Studies in Uralic vocalism III

Mikhail Zhivlov (Russian State University for the Humanities, zhivlov@gmail.com)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 12, 2014 - p.113-148

Abstract: The paper discusses three issues in the history of Uralic vocalism: the change of Proto-Uralic vowel combination *ä-ä to Proto-Finnic *a-e, the fate of Proto-Uralic *i̬ before velar consonants in Finnic, Saami and Mordvin, and the possibility of reconstructing two distinct vowels in PU non-initial syllables instead of *a of the traditional reconstruction. It is argued that the development of Uralic vocalism must be described in terms of strict sound laws, and not of “sporadic developments”.

Keywords: Uralic languages, Finno-Ugric languages, historical phonetics, proto-language reconstruction, Proto-Uralic vocalism

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