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L
ARS
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UNNAR
L
ARSSON
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left, but the present theories are based on the work of several generations of
researchers. The proto-language had, e.g., three sibilant phonemes, as can be
seen already from a comparison of representative examples in Saami, Finnish
and Hungarian.
Saami Finnish Hungarian Reconstructed
Meaning
salla syli
öl
*
süli
‘lap, arms ‘
čuohti sata
száz
*
śata
‘100’
luossa lohi
–
< Balt., cf. Lith.
lašiša
etc. ‘salmon’
–
hiiri
egér
*
šiŋere
‘mouse’
These examples show that there are three types of correspondences:
Saa.
s
= Fi.
s
= Hung.
Ø
Saa.
č
= Fi.
s
= Hung.
sz
Saa.
s
= Fi.
h
= Hung.
Ø
A lower number of reconstructed sibilants cannot provide any explanation
with a regular development of the sounds. The fact that the word represented
by Saami
luossa
is a Baltic loanword helps us identify one of the sounds in
the proto-language as *
š
. When material from more languages is added, the
conclusions will be even safer, be it material from Finno-Ugric languages or
from languages that Finno-Ugric has borrowed words from. To mention one
such case, the reconstructed palatal sibilant is supported by the Permian lan-
guages, where the opposition of non-palatal vs. palatal consonant is pre-
served, and by loanwords from Indo-Iranian languages, e.g. the word for
‘100’, where the palatal ś is preserved also, cf., e.g., Sanskrit
śata-
‘100’.
It should also be noted that among the examples above there is no word
where an initial *
š
is represented in all three languages. The language histo-
rian cannot expect the words to be preserved just because they present inter-
esting facts about the proto-language. A living language is not a systemati-
cally built up museum, so we have to work with the material that has acci-
dentally remained. Some sounds are extremely stable over time, e.g., *
m
and
*
r
, and are maintained in several languages, but in general, the reconstructed,
original sound can be found as such in just a few languages. An initial *
k
,
e.g., is maintained in the western, Finno-Permian languages, but in Ugric
languages it changes under certain conditions. Furthermore, the different
sounds had a different frequency in the proto-language, and that certainly af-
fects their chances to remain in the languages of today. When working with
questions of this kind, the data presented in Statistik der uralischen Lautent-
sprechungen (SUL) are very useful. Of course, sounds that were frequent in