Sound Change and Analogy, Again: Brugmann's Law and the Hunt For O‐Grades in Indo‐Iranian*

Abstract

AbstractThis article revisits the interaction between regular ‘Neogrammarian’ sound change (defined as a purely phonological process) and subsequent morphological change (especially changes subsumed under the term ‘analogy’) in the development of the outcomes of Brugmann's Law (BL) in Indo‐Iranian. The traditional formulation of BL states that Proto‐Indo‐European *o became Indo‐Iranian /ā/ in open syllables and /a/ elsewhere, positing a purely phonological context of application. Alternatively, Kiparsky (2010) has argued for a revised version of BL in which the accent and ablaut properties of the affected forms play a role, hence essentially for a synchronic morphophonological rule. I argue that this revised version fails both from the perspective of comparative reconstruction and as a synchronic rule based on a detailed study of the forms cited as evidence for the revised rule. Rather, in order to identify inherited *o in Indo‐Iranian the effects of the ‘blind’ Neogrammarian rule must be separated from the synchronic morphological rules of the attested languages. This paper thus makes a methodological contribution in defence of the Neogrammarian approach to sound change, but also an empirical contribution by showing that this approach, in combination with a strictly lexical definition of analogy, can account for some conspicuous exceptions to traditional BL.