Wenja's Roots: Dwani (Sounds), Part 2

Welcome back!

Having examined the stops of PIE & Wenja, we can now turn to the fricatives. Fricatives are noisy sounds, characterized by significant (but partial) obstruction within the vocal tract. In English, we have nine fricatives (in case you're wondering, that's a lot!) -- they can be made with the lips & teeth together (labiodental), with the tongue in between the teeth ([inter]dental), just behind the top front teeth (alveolar), retracted slightly behind that (alveopalatal), or in the throat (glottal). Note the voicing distinction found in the stops is also present for all the fricatives except for < h >.

	Voiceless	Voiced
Labiodental	f	v
Interdental	θ	ð
Alveolar	s	z
Alveopalatal	ʃ	ʒ
Glottal	h	-

The sounds < f >, < v >, < s >, < z >, and < h> are pretty self-explanatory -- they're the sounds at the beginning of the words fish, van, sit, zoo, and hi, respectively. But what about those remaining, funny-looking characters? The symbol < θ > =  < th >, as in thick, < ð > = < th > as in then, < ʃ > = < sh > as in shoot, and < ʒ > = < j > as in judge.

And how about PIE?  While the proto-language had fifteen different types of stops, it probably only utilized four different types of fricatives.  They were:

	Voiceless	Voiced
Dental	s	[z]
Uvular	χ (h₂)	ʁʷ (h₃)
Glottal	h (h₁)	-

We'll discuss each of these in turn.

The fricative *s was likely a dental sound, more like the Spanish s than the English one. We find this sound all over the place in PIE, for instance in the widespread root 'to sit'. PIE *sed- 'sit' > Ved. sáda ‘sit!’, Lat. sedēre, Eng. sit, OCS sěděti, Gk. hézomai, Arm. hecanim, Wenja sada 'sit'.

While < z > is a full-fledged sound in English (note the pair sit ~ zit), it was not in PIE. In linguistics we would call *z an allophone of the phoneme *s. By this we mean that PIE speakers didn't hear *z as a different sound from *s, despite their difference in pronunciation. In fact, the only time we can reconstruct *z is when *s was situated in front of a voiced stop (*d, *gʰ, etc.).  To give you an example, the *e vowel in *sed- 'sit' was sometimes deleted to produce *sd-, which was automatically pronounced as *-zd-. This famously explains the source of PIE *ni-zd-ó- 'nest', literally the 'place (for a bird) to sit down', continued by Sanskrit nīḍás, Latin nīdus, Old Church Slavonic gnězdo, English nest, Wenja nizda 'nest, lair'. As for the element of *nizdó-, ni 'down', if you watch Brenna's Winja Warshta: Brina Winja dachaya, you'll hear her give the command U ni sada! "Sit down!" The basic word for 'down' in both Wenja & PIE is ni.

Just like PIE, < z > really isn't used in Wenja, except when it's before voiced stops in words such as mazga 'to descend; marrow, semen' or in borrowed words (Izila < Iz. His-hílax).

The other three fricatives of PIE, *h₁,* h₂, *h₃, are known as the laryngeals. These were all fricatives produced in the back of the throat, which were largely eliminated / altered beyond recognition in the daughter languages.

Here's the funny thing about the laryngeals. While they were technically consonants in PIE, they are primarily continued as vowels in the Indo-European languages.  So if they're usually vowels, why do we think they were consonants? This is largely due to the Anatolian languages, such as Hittite. Let's look at some examples:

1. *h₁es- 'be' > Hittite ēszi 'is', Sanskrit asti, Greek esti, Latin est, English is, Wenja hasa 'be (formal), exist'
2. *h₂ent- ‘face’ > Hittite ḫanti ‘in the face of’, Sanskrit ánti ‘before’, Latin ante, Greek antí, English end, Wenja shantiyi 'near'
3. *h₃er- ‘large bird’ > Hittite ḫāraš ‘eagle’, Greek órnis ‘bird’; Gothic ara, Old Irish irar, Old Church Slavonic orĭlĭ ‘eagle’, Wenja faran 'eagle'

You'll note that in the words above both *h₂ and *h₃ are continued as < ḫ > in Hittite, a sound which was either a velar or pharyngeal fricative.  For more on the laryngeals (and PIE phonology) in general, I recommend that you read through a recent paper of mine, posted here.

So why do the laryngeals become vowels in the non-Anatolian languages? Well, often laryngeals were situated in difficult-to-pronounce consonant sequences, such as *ph₂ter- 'father'. They 'vocalized', which really means that they inserted a short vowel (schwa, the *uh* sound in among) next to it in order to make the sequence pronounceable. 

1. *d^hh₁s- ‘sacred, religious’ → *d^həh₁s- > Gk. t^hés-p^hatos ‘decreed by god’, Lat. fānum ‘temple’ (< *fasno-), Skt. dhíṣṇya- ‘devout’, HLuv. tasan-za ‘votive stele’, Wenja dahisna 'temple'
2. *sth₂-to- ‘standing, made to stand’ → *stəh₂-to- > Gk. statós, Ved. sthitá-, Lat. status, ON staðr ‘obstinate, restive (of horses)’, Wenja tashta 'stand, pedestal'
3. *dh₃-ti- ‘gift’ → *dəh₃-ti- > Gk. dósis, Ved. díti-, Lat. datiō, Wenja dafti '(mutual) exchange'

You can see that Wenja does pretty much the same thing as PIE -- it inserts a vowel next to the laryngeal to make the sequence easier to say.  While PIE used schwa, Wenja uses either < i > or < a >, which depends on other factors we can't get into here. 

And like Hittite, those consonant sounds haven't gone anywhere, though two of them have shifted in pronunciation. You've probably picked up on how the three laryngeals change into Wenja:

• *h₁ > h   (no change!)
• *h₂ > sh
• *h₃ > f

While the second & third laryngeals become < sh > and < f > consistently throughout Wenja, you'll often see the first laryngeal changing to < sh > in certain contexts, namely before a consonant or at the end of a word.

• PIE *wih₁ró- 'hero' > Sanskrit vīra- 'hero', Latin vir 'man', English were(wolf), Wenja wishra 'hero; the one'
• PIE *d(e)h₁só- 'god' > Greek theós, Armenian dik', Wenja dashka 'god'

You'll note that in the second example, *deh₁só- 'god', there's an additional change of < s > to < k >, which is something we'll discuss in a later post on consonant sequences.

So to wrap things up, here is the fricative inventory of Wenja:

Labiodental	fmaygan ‘piss man’
Alveolar	sada ‘sit’
Alveopalatal	shazda ‘branch’
Glottal	hatra ‘food’