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

On Mon, 30 Sep 2002 14:01:18 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
<jer@...> wrote:

>On Mon, 30 Sep 2002, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
>>
>> [...]  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).
>
>So you would like to have two sources for PIE *H1 - why only two? Surely
>you are not being guided by the principle of not inventing entities you do
>not need, so why stop here?

I'm being guided by the observation that the vast majority of languages have
words beginning with V- (with or without automatic glottal stop ?V-) as well as
hV-, if they have /h/ at all. A matter of common sense. In practice, since the
matter is mostly unknowable (barring considerations of a Nostratic nature), I'm
perfectly happy to adopt an algebraic position and use the symbol *h1.

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