Abstract

“Osthoff’s Law” is a phonological process in Greek (and some other IE languages) by which long vowels were shortened when they occurred before sonorants in syllable-coda position that were followed by another consonant, e.g. Gk dat. pl. -ois < PIE *-ōis. Since “Osthoff-shortening” is a typologically natural strategy of “overlength avoidance”, similar shortenings elsewhere in IE are independent of the Greek version of Osthoff’s Law.