Holger Pedersen (linguist) - Origin of The Glottalic Theory

Origin of The Glottalic Theory

In a work published in 1951, Pedersen pointed out that the frequency of b in Indo-European is abnormally low. Comparison of languages, however, shows that it would be normal if it had once been the equivalent voiceless stop p, which is infrequent or absent in many languages.

He also posited that the Indo-European voiced aspirates, bh dh gh, could be better understood as voiceless aspirates, ph th kh.

Pedersen therefore proposed that the three stop series of Indo-European, p t k, bh dh gh, and b d g, had at an earlier time been b d g, ph th kh, and (p) t k, with the voiceless and voiced non-aspirates reversed.

This theory attracted relatively little attention until the American linguist Paul Hopper (1973) and the two Soviet scholars Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov proposed, in a series of articles culminating in a major work by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov published in 1984 (English translation 1995), that the Indo-European b d g series had originally been a glottalized series, p' t' k'. Under this form, the theory has attracted wide interest. There seems to be a good chance that it will endure in one form or another.