Re: Laryngeal h4

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@...> wrote:

>
> I have seen that a fourth laryngeal h4 has been posited for those
> cognates where Latin or Greek has <a-> but Hittite has <a-> too (no
> <ha-> from *h2e-). I would like to ask: is it possible that we could
> be dealing here with *h1a-, with <a> a wholly separate vowel,
> unaffected by the preceding *h1, which in Hittite appears as Ø- in

onset?

I've wondered about that myself. There doesn't seem to be any good
reason to reject the existence of PIE *a, even if it is somewhat rare.