Re: [tied] Origins of Indo-European, and naturalness of laryngeals

>The "Laryngeal Theory" is based on several false premises, the most notable
>of which is that >"laryngeals" can "color" vowels. In languages like
>Arabic, ...

Your argument from Arabic fails. It is suggested that in PIE, laryngeals
colour vowels when they are lost - but you argue from a situation where
laryngeals are not lost, but survive. The two languages (PIE and Arabic)
both show laryngeals beside any vowel : in PIE we reconstruct, for
example, -eh1, -eh2 and -eh3. So Arabic is in this respect irrelevant.

> the form of the theory that proposes a value of [x] and [G] for
> "laryngeals" is particularly suspect >since neither [x] or [G] are
> "laryngeals' nor yet "pharyngeals" (not "guttural") but rather _velar_
> >fricatives.

Remember that the term "laryngeals" is merely a label, not a description.
It is used for historical reasons, and we're stuck with it. So the
"laryngeals" can be phonetically whatever the evidence compels us to
reconstruct - including velar fricatives.

Peter