantal tier. Because the 2.sg.pres. inflectional morpheme

/-si/ lexically specifies a link to a C node, the segment and its node must be delet-

ed to satisfy the relevant OCP constraint.

(3)

The further issue is then to define exactly what counts as “adjacency.” Clear-

ly, two C nodes linked to two independent but featurally identical segments (as in

(3)) cannot be realized without repair. However, two featurally identical conso-

nants certainly do occur when separated by a vowel, even internal to the same

syllable. Consider 3.pl.pres.act.ind. *[gʷʰnén.ti] ‘they beat’ (> Ved. ghnánti, Hitt.

[kʷnánzi]), the 3.sg.pres.mid.ind. *[k̑é.i̯oi̯] ‘he lies’ (Ved. śáye), the acc.sg. to the

secondary comparative *[-te.mom], and perhaps *[mēms-] ‘meat’;7 at minimum,

these forms provide evidence for syllables of the shape *[nen]σ, *[i̯oi̯]σ, and

*[mom]σ, and further similar examples could easily be adduced.8 Such cases

6 Numerous approaches to NDEB in Optimality Theory could handle the present case; for an

overview, see Inkelas 2000.

7 See discussion in Wodtko et al. 2008:s.v. *me(m)s-. 8 However, virtually all examples of two identical segments that would regularly have been

parsed into a single syllable, with the exception of 3.pl. /-ent(i)/, involve a consonant at the

Ryan Sandell 6

would evidently violate OCP-σ as formulated in (1), or a phonotactic constraint

that looks only at segments linearly along the consonantal tier, employing the

type of representations in (3). Given the evidence for such violations of OCP-σ at

the post-lexical level of Indo-European phonology (in terms of Lexical Phonolo-

gy and Morphology; cf. Kiparsky 1982 and 2010), the only phonological repre-

sentation restricted by the OCP that unquestionably necessitates repair by

deletion or epenthesis is of the form in (4), given as a markedness constraint:

(4)

Nevertheless, the fact that OCP-σ (vel sim.) does not constrain surface repre-

sentations across the board in PIE does not necessarily make it invalid. Instead, I

believe that we can muster evidence to demonstrate a more restricted domain of

application.

3. Indo-European root structure constraints and OCP-σ: co-occurrence statistics

Easily the most ready source of data for the study of possible phonotactic and

consonantal co-occurrence restrictions in Indo-European comes from reconstruct-

ed roots. That the structure of licit roots reconstructable for Indo-European was

not entirely free is well known (cf. Weiss 2011:44–5, Fortson 2010:78); both an-

ecdotal observations on (explicitly given at least as early as Benveniste 1935:171)

and statistical analyses (attempted at least as early as Jucquois 1966) relating to

such “root-structure constraints” have existed for some time. The root-structure

constraint most immediately relevant to the present question is stated by Benven-

iste (1935:171; cf. also Ringe 1998:174–6) as follows: “… sont exclues … les

racines à consonnes pareilles (pep-, mem-).” Anecdotally speaking, it is the case

that reconstructable roots of the shape */CieCi/ are very uncommon; the reverse

index of roots in Rix et al. 2001 (LIV2) lists but one, */ses-/ ‘sleep’.9 Similarly, I

right edge of the word. Given the evidence for the particular treatment of consonants at the

right edge of the word in PIE (they were extrametrical, and were probably parsed into an ap-

pendix to the prosodic word rather than the final syllable; cf. Byrd 2010:86–100 and Sandell

and Byrd 2014), perhaps sequences of *[-CiVCi#] would not count towards violations of

OCP-σ.

9 The form of this root is sometimes attributed to onomatopoeia or a deformation of another root

meaning ‘sleep’, such as */su̯ep-/ or */seu̯p-/. The latter idea is sensibly understood as an effect


find but one root of the form */sCieCi/, */skek-/ ‘move quickly’. Two questions

confront such observations. First, is the rarity of such root shapes unlikely to be

due to chance? Then, if so, does that rarity have any significance for the phono-

logical grammar of a PIE speaker? I here seek to address the first question; I re-

turn to the second question under §4.

3.1. Data preparation

For the evaluation of IE root phonotactics, I use the full set of LIV2 roots, despite

ambiguities of reconstruction therein; likewise, although the reconstructability of

many roots for High Node Indo-European is doubtful, most seem to be plausible

representatives of the kind of lexical roots that existed in PIE.10 I input the data to

a plain text file, following formatting conventions used for the UCLA Phonotac-

tic Learner (Hayes and Wilson 2008). All searches for patterns and calculations

were carried out using regular expressions and other functions built into the R

statistical computing environment (http://www.r-project.org/); my data and code

are available at https://github.com/rpsandell/WeCIEC26.

3.2. Observed versus Expected (O/E) ratios

The most recent analyses of Indo-European root structure by Cooper (2009 and

2011) evaluate possible segmental co-occurrence restrictions within roots by way

of Observed/Expected (O/E) ratios.11 Based on earlier work by Pierrehumbert

(1993) and Frisch et al. (2004) on co-occurrence restrictions in Arabic verbal

roots (see further §4), Cooper follows the assumption that an O/E ratio of less

of child phonology, in which consonant harmony is very common, in contrast to its rarity in

adult phonologies (cf. Hansson 2001:166 and references therein).

10 Cooper (2009) states that Rix et al. 2001 contains 1195 roots; based on the reverse index,

which I have cross-checked three times, I count only 1181 roots; it seems possible that the re-

verse index is missing a small number of items included in the full lexicon.

11 Here, O is the actual number of occurrences of some pattern, e.g., /tVt/. E, the expected num-

ber of occurrences of that pattern, is calculated as the product of the number of occurrences of

the first variable (/tV-/) and the number of occurrences of the second variable (/-Vt/), divided

by the total number of roots. In the 1181 roots in my data, /tV-/ occurs 81× and /-Vt/ occurs

26×, so E = (81× 26) ÷ 1181 = 1.783235. /tVt/ itself occurs once (in */tetk ̑ -/), so the O/E is

1/1.783235 = 0.561. /tVt/ is therefore less frequent in the data than would be expected, given

the frequencies of /tV-/ and /-Vt/. The minimum O/E is 0, when a sequence is unattested; O/E

cannot be calculated where any one of the components is unattested, because the calculation

would result in division by 0. It is reasonable to say that a complex sequence is not expected to

occur if any of its components does not occur.

Ryan Sandell 8

than 1 (i.e., underrepresentation of the co-occurrence of some sequence of ele-

ments) is indicative of a restriction of some sort. Cooper also adopts the hypothe-

sis of Frisch et al. 2004 that co-occurrence restrictions are motivated by similarity

avoidance, where similarity can be assessed by the number of natural classes

shared between two segments.

Based on a subset of 630 roots drawn from LIV2,12 Cooper (2009:58) calcu-

lates O/E ratios for /CVC/ sequences in roots for four places of articulation (labi-

al, coronal, dorsal, and “laryngeal”) and five manners of articulation (stop,

fricative, nasal, liquid, and glide). Cooper finds that every combination of identi-

cal place or identical manner between the two consonants (e.g., two labials, two

nasals, etc.) in his data has an O/E of less than 1, while only 6/32 non-identical

combinations of place or manner have an O/E less than 1. It thus seems reasona-

ble to conclude that combinations of shared place or manner are restricted in

some way. Cooper also calculates O/E for /CiVCi/ as 0.01, highly underrepresent-

ed.

Worth noting is that the O/E ratios appear to be yet smaller for pairings shar-

ing both place and manner of articulation. For instance, the O/E for labial stops is

0, and for coronal stops is 0.115. In Cooper’s calculations, O/E for stops is 0.79,

for labial place is 0.29, and for coronal place is 0.69.13 This result is expected ei-

ther under similarity avoidance, or through the “ganging” of separate constraints

on shared manner and shared place of articulation (cf. Pater and Coetzee 2008).

Although O/E ratios provide a useful descriptive statistic, and fit with sensi-

ble linguistic hypotheses, they themselves do not give any indication of the statis-

tical significance of the over- or under-representation of some pattern. Without an

assessment of a pattern’s under- or over-representation against some baseline, the

risk exists that the frequency of occurrence might fall well within the realm of

chance, and therefore be meaningless.

3.3. Comparing attested versus possible roots

The method of statistical analysis that I therefore pursue now is to compare the

ratios of attested to possible roots with some more general and some more specif-

12 Cooper (2009:57) takes this group to be “reconstructed with confidence; LIV2 treats the re-

maining 565 roots as problematic in some way, each being either of questionable PIE date,

ambiguous in its reconstruction, or both.”

13 I find no /CVC/ sequences with two labial stops, and only one with two coronal stops: /tet/ in

*/tetk ̑ -/.


ic sequence. For instance, every root in LIV2 contains a sequence /CVC/; we can

calculate the number of possible permutations of the two /C/ elements that con-

cern us to find the number of possible such sequences, and then count how many

distinct /CVC/ sequences are, in fact, attested. That attested/possible ratio pro-

vides the baseline ratio of expectation for an attested/possible ratio among any

subset of /CVC/ sequences. Where the subset’s attested/possible ratio is signifi-

cantly less (as evaluated by a χ2 Test) than the attested/possible ratio for all

/CVC/ sequences, then the under- or over-attestation of that subset is unlikely to

be due to chance.

Among complete roots of the form /CVC-/, there is just one root that violates

either Zukoff’s formulation of OCP-σ in (1), */ses-/, but I find approximately 180

distinct biconsonantal roots. Given a phoneme inventory of 25 consonants in PIE,

there are 625 possible permutations of any two elements, allowing for repetition

(= 252); there are only 25 possible distinct roots of the form /CiVCi-/. The differ-

ence in attestation between roots of the form /CiVCi-/ and biconsonantal roots

generally is significant: χ2 = 4.0389, p < 0.05.

/CiVCi-/ All /CVC-/

Attested 1 180

Possible 25 625

The hypothesis of a restriction on the co-occurrence of identical segments

can be explored more broadly by evaluating /CVC/ sequences generally in which

the two /C/ segments would be identical. Again, 25 of these permutations would

contain a sequence /CiVCi/ that could violate OCP-σ if parsed into a single sylla-

ble. In order not to prejudge any facts, I simply take LIV2’s reported roots at face

value; there are then 5 roots containing a /CiVCi/ sequence (*/h1eh1s-/, */ses-/,

*/sest-/, */skek-/, and */tetk-/), instantiating four distinct patterns (/h1eh1/, /kek/,

/ses/, /tet/). Among all roots listed in LIV2, I find 308 clearly distinct patterns:

there are fifteen /CVC/ sequences in which one or both Cs are ambiguous, but

might reflect a distinct root.14 I thus estimate the number of distinct /CVC/ pat-

terns at 314, slightly more than half of the possible permutations. The results of a

χ2 Test (χ2 = 4.0721, p < 0.05, statistically significant) indicate that less than 5%

of the possible random samples 314 of the 625 possible /CVC/ patterns would

14 In cases where an ambiguous root would certainly be distinct from any other listed combina-

tion (e.g., */k ̑ eKʷ-/ reflects either distinct */k ̑ ekʷ-/ or distinct */k ̑ egʷ-/), it counts as 1; where

not, the ambiguous element counts as value-equivalent to the random chance of choosing the

segment that would produce a unique combination of elements.

Ryan Sandell 10

yield only 4 or fewer /CiVCi/ patterns. The results strongly suggest that a princi-

pled reason underlies the relative rarity of /CiVCi/ sequences in Indo-European

roots.

/CiVCi/ All

Attested 4 314

Possible 25 625

In contrast, consider the same calculation for /CVC/ in which C1 is any stop

/T/ and and C2 is any sonorant /R/, thus /TVR/. Here, there are 90 possible com-

binations of /TVR/ (15 distinct stops × 6 distinct sonorants); 77 such distinct pat-

terns in fact occur. Sequences of the shape /TVR/ among Indo-European roots

thus prove to be much more common than would be expected, given the possible

number of combinations and the size of the population to which they belong:

there is a significant difference in attestation between /TVR/ sequences and

/CVC/ sequences generally (χ2 = 9.409, p < 0.01, statistically significant), but in

this case it is the overattestation of /TVR/ that produces the significant result.

/TVR All

Attested 77 314

Possible 90 625

Continuing this same line of investigation, I note anecdotally that sequences

of the shape /CVC/ in which the two consonants share both place and manner of

articulation are virtually non-existent. For instance, searching for biconsonantal

roots with coronal stops, I find no roots */tet-/, */ted-/, */tedʰ-/, */det-/, */ded-/,

*/dedʰ-/, */dʰet-/, */dʰed-/, or */dʰedʰ-/.15 If such roots are indeed so underrepre-

sented, the rarity of /CVC/ sequences with shared place and manner of articula-

tion might be interpreted as evidence for a yet stronger formulation of OCP-σ, as

in (5).

(5) OCP-SYLLABLE (OCP-σ)

Assign one violation mark * for every syllable that contains two segments

identical in place and manner of articulation and adjacent on the consonantal

tier.

15 Note that some of these combinations might also be dispreferred on account of restrictions on

the occurrence of two voiced stops or voiceless stop and voiced aspirate.


Searching for any /CVC/ sequences with shared place and manner of articula-

tion16 yields only two sequences beyond the four /CiVCi/ sequences given above

(/h2eh1/ and /h2eh3/), and one possible instance (/kagʰ/, if not /k̑agʰ/). There are

then 6.5 sequences that potentially violate (5) above. Eighty-one possible /CVC/

sequences would contain segments sharing place and manner of articulation.

Once again, there is a significant difference between the ratio of attested/possible

for this subset and the entirety of attested distinct /CVC/ sequences (χ2 = 24.022,

p < 0.01), which is indeed even stronger than found for /CiVCi/ sequences

above.17

/C[i, j]VC[i, j]/ All /CVC/

Attested 6.5 314

Possible 81.0 625

Even with an intervening sonorant, in the patterns /CVRC/ or /CRVC/, the

occurrence of roots of two consonants with shared place and manner is un-

derrepresented. I find 32 instances of the pattern /CVRC/ or /CRVC/ in which the

two /C/ segments may share both place and manner of articulation, though some

show ambiguities in reconstruction.18 Assuming that all 32 instances reflect oc-

currences of shared place and manner (though more likely, not all do), the differ-

ence in attestation in comparison to all /CVRC/ and /CRVC/ sequences is highly

significant (χ2 = 27.7016, p < 0.01).

/C[i, j]VRC[i, j]/ or /C[i, j]RVC[i, j]/ All /CVRC/ or /CRVC/

Attested 32 637

Possible 972 7,500

3.4. Local summary

Two distinct methods of statistical analysis of Indo-European root structures, O/E

ratios, as previously examined by Cooper (2009, 2011), and χ2 comparisons of

attested versus possible root shapes, both decisively indicate a dispreference for

roots containing segments that are very similar in phonological composition. Not

16 For convenience, I treated all laryngeals as sharing place of articulation, though this may not

be accurate. Palatovelars were treated as having a distinct place of articulation from plain ve-

lars and labiovelars, which were treated as sharing the same place of articulation.

17 /C[i, j]/ = a consonant with place of articulation i and manner of articulation j. 18 See online supplemental materials (https://github.com/rpsandell/WeCIEC26) for a list of these

roots.

Ryan Sandell 12

only roots with identical consonants, as long recognized, but also roots in which

identical consonants are separated by other consonants, as well as roots in which

two consonants differ only in place and manner of articulation, are underrepre-

sented to an extent that is highly unlikely to be coincidental. Insofar as the phono-

tactics of the Indo-European root are indicative of the general phonotactics of the

language, OCP-σ appears well motivated. The issue then becomes whether, in

fact, the sorts of consonantal co-occurrence restrictions identified here for Indo-

European have grammatical significance.

4. Consonantal co-occurrence restrictions: typological and experimental evidence

Restrictions on consonantal co-occurrence within lexemes similar to those dis-

cussed for PIE above are well attested across a range of languages. Much dis-

cussed is underattestation of Arabic verbal roots with segments sharing place of

articulation, variously accounted for through an OCP-PLACE constraint (McCar-

thy 1994; also Pater and Coetzee 2008, including additional OCP constraints on

manner and glottal state) or similarity avoidance (Pierrehumbert 1993, Frisch et

al. 2004). In broad outline, the O/E ratios reported by Frisch et al. (2004:186)

parallel the figures reported by Cooper (2009) for Indo-European: roots with two

adjacent consonants sharing place of attestation are systematically underattested.

Similar morpheme-internal limitations on shared place of articulation are reported

for the native (Yamato) stratum of the Japanese lexicon (Kawahara et al. 2006),

Hebrew (Berent and Shimron 1997), Muna (van den Berg 1989:27–32, Pater and

Coetzee 2008), and across the Niger-Congo language family (Pozdniakov and

Segerer 2007), as well as for several modern Indo-European languages (including

English, French, and Russian). Other more specific featural restrictions (e.g., un-

derattestation of two prenasalized consonants in Muna morphemes) are often

found as well. Typologically speaking, the co-occurrence limitations found for

reconstructed Indo-European roots in the previous section are wholly unsurpris-

ing.

More importantly, the existence of such restrictions in modern languages

permits their investigation in psycholinguistic terms: are speakers actively aware

of these restrictions, and do those restrictions appear to shape linguistic behavior

and judgments? The answer on both counts is resoundingly “yes”; Frisch and

Zawaydeh (2001:103), for instance, working with Arabic speakers from Amman,

conclude that “OCP-Place is a psychologically real synchronic constraint.” Ber-

ent and Shimron (1997) employed a rating task with native speakers of Hebrew to

evaluate the well-formedness of nonce trisegmental roots, presented as nonce


words with possible vocalic patterns (e.g., [sasam] to evaluate /ssm/). Roots con-

taining two identical consonants at the left edge of the root (e.g., /ssm/, which do

not exist at all in Hebrew) were rated as worse than roots with two identical con-

sonants at the right edge of the root (e.g., /mss/), which in turn were rated worse

than roots with no identical segments or shared place of articulation (e.g., /smk/).

This study indicates a general awareness of lexical OCP effects that constrain the

acceptability of novel lexemes. Frisch and Zawaydeh (2001) used a similar rating

task of nonce roots with speakers of Arabic, but designed stimuli specifically to

contain violations of OCP-PLACE (e.g., /bts/ vs. /thf/). Three experiments, de-

signed to test the significance of OCP-PLACE in ratings taking into account simi-

larity to existing roots, accidental and systematic phonotactic gaps in the Arabic

lexicon, and gradience of the relationship between segmental similarity and rat-

ing, all decisively show that shared place of articulation among any two conso-

nants decreases perceived well-formedness. While not concerned with OCP-

PLACE, Coetzee (2014) found that speakers of Afrikaans dispreferred nonce noun

plural forms (ending in [-ə]) containing roots of the shape /C1VC2/, where C1 is a

voiceless obstruent and C2 is a voiced obstruent. The point of interest here is that

roots of the form /C[αvoice]VC[–αvoice]/ are systematically absent from Afrikaans, but

this gap has arisen through the confluence of unrelated sound changes, and the

restriction cannot be attributed to any effect of similarity avoidance. The dispref-

erence of /C[αvoice]VC[–αvoice]/ therefore points to an “unnatural” but learnable con-

straint, acquired from statistical generalizations over the lexicon.

These experimental results permit us to interpret the significance of the statis-

tics concerning the PIE lexicon. Straightforward application of the Uniformitari-

an Principle demands that, if speakers of languages such as present-day Arabic

and Afrikaans are sensitive to systematic phonotactic gaps, which impact their

judgments of a novel lexeme’s well-formedness, then PIE speakers must have

been sensitive to the phonotactic distributions inherent to their lexicon as well.

Thus, regardless of the diachronic pathways by which those distributions arose,

they were not synchronically inert. The remaining issue is over what morphologi-

cal domain(s) the phonotactic dispreferences emanating from the lexicon would

have been enforced.

5. Reduplicants are special: morphological conditions on OCP effects

The evidence surveyed thus far indicates that segmental co-occurrence restric-

tions, which would resemble the constraints in (1) or (5), ought to have been,

at some level, enforceable by a constraint in novel productions. The problem that

remains in evaluating OCP-σ, however, is that the evidence that it correctly

Ryan Sandell 14

accounts for is limited to reduplicants, while unrepaired violations seem to exist in inflected forms (e.g., *[gʷʰnén.ti]). A restriction of OCP-σ to the stem-level phonology (assuming stem-level syllabification) escapes possible violations aris-ing from inflectional morphology, but likely s-stems such as *[h2áu̯.sos-] ‘dawn’ or *[u̯é.sos-] ‘garment’ might then be problematic.19

Perhaps the co-occurrence restrictions hold strongly only over roots and the stem formed from a root and reduplicant. In developing his “bigētun-Rule,” Schumacher (2005:601) has claimed that the type of stem formed by reduplicant and root is “von einer besonderen Qualität,” and suggests that they are subject to “besondere strukturelle Bedingungen, die eng verwandt sind mit den Regeln, die die grundsprachliche Wurzelstruktur an sich betreffen.” Although Schumacher offers no real evidence to support these notions, one need not dig too deeply into the behaviors of reduplicants in Indo-European languages and beyond to find that the idea has support.

Familiar is the fact that reduplicants are often subject to much tighter phono-logical restrictions than other classes of affixes or full word forms; see generally Inkelas and Zoll 2005. Indeed, reduplicants are famous for often displaying so-called emergence of the unmarked effects (McCarthy and Prince 1995:81–4): they form domains in which a language’s least-marked phonological representa-tions tend to be brought out. Among reduplicants of all types in Sanskrit, for in-stance, complex onsets are never permitted (e.g., √krand ‘step’ forms a perfect ka-krand-, intensive kani-krand-, etc.). Insofar as the segmental co-occurrence restrictions reflect adherence to unmarked patterns, to find those patterns maxi-mally enforced in the domain of reduplicant + root appears reasonable.

Moreover, reduplicants sometimes exhibit phonological characteristics that are otherwise restricted to roots. Such root-like behavior of reduplicants is avail-able from reduplicative patterns in Lushootseed. Crucially, stressed schwa [ə́] is found almost exclusively in Lushootseed roots; however, in pluralizing (distribu-tive) reduplication patterns, roots containing a schwa as the leftmost vowel ap-pear to copy that schwa into the reduplicant, and that schwa happily hosts the primary word stress, as shown in (6). In permitting stressed schwas, Lushootseed

19 One further issue with attributing possible OCP-σ effects to the stem-level phonology is that

the relevant environments in reduplicated stems seem to be created by root ablaut triggered by certain inflectional endings. For instance, stem-level syllabification of a reduplicated stem /le.leg̑-/ contains no violation; ablaut triggered in, e.g., a 3.pl.perf. /lel.g̑-r,/ would feed OCP-σ.


distributive reduplicants show a striking similarity to roots; see Urbanczyk 2006

for further discussion of the phenomenon.

(6) Distributive reduplication in Lushootseed (data from Bates et al. 1994)

a. ǰə́səd ‘foot’ → ǰə́s-ǰəsəd ‘feet’

b. s-čə́txʷəd ‘bear’ → š-čə́t-čətxʷəd ‘bears’

In other cases, phonological processes entirely unique to the root + redupli-

cant domain manifest themselves. For instance, Dakota shows a process of coro-

nal dissimilation whereby a sequence of two coronals dissimilates to velar +

coronal, but only at a root + reduplicant boundary, not elsewhere. Contrast the

reduplicated forms in (7) with the compounds in (8) (cf. Shaw 1985:184, Inkelas

and Zoll 2005:101).

(7) Dakota reduplicated forms—coronal dissimilation applies:

a. /žat-RED-a/ → žag-žát-a ‘curved’

b. /nin-RED-a/ → nig-nín-a ‘very’

(8) Dakota compounds—coronal dissimilation fails to apply:

c. /sdod + čhí-ya/ → sdodčhíya ‘I know you’ know.1.SG + you-CAUSATIVE

d. /phed + nákpakpa/ → phednákpakpa ‘sparks’ fire + crackle

Sanskrit knows a very familiar phonological process that applies just within

the domain of the root and reduplicant + root: Grassmann’s Law. Underlying

roots with two aspirates (e.g., /bʰudʰ-/ ‘awaken’) surface with only a single

[+spread glottis] stop within the boundaries of the root. In combinations of redu-

plicant + root, whether a root contains only one or two [+spread glottis] stops,

only one [+spread glottis] stop surfaces in the domain of the reduplicant + root

complex (e.g., 3.sg.pres. bíbharti ← /bhi-bhar-ti/ to √bhr̥ ‘bear’; 3.sg.perf.subj.

bubhodhati ← /bhu-bhodh-a-ti/). The same constraint does not apply to instances

of stem + inflection (e.g., inst.pl. pathí-bhiḥ to páthā- ‘path), or root + deriva-

tional suffix (e.g., ava-bhr̥-thá- ‘bearing away’). Grassmann’s Law thus evidently

bans the occurrence of more than one [+spead glottis] consonant within some

morphological domain, where that morphological domain appears to be the root

or reduplicant + root.

Another (perhaps PIE-level) phenomenon which seems to operate within a

specific morphological domain is the so-called νεογνός Rule (cf. Mayrhofer

1986:129, Weiss 2011:113). This phenomenon appears to target underlying

laryngeals within the domain of a compound or reduplicant + root for deletion;

in the Paradebeispiel, */neu̯o-g̑nh1-ó-s/ → *[ne.u̯og̑.nós] ‘new-born’ (> Gk.

Ryan Sandell 16

νεογνός), the /h1/ must be deleted, else the (entirely licit) possible output ×[ne.u̯o.g̑n̥.h1ós] would instead be expected to give Gk. ×νεογανός. The thematic

reduplicated present evident in Gk. γίγνομαι ‘am born’ and Lat. gignō ‘I beget’

must similarly reflect absence of the root’s /h1/, thus *[g̑í.g̑ne/o-], not ×[g̑í.g̑n̥.h1e/o-]. The precise parameters of this phenomenon remain to be deter-

mined, but it appears to be another case where a rule takes reduplicant + root as

its domain.

The sum of the evidence presented here shows that a restriction of phonolog-

ical alternations to the domain of reduplicant + root is empirically well grounded.

Consequently, to limit the effects of OCP-σ and/or strict consonant co-occurrence

constraints to roots themselves and the combination of reduplicant + root in PIE

would appear to be a licit analytical maneuver.

6. Conclusions

We are now in a position to evaluate the general explanatory power of OCP-σ, as

defined in either (1) or (5) above. Given a basic ranking of OCP-σ ≫ Max-C-IO20

that would hold throughout the phonology of PIE, which would predict *[g(ʰ)ēbʰ-] and *[lēg̑-] from */gʰe-gʰbʰ-/ and */le-lg̑-/, possible counterexamples present

themselves.21 Recourse is then necessary either to further phonological devices,

such as final consonant extrametricality (cf. n.8), or tight morphological condi-

tions on the domain where that ranking holds (cf. §5). Another possibility is that

the sum effects attributable to a constraint OCP-σ may rather result from subtler

phonotactic constraints—OCP-σ may be too gross an instrument.22

In comparison to the alternative accounts of “long-vowel” preterites dis-

cussed at the outset, a morphologically restricted domain for OCP-σ comes very

close to the proposal advanced in Schumacher (2005). Even with a restriction of

repairs to consonant co-occurrence by deletion and compensatory lengthening to

reduplicant + root domains, the fact that the OCP-σ hypothesis can further feed

explanations of Attic reduplication (Zukoff 2014) and Vedic perfect weak stems

20 Nearly mirroring DEP-V-IO encountered in §1, which penalizes a vowel in the output without

a realization in the input, MAX-C-IO assigns one violation mark * for every consonant present

in the input that lacks a correspondent in the output. 21 The question of how compensatory lengthening in these configurations is to be modeled is

itself by no means trivial, and should not be taken for granted. However, that issue must re-

main a topic for discussion elsewhere; for the time being, for some treatment of complex com-

pensatory lengthening phenomena in Indo-European, see Sandell and Byrd 2015.

22 Zukoff (2015) has, in fact, initiated work in this direction.


of the form C1eC2- (Sandell 2015:Ch.8) may make it preferable to the account of

“long-vowel” preterites advanced in Jasanoff 2012. Indeed, were it possible to

formally demonstrate a derivation of “Narten” presents themselves from redupli-

cated formations under the same assumptions used to derive “long-vowel” preter-

ites from reduplicated formations, then, phonologically speaking, the accounts of

Indo-European long-vowel preterites would reduce to the same thing. Such a de-

rivation has been suggested by Helmut Rix (apud Harðarson 1993:29 n.12), Fred-

erik Kortlandt (1999:2, 6), Michiel de Vaan (2004: 597–8), and Reiner Lipp

(apud LIV2:s.v. *tetk̑-), though none of these authors attribute the emergence of

“Narten” presents out of reduplication to PIE itself.

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