problematikus feltevés. in B Oszkó & A Cser (eds), Általános Nyelvészeti Tanulmányok
XXXVII : Tanulmányok a történeti nyelvtudomány körébl. Általános nyelvészeti
tanulmányok, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, pp. 11-33. http://hdl.handle.net/10138/626514
West Uralic protolanguage: a problematic assumption in terms of historical phonology
Abstract: There is no consensus on the internal taxonomy of the Uralic language family, and different taxonomical models exist. Jaakko Häkkinen’s (2007) idea that Saami, Finnic and Mordvin form a genealogical node, “West Uralic”, has received rather wide acceptance in recent literature on historical linguistics. The postulation of West Uralic is, however, based on rather few convincing arguments: Häkkinen’s original argumentation considering historical phonology has partly become outdated thanks to Aikio’s (2012; 2015) studies on vowel history. There are also few unambiguously “West Uralic” lexical or morphological innovations. In our study, we focus on the disputed phonological innovations and assess the status of the West Uralic taxonomical model in light of them. We discuss the following cases, among others, considered to be West Uralic innovations: the merger of Proto-Uralic *e̮ and *a in *a-stems; the emergence of second-syllable *o; and the loss of word-initial *w- before labial vowels. Our goal is to find out whether these can really be seen as common innovations or whether they are rather parallel developments or later areal innovations. We place special emphasis on the relative chronology and the typology of sound changes. The main result of our examination is that none of the discussed phonological innovations actually supports the assumed Finno-Saami-Mordvin protolanguage, which in general level calls for caution in using less firmly grounded taxonomical assumptions in linguistic and other treatises of prehistory
