Palatal assibilation before [w]?: The case of Armenian, Saka, and Luwian

Abstract

Three branches of Indo-European -Luwian, Armenian, and East Iranian (Kho-tanese) Saka- seem have to undergone asssibilation of PIE palatal-prevelar stops before [w], a development contrasting with the general outcome of these stops in Armenian and Saka, and with their apparent outcome before [- front] vocalic segments in Luwian. So far, no principled phonetic or phonological explanations for this behavior have been proposed. I show that the de-velopments in Saka and Armenican can be accounted for in terms of a crosslinguistic tendency for the high-vocalic labiovelar glide w, whether full segment w or nonsegmental offglidew, to as-similate to a following y or front vowel by becoming labiopalatal segmental ɥ or offglide ɥ, which following a common trend is unrounded to y or y and then palatalizes and assibilates the preced-ing stop. This account is not applicable to Luwian for which a general assimilation of palatal-prevelar before non-low vowels seems the best solution. The similarity between Armenian and Saka on one hand and Luwian on the other, thus, is accidental, and we must conclude that simi-lar outcomes can be produced by very different historical developments.