Re: [tied] Laryngeal theory as an unnatural

On Sat, 25 Jan 2003 17:23:08 -0000, "aquila_grande
<aquila_grande@...>" <aquila_grande@...> wrote:

>In IE many -o/e-stems and a:-stems have the same root, where the o/e-
>stem denotes masculine and a:-stem feminine. In an combined theory
>this could be explained in the following way:
>
>-In an early period there was some -e-stems ex: wlquem (acc of wolf)
>
>-Then a a-tuning laryngeal suffixe was added to denote a feminine
>being, then the pair wlquem (he-wolf)/wlqueAm (she-wolf) were created.
>
>Then the case ending -m tuned the -e to o, and the laryngeal A tuned
>the e to -a, creating wlquom (he-wolf)/wlqaAm(she-wolf)
>
>Then the laryngeal was lost with lengthening of the final wovel,
>creating: wlquom/wlqua:m. Later on, the -o, tune was analogically
>extended to other forms, but not all. The wokative remained as wlque.
>
>In this case the whole prossess created an ablaut pattern -e - o - a:
>in the stem-ending wovel, used grammatically to distinguish cases
>vocativ/other cases and to distinguish gender masculine/feminine.

But I don't see any new insights here into the laryngeal theory. The
*h2 of the feminine suffix coloured the vowel to /a/ and then
disappeared, lengthening the vowel (/a:/). That's what you say, and
that's exactly what the laryngeal theory says.

It's also true that the accusative ending *-m caused the thematic
vowel to become /o/ (in my version: the thematic vowel **/a/ was
lengthened by any following _voiced_ segment, and **/a:/ further
developed to /o/). But this has nothing to do with laryngeals: it
does not damge nor support the larynegal theory.

Of course both phenomena are cases of one sound being influenced by a
neighbouring sound, but that's not really a new insight: such
phenomena go by names like "conditioned soundlaws", "assimilation"
"dissimilation", etc.


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