Everything about Ruki Sound Law totally explained
Ruki or
iurk is the term for a
sound law in the
Satem group of
Indo-European languages, especially
Balto-Slavic and
Indo-Iranian, describing context in which an original /s/ phoneme changes into /š/:
» s >
š /
r, u, K, i _
A
sibilant s is
retracted to a
Voiceless postalveolar fricative after
i,
u,
r, or a
velar (for example *k or *g which may have developed from earlier
k, g, gh). Due to the character of the retraction, it was probably an
apical sibilant (as in some
dialects of Spanish), rather than the
dorsal of
English. The first phase (
s >
š) seems to be universal; the later
retroflexion (in
Sanskrit and probably in
Proto-Slavic as well) is due to levelling of the sibilant system, and so is the third phase - the retraction to
velar x in Slavic and also in some
Middle Indian languages, with parallels in languages like Spanish. This rule was first formulated for the
Indo-European languages by
Holger Pedersen, and it's known sometimes as the Pedersen law.
The name "ruki" comes from the sounds which cause the phonetic change. It associates with a
Russian word which means 'hands' or 'arms'.
Applications to language groups
The rule was originally formulated for
Sanskrit. It was later proposed to be valid in some degree for all
Satem languages, and unexceptionless for
Indo-Iranian languages. In
Baltic and
Albanian it's more or less limited or affected by other
sound laws. Nevertheless, it has to have been universal in these branches of the IE languages, and the lack of for example Slavic
reflexes before consonants is rather due to merger of these with the reflexes of other sibilants.
Exceptions in Slavic languages
In
Slavic languages the process is regular before a vowel, but it doesn't take place before consonants. The final result is the
voiceless velar fricative x, which is even more retracted than the
š. This velar fricative changed back into
š before a
front vowel or the
voiced palatal approximant j.
Exceptions in Indo-Iranian languages
In Indo-Iranian *
r and *
l merged, and the change worked even after the new sound. This has cited as evidence by many scholars for an argument for the later influence of
Iranian languages on
Proto-Slavic. There are obvious drawbacks in the theory - the two sounds must have been very close (
r/
l), so that both could have triggered the change in Indo-Iranian, and what's more, there are no real examples of this change working in Slavic, and it's also doubtful, that only this change (ruki) and no other such change of sibilants (for example
s >
h) was borrowed into Slavic.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ruki Sound Law'.
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