CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FERDINAND DE
SAUSSURE
MÉMOIRE ON THE PRIMITIVE SYSTEM
OF VOWELS IN THE
INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES
Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles
dans
les langues indo-européennes (Paris: Vieweg, 1887),
authorized
reprint of the 1879 edition
[Lehmann 217-224] {Textual Conventions}
Saussure's achievement in his Mémoire is phenomenal. Published during his student days, actually in 1878 rather than the indicated 1879, it was far in advance of his time. Applying the method of internal reconstruction to Proto-Indo-European, he proposed the hypothesis that the long vowels had developed from short vowel plus sonant coefficients. His hypothesis was confirmed after Hittite was discovered. J. Kurylowicz in 1927 pointed out that the Hittite consonants transcribed withcorresponded in some cognates to those which Saussure had suggested purely on the basis of phonological analysis of morphological patterns. The Mémoire is accordingly a fine example of the method of internal reconstruction, possibly the most dramatic application that has been made.
The consonants proposed by Saussure were related to Semitic by Hermann Möller in the following year, and have subsequently been known as laryngeals; their position in the phonological system of Proto-Indo-European and pre-Indo-European has subsequently been one of the intriguing questions of Indo-European linguistics. As is clear from the excerpts presented here, Saussure's chief interest was clarification of the Indo-European ablaut relationships generally, not merely of the roots with long vowels. These excerpts also illustrate the various uncertainties about the phonological system of Indo-European during the seventies. Only at the end of the decade was the "law of palatals" understood and with it the vowel system of late Proto-IndoEuropean as we know it was proposed.
Although the contributions of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) to historical linguistics were great, those to descriptive linguistics overshadow them. He is known as the founder of modern linguistics. His influence was [217]largely exerted through a posthumous publication based on lecture notes: the celebrated Cours de linguistique générale, edited by C. Bally and A. Sechehaye. A student at Leipzig, he is largely responsible for establishing the eminent linguistic group in Paris, through his position at the École des Hautes Études, 1881-1891, which after him was led so long by his student, Antoine Meillet (1866-1936). He himself found life more congenial in Geneva, where he gave the lectures on which the Cours was based. His contributions have been capably discussed, as by Rulon Wells, "De Saussure's System of Linguistics," Word 3. 1-31 (1947) and Meillet, Linguistique historique et linguistique générale II. 174-183. We may note that his view of language as a system is apparent in the very title of the Mémoire which he wrote when he was barely twenty-one, and that from this view he made his notable analysis.
(1-6) The immediate object of this small work is to study the various forms under which is manifested what is referred to as IE a; the remaining vowels are not taken into consideration except to the extent that the phenomena related to a require. But if after we have come to the end of such a limited field the table of the Indo-European vocalism is little by little modified under our eyes so that we see it grouped entirely around a, and we take a new view of it, clearly it is the system of vowels in its entirety on which our observations will center and which should be indicated at the start. Nothing is more disputed: the opinions are almost infinitely divided and various authors have rarely made a completely rigorous application of their ideas. In addition, the problem of the a is related to a series of phonological and morphological difficulties, some of which have yet to be solved, but many have not yet been stated. Thus in the course of our peregrination we will often traverse the most unexplored regions of Indo-European linguistics. If nonetheless we set out, though convinced in advance that our inexperience will often lead us into a maze, it is not recklessness, as is often said, that compels anyone who occupies himself with these studies to attack such questions: rather it is a necessity, it is the first school one must pass. For the question is not one of speculations of a transcendent order but of research into elementary facts without which everything drifts, everything is arbitrary and uncertainty.
I must withdraw some opinions which I have published in an article in the Mémoire de la Société de Linguistique de Paris,[218] entitled: An Essay on a Distinction between different IE a's. Particularly the resemblance of Ar with the phonemes arising from
led me to reject, very
reluctantly, the theory of vocalic liquids and nasals, to which I now
return after mature reflection.Bopp and those who immediately followed the illustrious author of the Comparative Grammar limited themselves to stating that in regard to the three vowels a e o of the European languages, the Aryan uniformly showed a. The e and o were then considered weakenings characteristic of the idioms of the West and relatively recent developments from a single IE a.
The work of Curtius in the Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (1864) enriched our understanding greatly: Curtius showed that e appeared in the same place in all the languages of Europe, so that it cannot have developed independently in each of them. And departing from the accepted idea that the mother language only possessed the three vowels a i u, he concluded that all the European peoples must have passed through a common period, during which they still spoke the same language. Also, that during this period a part of the a's were weakened to e, under an unknown influence, while the rest persisted as a. Later the various languages, separately from one another, had carried out a second split of the a, which yielded o. Yet in southern Europe this vowel must have arisen before the end of the Greco-Italic period, in view of the agreement of the o of the two classical languages, notably in the declension of the masculine stems in -a (Gk híppos= equos).
We believe we are representing exactly the system of Curtius by the following table:
[lt is necessary, however, to add the following remark of the Grundzüge, p. 54: "the original dualism (Zweiklang) gan (Skt
an-â-mi) and gân (Skt perf. a- ân-a), bhar(Skt bhar-â-mi) and bhar (Skt
bhâra-s 'bundle') arose by an imperceptible substitution at the
start: gen gan, bher bhar, then gon (Gk
genésthai, gégona), bher, bhor (Gk phér
,
phóros). But nothing can make us believe that there had ever been a
time when Gk gen and gon, pher and phor would
have been interchanged arbitrarily, of a kind so that one might have said
Gk gonésthai, phór or inversely
gégena, phéros." Here accordingly the learned professor admits an
original distinction of e and o, and derives the o of
Gk egona from IE 
.]Fick's statement, Spracheinheit der Indogermanen Europas, p. [219] 176ff., reproduces in general the preceding system. The ancient a is divided into a and e in the European period. When a word shows e in all the languages, it is necessary to assume that the change of its a to e goes back to this period. On the contrary it seems for a or o, that although this appears in a single language, it is necessary to admit that a still remained at the time of the community. The ablaut of Gk dérkomai dédorka, but above all of Gmc ita, at, is an admirable utilization of the splitting of a. On this last point see Curtius in the quotation above.
The system of Schleicher is different. Admitting in each vocalic series two degrees of reinforcement produced by the addition of one or two a's, he places for the series of athe three expressions: a aa
a.He finds these three degrees in Greek: a is represented ordinarily by
(e.g.
Gk éd ),
but also by o (Gk podós) and by 
(Gk ák n). The first
reinforcement, a + a, is represented by o when it is
produced from , i.e. "Gk gé-gon- a, the first form: ga-gn-a; Skt a
n-a
beside Gk e-gen-óm
n. " This same degree is transmitted under the form of
,
,
when it has a for base: Gk élakon, lélka. The second
reinforcement is o: érrga. Gothic
possesses the three degrees too; the other languages have confused the two
reinforcements.Since the genealogical tree of languages as Schleicher constructed it was not that which most of the other scholars had adopted and did not include a European period, it is clear that the e of the languages of Europe does not go back for him to a common origin. In particular, Goth. i has a different place from that of Gk e in his Compendium; the latter is considered the regular representative of IE a, Goth. i as an abnormal weakening. In formulating the following scheme according to Schleicher's system we therefore avoid the idea of a historically common development of the European vocalism:
It is also necessary to note that Gk a and Lat. a are not mentioned as reinforced degrees.
In a small work entitled: "Die Bildung der Tempusstämme durch Vocalsteigerung," Berlin, 1871, the Germanist Amelung, prematurely lost to our science, has attempted to apply the system of Schleicher in a very consistent manner and to combine it with the fact of common European e. In his eyes, this e is the normal representative of the non-reinforced a. The European a-- with which he also includes o as Curtius had done-- goes back to the first reinforcement which he designates by
; and the second
reinforcement [220] (â) is long in the European
languages. Presents, such as Goth. fara, Gk ág, óz accordingly show a
reinforced vowel, and it is necessary to admit that they are
denominatives.-- In a word, the dualism: e a is original, and the
relation existing between them is that of simple to reinforced vowel. Note
the table:
The debate which Amelung had on this question with Leo Meyer in KZ 21 and 22 did not bring any essential modification to this system, which has been presented in detail a second time in the Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 16. 161ff.
Brugman, Studien 9. 367ff. KZ 24.2 traces the existence of e, as a distinct vowel from every other, to the Indo- European period, without pretending by this that its pronunciation had been that of an e from its origin; and he designates its proto-type by a1. Concurrently with this vowel the same scholar finds in Greek, Latin, Slavic o= Lithuanian, Gothic a= Sanskrit
(at least in
open syllables) a stronger phoneme which he calls a2 and
the origin of which was determined by the accent.In accordance with this theory one generally arranges the following table, which nonetheless is certainly not that approved by Brugman himself, for he alludes (Studier 9.381) to the possibility of a great number of original a's:
In sum, one sees that for the languages of the West, the different authors, whatever their point of view, operate with three entities: the e, a,
of the European
languages. It will be our task to clarify the fact that there are really
four different units, not three; that the languages of the North confused
two fundamentally distinct phonemes still distinguished in southern
Europe: a, a simple vowel, opposed to e; and o, a
reinforced vowel, which is merely e in its higher form of
expression. The dispute between those who favor the split (original
a weakened partially to e) and those who favor a twofold
original a (a1, a2 becoming
e and a)-- this dispute, it is necessary to state, gets us
nowhere, because by the a of the languages of Europe is understood
an aggregate which has no organic unity.[221]These four kinds of a which we are going to try to find at the basis of the European vocalism we will pursue further still and arrive at the conclusion that they even belonged to the mother language from which the languages of the East and West arose.
Chapter I. The sonant liquids and nasals.
Before beginning the study of a it is necessary to determine
carefully the limits of its domain, and at this point the question of the
sonant liquids and nasals is presented. For anyone who admits these
phonemes for the mother language will consider a number of vowels of the
historical periods of the language recent and distinct from the question
of the a.
The hypothesis of sonant nasals was first proposed
and developed by Brugman, Studien 9. 287ff. In the same work (325)
the author also touched on the subject of the sonant liquids, of which
apparently the first notion is due to Osthoff.
1. Sonant
liquids.
In the Indo-European mother language, the liquid, or
liquids, if one accepts two of them, existed not only in the state of
consonants but also in the state of sonants, that is to say, that they
were able to carry a syllabic accent, capable of forming a syllable. This
took place, as is known, in historical times, in Sanskrit. Everything
leads one to believe that the sonant liquids never arose except through
weakening, because of which the a which preceded the liquid was
expelled; but this does not hinder our placing them, as we shall see, on
the very same plane with i and u....
(8) 1. Root
syllable.
The order adopted here to distinguish the different
instances in which r{syllabic} appears is based on a new
classification of roots, which can only be justified later but should not
confuse the reader in the meantime.
We will deal only with the
roots containing e.-- Every root which contains e in the
languages of Europe has the ability of expelling this e and in this
way taking on a weaker form, on the sole condition that the phonetic
combinations so produced can be readily pronounced.
To be arranged
under the roots containing e are those in which are found the
diphthongs ei and eu and which one is accustomed to cite
under their weakened form, deprived of e: thus, kei,
sreu, deik, bheugh (ki, sru,
dik, bhugh).
The i and u of these
roots, as well as the liquid and nasal of roots such as derk bhendh
can be called sonant coefficients (coefficient sonantique).[222]
They are parallel in vocalism of the
root. Depending on whether the e remains or disappears, their
function varies: r l m n develop from consonants to sonants;
i and u pass from a symphthongic state to an
autophthongic.
A. Roots ending with a sonant
coefficient.
Examples kei (weak form ki) sreu
(w.f. sru) bher (w.f. bhr) men (w.f.
mn).
B. Roots including a sonant coefficient followed by a
consonant.
Examples deik (w.f. dik) bheugh
(w.f. bhugh) derk (w.f. d k)
bhendh (w.f. bh
dh).
C. Roots without a
sonant coefficient, ended by a consonant.
Examples pet (w.f.
pt) sek (w.f. sk) sed (w.f.
zd)....
(51) How then could the a and o of the
languages of the South have arisen from one and the same original
a? By what miracle could this old a be colored to o,
and never to a, in all the times that it is found to vary with
e? --Conclusion: the twofold a and o of the classical
languages is original, and it must be that in the single a of the
North two phonemes were confused.
Confirmation: when a root
contains a in Greek or in Latin and this root is found in the
languages of the North, one observes in the first place that it there
still shows the vowel a, but what is the important fact, that this
a never alternates with e, as is the case when Greek
corresponds with an o. Thus Goth. vagja = Gk okhé,
hlaf = Gk (ké)klopha are accompanied by viga and
hlifa. But agis(a-)= Gk ákhos, or ala = Lat.
alo do not have a parent form with e. On the other hand, the
roots of the latter type have a characteristic, unknown among the first
type: the ability to lengthen their a (agis: g, ala:
l) of which we will have to take account below.
Brugman has
designated with a1 the prototype of European e;
his a2 is the phoneme which we have called o up
to now. As to this third phoneme which is Greco-Italic a and which
constitutes a portion of the a's of the languages of the North, we
will designate it by the letter A, after noting well that it is not
the parent of e(a1) nor of o
(a2). --Excluding for the time being the other possible
kinds of one obtains the following table:
(134-135) § 11. Grammatical role of the phonemes A and Q. Complete system of the primordial vowels.
When one considers the following cases of the permutation a1,a2: [223] Goth. hilfa hlaf, Gk klépt
kéklopha, Gk.
híppos híppe, and when one compares with them the following
cases of the permutation A 
: Goth.
sake sk, Gk lásk lélka, Gk
númph númph
, the temptation is strong,
assuredly, to set up the proportion : A =
a2: a1. But this would be to get
involved in a course without result and to misunderstand the true
character of the phenomena. For greater clarity we are going to construct
at once the system of vowels such as we understand it. For the time being
we are concerned only with root syllables.The phoneme a1 is the root vowel of all roots. It can be alone in forming the vocalism of the root or it can be followed by a second sonant which we have called sonant coefficient (p. 8).
Under certain conditions which are not known, a1 is replaced by a2; under others, better known, it is expelled.
When a1 is expelled, the root remains without vowel when it does not contain a sonant coefficient. When it does, the sonant coefficient comes to be alone, or in an autophthongic state (p. 8), and provides a vowel to the root.
The phonemes A and Q are sonant coefficients. They cannot appear alone except in the reduced state of the root. In the normal state of the root, it is necessary that they be preceded by a1, and the combinations a1 + A, a1 + Q give rise to the longs
, 
. The permutation
a1: a2 takes place before A and
Q as elsewhere.
Useful designations
For a1A and a1Q after contraction:
1 and 1.For a2A and a2Q after contraction:
2
and 2.The theory summed up in this table has been applied to all the types of roots above except those which contain A and Q.... [224]
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