| has gloss | eng: Siebs law is a Proto-Indo-European phonological rule named after the German linguist Theodor Siebs. According to this law, if an s-mobile is added to a root that starts with a voiced or aspirated stop, that stop is devoiced. Siebs proposed this law in the Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen, as Anlautstudien (Berlin 1904: 37.277-324). Oswald Szemerenyi has rejected this rule, explaining that it is untenable and cites the contradiction present in Avestan zdī from PIE "be!" as counterproof (Szemerenyi 1999: 144). However, the PIE form is more accurately reconstructed as and thus Siebs Law appears to demand that the sibilant and aspirated stop are both adjacent and tautosyllabic, something which is known to only occur in word-initial position in Proto-Indo-European anyway. |