On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 15:46:32 +0000, elmeras2000 <
jer@...> wrote:
>On the basis of these two Greek examples with /h-/ and evidence for
>lengthening the Greek dichotomy /h-/ : /z-/ is projected back into
>PIE as *Hy- : *y- respectively by the "Vienna school".
But *y- gives h- in the relative pronoun <hos> etc < *yos, which is highly
unlikely to be *h1yos, if we apply the rule of tumb that pronominal stems
only contain a single consonant.
Unlike what we have in other cases of (H)C-, where Armenian can tell us if
there was a laryngeal or not, and Greek can tell us which laryngeal, in the
case of *(H)y-, both Armenian and Greek abandon us (the reflexes of *(H)y-
in Armenian are wholly unclear: 0-, j-, j^-???, Greek has no prothetic
vowel, but only z- and h- in a distribution which is unclear).
I do not believe there was an initial laryngeal in the roots *yeug- and
*ye:kWr(t) [*ye:pWrt], because I believe *y- here comes from earlier
palatalized **l^ (Arm. luc "yoke", leard "liver"; external links to
Nakh-Daghestanian *r(y)ukk "yoke", Uralic *lapde ~ *dapde "spleen"). Greek
here shows that this *y- < **l^- is not distinguished from original *y-,
and that it can give both h- (he:par) and z- (zugon).
That makes me wonder whether the distribution of h- and z- in Greek has
anything to do with the initial at all. Perhaps it is conditioned by *what
follows*. But the only clear correlation I can find is z-, not h-, before
/h/ < /s/ (zéo:, zó:nnu:mi, zu:me:). More speculatively, if /w/ and
/h2/(???) also gave /h/ at a certain stage, that might also explain zeiaí
(*yewV-), ze:los/za:los (*yah2-los). But zugón/zeûgma (and zorx) remain
unexplained.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...