Re: [tied] Re: Greek laryngeals

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 5879
Date: 2001-02-01

It's very simple. PIE (and all its daughters) have plenty of instances of /e/ and /o/ that have nothing to do with laryngeals. For example, Greek ne(w)os < PIE *newos and Greek genos < PIE *g^enh1os (the second vowel in this word stands next to *h1, but is not coloured by it. Now if there was a time when Greek A stood for *h2, E for *h1 and O for *h3 (there are serious problems with such an assignment, pointed out by Miguel, but let's ignore them for the sake of the present argument), we should expect the above words to be written NWS (<nu> <digamma> <sigma>) and GNES (<gamma> <nu> <epsilon> <sigma>), rather than NEWOS, GENOS. There is no trace of such conventions in the oldest alphabetic Greek inscriptions.
 
Piotr
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: tgpedersen@...
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2001 11:29 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: Greek laryngeals

--- In cybalist@......, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@......> wrote:
> Just show us those archaic Greek inscriptions in which A, E, O
stand for laryngeals while vowels are not marked.
>
> Piotr
>
How could you possibly tell one way or the other? That was my point.

Torsten