Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes

Mmoire sur le systme primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-europennesAuthor(s): Ferdinand de Saussure\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781108006590, 978-1108006590\nSynopsis\nWritten in 1878, while the author was a twenty-year-old student in Berlin, Saussure's only full-length work proposed the existence of two additional sonant coefficients in the Indo-European parent language. Applying the methods of comparison and internal reconstruction to Proto-Indo-European, Saussure argued that the long vowels had developed from a short vowel plus a sonant coefficient. A hypothesis far ahead of its time, his proposal was not confirmed until 1927 when a consonantal phoneme etymologically derived from Saussure's A was discovered in newly deciphered Hittite, the oldest attested Indo-European language. Not only is the Mmoire a dramatic demonstration of the method of internal reconstruction, but it also p.