Number of Laryngeals and Nostratic Roots

I think I should add this to what I wrote earlier:

It's not at all unimportant how many laryngeals there were. If we accept
the three- (or four-) laryngeal theory, this means that the PIE root 'to
be', for example, starts with a laryngeal (*Hes-). If there was only one
laryngeal, there's no need for putting it at the beginning of this root
which in this case sounded simply *es-. This would make a huge difference
for the Nostratic roots.
In the first case, we're looking for the sequence Hes or Kes (the
Fenno-Ugric evidence shows a k-sound in some words that are considered to be
IE. Whether we understand them as loans or as words with common origines
makes no difference in this case). We can easily imagine that a k or a h
could undergo many changes, not to mention the s of this root or even its
vowel.
In the second case, the required root could have an s, z, h or r sound in a
convenient place. Gosh, we could organize a competition in finding as many
fitting �Nostratic� roots as possible. If we're not too difficult to please
(and those ho speak in favour of the Proto-language don't seem to be), a
�fishing expedition� (Don Ringe's expression) in just any dictionary should
result in abounding Nostratic or Proto-language material.

Simona Klemencic


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