Die i-Epenthese im Altindoarischen: Laryngalvokalisierung oder „Verbindungsglied“?

Abstract

In contemporary Indo-European studies, the Old Indo-Aryan i-epenthesis is usually treated as a result of a diachronic process, namely that of laryngeal vocalization. This view, however, necessitates the assumption of a strict and quite early divide between the Indo-Aryan and Iranian as subbranches of Indo-Iranian. In this paper, we challenge this particular view: we argue that the phonological development of laryngeals is basically uniform within Indo-Iranian. Hence, the i-epenthesis represents instead a later phenomenon that emerges only in Old Indo-Aryan and that is not exclusively tied to the phonology of laryngeals. We show that the distribution of the i-epenthesis renders this it a synchronic repair strategy of Old Indo-Aryan either to avoid phonotacticly illicit consonant clusters or to saturate other morphonological tendencies. The tendencies identified by us include an Old Indo-Aryan thrive for open syllables, paradigm uniformity, and morphological recoverability to enhance lexicon retrieval. We develop our proposal for Vedic and Pāṇinian Sanskrit by examining certain deverbal suffixes for nominal derivation and the structure of inherited kinship terms that denote ‘father’ or ‘daughter’ respectively.