Finnic-Saamic labial vowels of non-initial syllables: an etymological evaluation

In the current article, a critical analysis is done of the corpus of proposed Finnic-Saamic etymological cognates showing second-syllable labial vowels in both language groups. The data is taken from the etymological dictionary Suomen sanojen alkuperä (SSA, 1992–2000) and assessed in the light of current research on Uralic sound history and language contacts. The analysis reveals that more than half of the cognate pairs previously suggested by SSA cannot be regarded as actual cognates including their stem vowels, but as results of loan contacts and parallel developments. There are, however, a dozen cognate pairs with sound correspondences undeniably showing inheritance from a common protolanguage and thus suggesting that the development of second-syllable labial vowels may have originated in a common Finno-Saamic protolanguage, even if their wider adoption in the phonological and morphological systems of these languages did not take place until later.