Ruki Sound Law
Ruki (or iurk) refers to a sound change in Balto-Slavic, Albanian, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian, wherein an original /s/ phoneme changed into after the consonants /r/, /k/, and the semi-vowels /u̯/, /i̯/, or:
- s > ʃ / r, u, K, i _
Specifically, the initial stage involves the coronal sibilant retracting to an apical after *i̯, *u̯, *r, or a plain velar consonant (that is, *k or *g) having developed from earlier *k, *g, *gʰ. In the second stage, further retracted to a voiceless postalveolar fricative ; this stage was reached universally. The third stage involves retroflexion (cf. Sanskrit ष and Proto-Slavic) and is due to levelling of the sibilant system. Similarly, levelling brought about the fourth and final phase involving the retraction to velar in Slavic and 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 is known sometimes as the Pedersen law.
The name "ruki" comes from the sounds (r, u, k, i) which cause the phonetic change.
Read more about Ruki Sound Law: Applications To Language Groups, Further Reading
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