Rules

PIE syllabification of sonorants

Syllabification rules appear to have been applied in the following order:

1. Base rule
2. Siever's law
3. Lindeman's option

Base rule

The base rule for syllabification of a sequence of sonorants was as follows:

Basic syllabification in PIE :: If the phoneme to the right of a sonorant is syllabic, the sonorant remains non-syllabic, else it is syllabic.¹

The rule iterated from right to left.

• e.g. zero grade kwn- ‘dog’ forms the genetive kwn-és → ==kunés== but the locative plural kwn-sú → ==kwṇsú==.

Exceptions

Notable systematic exceptions to this rule include

• The nasal infix -né- never seems to exhibit syllabic ṇ in zero-grade.
  • e.g. Core IE present stem linékʷ- ‘be leaving behind has a zero grade ==linkʷ-==
• The i-stem and u-stem accusative endings always exhibit sg. -im, -um rsp. and pl. -ins, -uns rsp.
• CRṚV may occur if CRṚC occurs elsewhere in the paradigm.²
• Word initial labial sonorant clusters mR- were ==always realised with both sonorants non-syllabic==.

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