Re: [tied] Re: Schleicher's Tale

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 20:20:27 +0100, P&G <petegray@...> wrote:

>If we accept the Greek evidence (as I think we can - there are too many
>points where it agrees with what must be reconstructed), then that raises
>other questions. Did syllabic laryngeals exist within PIE before the
>break-up?

They (or it) must have existed. Not only does Hittite (presumably the
first to break off) have them, but their very origin lies in the
"zero-grade event", which also predates the break-up.

>Reconstructed "words" have a full vowel somewhere for the
>accent - so what traditionally appears as a syllabic laryngeal could be a
>consonant cluster, simplified after the break-up.

That would imply zero grade (e.g. *h1és-mi, *&1s-mén) _after_ the breakup,
which is a lot harder to swallow than 2 additional phonemes.

>If the Greek evidence is
>acceptable, and PIE did have 3 syllabic laryngeals, they cannot have been
>the /e, a, o/ of Greek, as there is no way to explain their collapse in all
>the other language groups. So if the Greek evidence is acceptable, either
>PIE did not have syllabic laryngeals, or it had three more vocalic phonemes,
>which all collapse together independently in the daughter languages - except
>Greek.

One can imagine a system more or less like modern Portuguese, where
unstressed /e/ is /&/ (schwa), unstressed /a/ is /A/ (i.e a centralized /a/
or lowered /&/) and unstressed /o/ is /u/ (better make that centralized /U/
for PIE).

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