Proto-Indo-European Accent (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Proto-Indo-European accent refers to the accentual system of Proto-Indo-European language. Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is reconstructed to have a pitch accent system that is usually described as a free tonal accent. This means that at most one syllable in a word was distinguished by height (rather than prominence), and that the place of accent (tone) was not predictable by phonological rules. PIE accent could be mobile, which means that it could change place throughout the inflectional paradigm. Vedic accent is generally considered the most archaic, reflecting fairly faithfully the position of the original PIE accent. Avestan manuscripts do not have written accent, but we know indirectly that in some period free PIE accent was preserved in (e.g. Avestan *r is devoiced yielding -hr- before voiceless stops and after the accent-if the accent was not on the preceding syllable, *r is not devoiced).