Indo-European s-mobile

In Indo-European studies, the term s-mobile designates the phenomenon where a Proto-Indo-European root appears to begin with an which is sometimes but not always present. It is therefore represented in the reflex of the root in some attested derivatives but not others. The fact that there is no consistency about which language groups retain the s-mobile in individual cases is good evidence that it is an original Indo-European phenomenon, and not an element added or lost in the later history of any specific language.

General description

This "movable" prefix appears at the beginning of some Indo-European roots, but is absent from other occurrences of the same root. For example, the stem 'large domestic animal, cattle', perhaps 'aurochs', gives Latin and Old English (Modern English steer), both meaning 'bull'. Both variants existed side by side in PIE, with Germanic preserving the forms as and respectively, but Italic, Celtic, Slavic and others all having words for 'bull' which reflect the root without the . Compare also: Gothic , German , Avestan (cattle); but Old Norse and ; and Greek , Latin , Old Church Slavonic (< Proto-Slavic ), Lithuanian , Welsh , Old Irish , Oscan , and Albanian .

In other cases, it is Germanic that preserves only the form without the s mobile. The Proto-Indo-European root , 'to cover', has descendants English thatch (from Old English ), German 'to cover', Latin 'I cover', but Greek and Russian .

Sometimes subsequent developments can treat the forms with and without the s-mobile quite differently. For example, by Grimm's law PIE becomes Proto-Germanic , but the combination is unaffected by this. Thus the root , perhaps meaning 'to scatter', has two apparently quite dissimilar derivatives in English: sprinkle (from the nasalized form ), and freckle (from ).

S-mobile is always followed by another consonant. Typical combinations are with voiceless stops: , , ; with liquids and nasals: , , ; and rarely, .

Origins

One theory of the origin of the s-mobile is that it was influenced by a suffix to the preceding word; many inflectional suffixes in PIE are reconstructed as having ended in , including the nominative singular and accusative plural of many nouns. The s-mobile can therefore be seen as an interference between the words, a kind of sandhi or rebracketing development. So for example, while an alternation between and (both meaning 'they saw') might be difficult to imagine, an alternation between and ('they saw the wolves') is plausible. The two variants would still be pronounced differently, as the double -ss- is distinct from a single -s- (compare English this pot and this spot), but the alternation can now be understood as a simple process of gemination (doubling) or degemination.

This can be understood in two ways.

• Gemination (→): by this view, the form without the is original. A habit of doubling at the join of the words causes a second which is understood as part of the second word. This is a kind of assimilation. Obviously, this could not happen to related forms which were used in different syntactic positions, and thus the original form without the survives elsewhere. This is the explanation given by Sihler.
• Degemination (→): by this view, the form with the is original. When it is adjacent to a noun suffix in , this produces a geminate. In rapid speech this is reduced to a single which is understood to belong to the noun, leaving the verb without its initial sibilant. This explanation is more popular among linguists, for two reasons: firstly, because a simplification of geminate is also observable elsewhere in the language (e.g. PIE → : see Indo-European copula); and secondly, because most PIE roots beginning with the clusters , , etc. have variants without the , whereas there are very many roots beginning with a simple , , etc. which have no s-mobile equivalents. If the variants without the are original, we would be faced with the problem of explaining why the phenomenon was not more widespread.

Further examples

	Root	Meaning	Reflexes with s-	Reflexes without s-
sk		to shine, glow	Sanskrit	Sanskrit , Ancient Greek , Latin , Old Armenian
		tool	Ancient Greek	Latin
		crooked	German 'squint', Greek 'worm'	Greek 'limb'
		cut, scrape	English scab	Late Latin 'cut'
		cut	English shear, share, Polish 'leather'	Latin 'short', Polish 'cortex'
		bent	English shrink, Avestan 'round'	Latin 'curved', Russian 'crooked', Lithuanian 'crooked'
		close (verb)	German	Latin
		big fish	Latin	English whale
sl		to swallow	German	Old Irish 'eats', Ancient Greek 'hiccup', Polish , 'swallow'
sm		small animal	English small	Irish 'animal', Russian 'small', Dutch 'calf (animal)'
		melt	English smelt, Dutch	English melt, Ancient Greek
sn		swim	Vedic Sanskrit , Old Irish	Tocharian B 'wash themselves'
		snake	English snake	Sanskrit 'snake'
sp		woodpecker, magpie	German 'woodpecker'	Latin 'magpie'
		sparrow	English sparrow, Ancient Greek 'starling', Polish 'starling'	Latin
		split	English split, splinter	English flint
		foam	Latin	English foam, Polish 'foam'
st		stand	Latin , English stand	Irish 'be'
		whirl	English storm	Latin 'commotion'
		thunder	Greek	English thunder, Latin
sw		resound	English sough	Ancient Greek 'sound'
		dwindle, wither	German 'dwindle'	Russian , 'wither', Polish 'wither'

A number of roots beginning in , , look as if they had an s-mobile but the evidence is inconclusive, since several languages (Latin, Greek, Albanian) lost initial s- before sonorants (l, m, n) by regular sound change. Examples include:

	Root	Meaning	Reflexes with s-	Reflexes without s-
sl		slack (weak, loose)	English slack, Old Norse	Old Irish , Ancient Greek
		slimy	English slime, Irish 'smooth', Lithuanian , Polish 'snail'	Latin 'muck', Ancient Greek 'snail'
sm		chin	Hittite , Irish , Old English 'lips', Lithuanian , , Sanskrit	Latin , Albanian , Armenian
sn		snow	English snow, Latvian , Russian , Avestan , Sanskrit	Latin , Ancient Greek , Welsh
		daughter-in-law	German , Icelandic , Czech , Persian , Sanskrit	Latin , Ancient Greek , Armenian

References

• Mark R.V. Southern, Sub-Grammatical Survival: Indo-European s-mobile and its Regeneration in Germanic, Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph 34 (1999).
• Shields, Kenneth (1996). "Indo-European s-mobile and Indo-European morphology" (PDF). Emérita. LXIV, 2: 249–254.

External links

• Indo-European Phonetics — Spirants