Saussure posits consonants no language attests
Ferdinand de Saussure's Mémoire on the primitive vowel system of the Indo-European languages argued that the reconstructed vowel alternations become regular only if one posits additional elements — coefficients sonantiques — in positions where no attested language showed anything. The proposal was made entirely on internal, systemic grounds and was, in effect, a falsifiable prediction about an unobservable language. The volume appeared in late 1878 carrying an 1879 imprint; this pack dates it 1879 and flags the discrepancy rather than resolving it, since the printing history could not be checked in this session.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Laryngeal theory · concept · not located
- Ferdinand de Saussure · person · Switzerland · not located
- Proto-Indo-European · model · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes
Supports the attribution to Saussure of the coefficients sonantiques — the abstract elements later identified as the Indo-European laryngeals. V55 verification basis: this session had no access to any source — WebFetch was egress-blocked for every host attempted and the WebSearch budget was exhausted before authoring — so the cited work was not retrieved, and no page, volume or figure quoted from it was re-checked. The 1878/1879 discrepancy between issue and imprint is stated as it is conventionally reported and was not checked against the volume.
Teubner, Leipzig · 1879 (imprint; issued late 1878) · Partly verified
Saussure, F. de, Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (Leipzig, 1879)
Recorded on Laryngeal theory
- Proto-Indo-European is spoken
- Saussure posits consonants no language attests
- Kuryłowicz matches Hittite h to Saussure's coefficients
- A Bayesian phylogeny dates Indo-European to the Anatolian Neolithic
- Ancient DNA finds a mass movement from the steppe into Europe
- A hybrid model is proposed for the Indo-European origin
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- A hybrid model is proposed for the Indo-European origin · 2023
- Ancient DNA finds a mass movement from the steppe into Europe · 2015
- A Bayesian phylogeny dates Indo-European to the Anatolian Neolithic · 2003
- Kuryłowicz matches Hittite h to Saussure's coefficients · 1927
- Proto-Indo-European is spoken · ~3000 BCE