Dybo's law

English

Etymology

Named after the Soviet accentologist Vladimir Dybo.

Proper noun

Dybo's law

  1. (Indo-European studies) A law posited to explain the occurrence of nouns and verbs in Slavic languages that are invariantly accented on the inflectional ending.
  2. (Indo-European studies) A proposed sound law for some branches of Indo-European which posits that long vowels (often reflecting a sequence of short vowel plus laryngeal) inherited from Proto-Indo-European were shortened when immediately preceding an accented syllable.
    Synonym: pretonic shortening

Usage notes

The two sound laws are named after the same linguist but otherwise unrelated. The law for pretonic shortening (sense 2) is highly controversial.

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