Sievers' Law and the evidence of the Rigveda By Franklin Eugene Horowitz (review)

428LANGUAGE, VOLUME 53, NUMBER 2 (1977) ------. 1931b. Gedanken über Morphonologie. TCLP 4.160-63. [English version in Chr. A. Baltaxe's translation of Trubetzkoy's Grundzüge (see below), 305-8.] -----. 1934. Das morphonologische System der russischen Sprache. (TCLP 5:2.) Prague. ------. 1936. Essai d'une théorie des oppositions phonologiques. Journal de Psychologie 33.5-18. ------. 1939. Grundzüge der Phonologie. (TCLP 7.) Prague. [English translation by Chr. A. M. Baltaxe: Principles of phonology. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969.] [Received 26 July 1976.] Sievers' Law and the evidence of the Rigveda. By Franklin Eugene Horowitz. (Janua linguarum, series practica, 216.) The Hague: Mouton, 1974. Pp. 74. /39.00. Reviewed by Jared S. Klein, University ofGeorgia In the past eleven years or so, a number ofdissertations, books, and articles have appeared which deal wholly or in part either with Sievers' Law alone, with Edgerton 's reformulation and expansion of it, or with both. Among the most important are Lindeman 1965, Sihler 1967, 1969, 1971, and Seebold 1972. All these studies have rejected, in varying degrees, Edgerton's claim that Proto-Indo-European possessed six resonant phonemes {*y *w *r "I *m *ri) which were realized as three different allophones in various phonological environments. Symbolizing these résonants by R, we can describe their allophones as [R], [R], and [RR]. Of crucial importance for its methodology is the work of Sihler, who in all three of his studies severely compromises any credibility that Edgerton might have acquired by emphasizing the latter's overly casual treatment of Rigvedic meter, which often led him into wrong-headed analyses and scansions of particular forms. Equally damaging to Edgerton's credibility is Sihler's cogent demonstration of the misleading nature of Edgerton's often-repeated argument that the limitation of a Rigvedic form containing an initial CRV-sequence (C is any obstruent, V any vowel) to a position following a light syllable within a line—the correct environment according to Edgerton's theory—necessarily implied the existence at some earlier stage of its automatic CRRV-variant following a heavy syllable. Horowitz' monograph, a 'slightly revised' version of his 1971 Columbia University dissertation, is like Sihler's studies both in methodology and in its tone of skepticism regarding Edgerton's theory. It is, however, extremely uneven in quality. Aside from a good discussion of the literature (Chapter 1, pp. 11-38) and a convincing refutation of the converse of Sievers' Law (Chapter 2, pp. 39-48), H's monograph is either of doubtful value (Chapter 3, 'The evidence of Rigveda, Mándala ?G, pp. 49-61) or overly superficial and inadequately argued (Chapter 4, 'Conclusion', pp. 62-8). By far the best part of H's monograph is Chapter 2, 'The converse of Sievers' Law'. One of the important bits ofevidence adduced by Edgerton in support ofhis thorough-going phonemicization of the IE résonants was what he referred to (1934:237) as 'the converse of Sievers's law',1 whereby a post-consonantal syllabic resonant is lost when preceded by a light syllable and followed across a morpheme boundary by a homorganic prevocalic non-syllabic resonant 1 This designation can be understood only in terms of Edgerton's restatement (235) of Sievers' Law: 'after a heavy syllable Vedic post-consonantal y, ? became iy, uv before a vowel.' REVIEWS429 (i.e. -VCR+RV- > -VCRV). An important class of data which should have been subject to this rule consists of Vedic compounds in su- 'well, good' followed by a form beginning with ?-. As it turns out, the entire mass of these forms shows only suv- with no occurrences of the revariant . Yet, as Edgerton points out (239), these compounds are almost entirely limited to positions where only the uv variant can occur according to Edgerton's rules (one exception out of 95 occurrences): after heavy syllables, or initially. It would seem at first glance, therefore, that compounds in su+v- obey the converse of Sievers' Law, and further that the converse of Sievers' Law is a sufficient explanation for the sole occurrence of suv- in these forms. As H sensibly points out, however (44), this argument 'does not take into account the fact that the...