Re: [tied] Re: Schleicher's Tale

From: P&G
Message: 24873
Date: 2003-07-28

> >Also, as for the possibility of "syllabic laryngeals," I would
> >imagine that they would be pronounced originally as whispered vowels,
> >but then quickly vocalized. What do you think?

It is much harder to establish the existence of three phonemically distinct
vowels from "syllabic laryngeals" than it is to establish three phonemic
consonants. A possibility that has been explored by various people is that
there was only one syllabic variant, as against three consonantal ones.
Greek is the only language that appears systematically to offer three
different reflexes for the syllabic laryngeals. And there is room to
dispute the Greek evidence, by saying that analogy, vowel harmony, etc is
responsible for the three different vowels.

If we accept the Greek evidence (as I think we can - there are too many
points where it agrees with what must be reconstructed), then that raises
other questions. Did syllabic laryngeals exist within PIE before the
break-up? Reconstructed "words" have a full vowel somewhere for the
accent - so what traditionally appears as a syllabic laryngeal could be a
consonant cluster, simplified after the break-up. If the Greek evidence is
acceptable, and PIE did have 3 syllabic laryngeals, they cannot have been
the /e, a, o/ of Greek, as there is no way to explain their collapse in all
the other language groups. So if the Greek evidence is acceptable, either
PIE did not have syllabic laryngeals, or it had three more vocalic phonemes,
which all collapse together independently in the daughter languages - except
Greek.

So am I right to be cautious about these vowels you are busy describing?

Peter