Re: [tied] Re: Schleicher's Tale

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003, Rob wrote:

> I was under the impression that Pre-PIE /xWa/ > /o/ everywhere,
> and /xa/ > /a/ everywhere; in other words, that they were immune to
> e/o variations.  Is this wrong?

Yes, apparently. Beekes made a persuasive case in a masterful article
entitled H2O in 1972 (in the journal Die Sprache) proving that /o/ is not
coloured by /H2/. One of the best examples will be *H2ost-/*H2ast- 'bone'
seen in Lat. os, Welsh as.

>
> Digression: Hittite preserves two laryngeals, which Piotr Gasiorowski
> says were velar ('h') and uvular ('hh') fricatives, respectively.
> Could it be that Hittite 'h' /x/ < 'h2' /x/, and 'hh' /Q/ < 'h3' /xW/?

No, <hh> and <h> are the strong and weak alternants of a single
morphophoneme, much like <tt>/<t> for *t. The alternation only applies to
word-internal position where the IE background is always *H2.

Jens