PHONOLOGY il6 The old Indo-European accent was lost, at some time or other in most Indo-European languages just as in Indo-Aryan. Accentual systems derived directly from Indo-European are found only in Greek and Balto-Slavonic. They may also be de- duced from the phonetic developments classified as Verner’s law for an early stage of Germanic. The existence of accurate information about the accentuation of two of the oldest mem- bers of the family, Sanskrit and Greek, is of the utmost value for the understanding of Indo-European. A comparison of the accentuation in those languages in which it is preserved reveals basic agreement, though to a greater or lesser extent all languages have innovated in detail. The position of the accent in Indo-European for instance is fre- quently established by the correspondence of Sanskrit and Greek : e.g. bhdrati ' bears 7 : Gk. <f>ipti ; srutd- * heard 1 : Gk. kAuto? ; guru- ' heavy 1 : Gk. papvs ; vacas * word ’ : Gk. tiros, etc., etc. In other cases they differ showing innovation on one side or the other : mdtdr - 4 mother 7 ; Gk, pL-qrqp ; bdhu- 4 arm : Gk. nfjxvs, etc. The tendency to innovate is also evi- dent from the frequent disagreements between accent and apophony, whether in individual languages (Gk. *8pev ‘ we know 7 as opposed to the more original accentuation of Skt. vidntd) or in all (Skt. vfka-, Gk. Xvkos, etc.). In the latter case the innovation is of the Indc-European period. By means of comparison of the individual languages, by the study of apo- phony so intimately bound up with accent, and by the proper understanding of the part played by accent in the morphology, it is possible to form a clear and accurate idea of the Indo- European accent. The details are part of the morphology and will be found in the chapters concerned. The nature of the old accent in Sanskrit and Greek is known from the technical descriptions handed down and partly in the case of Sanskrit from the traditional recitation of the Veda. It was in both languages predominantly musical, and not a matter of stress. This is confirmed by the fact that in both languages metre is completely independent of accent, depending solely on the length of syllables. From this agreement it is deduced that the same kind of accent prevailed in late Indo-European. But, as we have already seen, there must have been a change be- tween early and late Indo-European in this respect. Earlier the accent had the power to reduce the neighbouring syllables.
