Re: [tied] Re: IE prefix "*s"

20-12-03 09:25, Daniel Baum wrote:

> H4 is an idea first raised by E. Sturtevant in the 1930s, in order to
> explain why some examples of h2 show up as /h/ in Hittite, but others
> don't. As far as I know, this idea is discredited nowadays, but as I am
> not up-to-date on the literature concerning Hittite, I don't know what
> the current explanation of the phenomenon is.

It's been a long time since I last saw Kurylowicz's celebrated article
on PIE *& and Hittite <h> (1927), but I'm fairly sure that the fourth
laryngeal (added to Saussure's two and Møller's third) was first
proposed there. The absence of consonantal reflexes of *h2 and *h3 in
various contexts in Hittite has been explained quite satisfactorily and
the whole matter is no longer treated as troublesome.

Piotr