Re: [tied] *h3 (More deja-vu)

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 15800
Date: 2002-09-30

On Mon, 30 Sep 2002 00:50:24 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
<jer@...> wrote:

> As for /H3/, we know it was voiced at one point (following the working
>of ablaut, for *píbeti had to lose the root vowel to make the consonants
>of older *pe-peH3-é-ti meet),

There are alternative explanations. If one believes in the glottalic theory, a
(rounded) glottal stop would also have had the effect of turning *p?(W) into *b
[ = *p'].

>and we know it changed (what would otherwise
>show up as) e into o which indicates rounding; also in the selection of
>/m/ or /n/ as the reduction of /mn/ it works just as well as /w, p, bh, m,
>kW, gW, gWh/ in taking /n/ by dissimilation, which also means it was in
>fact rounded; in Celtic it was dissimilated away before labiovelars, as in
>*eni(H3)kWos, *ma:tri(H3)kWaH2 (Hamp); in the lexeme *gWiH3wós it
>completely assimilated to the initial in pre-Germanic, so that *gwigwos
>could give Gms. *kwikwaz with the sound shift; this all practically proves
>it was a voiced labiovelar fricative, i.e. the fricative counterpart of
>*gW.
> The "first laryngeal" was not very different from a simple [h]. The
>list of examples of its aspirating affect on a following voiceless stop is
>quite long by now, much longer in fact than any list of examples of the
>aspirating effect of /H2/ on a preceding stop, a rule accepted by
>practically everybody. It *may* have had a slight palatal shade to it
>also, for how else could Greek develop sequences of syllabic sonants into
>/ne:, me:, le:, re:/ which all have a-timbre without laryngeals? So it was
>something like an /h/ with e-timbre, a voiceless /e/ if you will. If
>languages playing with aspiration as a feature in their stops are demanded
>to have a phoneme /h/, here it is.

Correct. But I still think that does not exclude that *some* h1's were in fact
not /h/ but /?/. It would really surprise me if *all* roots pre-laryngeally
reconstructed as vowel-initial (*es-, *ed- etc.) had been pronounced with h-.
We know for a fact they had *h1 (witness Hitt. zero grade as-, at-, etc.), but
we cannot tell which *h1's were /h/ and which were /?/ (except in those etyma
where /h1/ has an aspirating effect, where we can posit /h/ with some
confidence).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...