Sound Change or Analogy? Palatalisation in the Plural Paradigm of the Khotanese i-declension

Del Tomba, Alessandro (2024) Sound Change or Analogy? Palatalisation in the Plural Paradigm of the Khotanese i-declension. ACTA ORIENTALIA ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARUM HUNGARICAE, 77 (2). pp. 253-264. ISSN 0001-6446

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Abstract

The article deals with the origin of palatalisation in the plural paradigm of the Khotanese i-declension. According to the common view, palatalisation resulted from regular sound change only in the nominative-accusative plural, with the etymological form of the endings remaining not-palatalised in the rest of the plural inflection. Subsequently, there emerged a tendency for the palatalised allomorph to become generalised and extend across the paradigm. However, a thorough examination of older and later Old Khotanese manuscripts challenges this perspective, revealing no evidence of original allomorphy between the palatalised and non-palatalised stem variants in the plural. This study demonstrates that palatalisation did not originate from analogical levellings but rather arose from regular sound change. Additionally, the article draws a comparison between the ideclension plural paradigm and the inflection of most numerals greater than ‘three’, which exhibit palatalisation in all case forms except for the nominative-accusative.

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