From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 57343
Date: 2008-04-15
----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 8:25 AM
Subject: Re: Horse Sense (was: [tied] Re: Hachmann versus Kossack?)
> On 2008-04-15 14:13, Patrick Ryan wrote:
>
> > No, of course, Hittite is not PIE but do you know of any recorded
> > language
> > closer to it than Hittite.
>
> Why should Hittite be regarded as formally close to PIE? Just because
> it's old and because some PIE laryngeals survived there as consonants?
> Languages don't change at a constant rate -- and Hittite, in particular,
> wasn't particularly conservative. Quite the opposite. Its phonology,
> morphology and lexicon were all _very_ heavily affected by substratal
> and adstratal influence. I don't think it _looks_ any closer to PIE
> than, say, Classical Greek or Vedic.
>
> > Hittite developments, though not necessarily definitive, should carry
> > appropriate weight.
>
> The phonetic realisation of <h> is not one of them. In the passage from
> PIE to Anatolian the whole obstruent system was radically transformed.
> The Anatolian languages are of course enormously important as they
> represent one of the two primary subfamilies of IE, but I wouldn't rely
> on them to reconstruct PIE phonetics.
>
> Piotr
***
Patrick:
There are strictly PIE indications as well.
It is generally thought that voiceless unaspirated stops combined with
'laryngeals' to produce voiceless aspirated stops.
What is the likelier scenario: <p> + <h> -> <pH>
or
<p> + <x> -> <pH> ?
Which involves the fewest assumptions?
***