On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 22:55:08 +0000, "Daniel J. Milton" <
dmilt1896@...>
wrote:
> I just did a Google search for "laryngeals" + "h4", and came up
>with one relevant hit -- Cybalist 4672 by a certain Miguel
>Carrasquer Vidal (to whom, by the way, I apologize for my lapse
>yesterday with "droog"). Would you get the h4 story out in open?
>What's EIEC for that matter.
EIEC is Mallory & Adams' Encyclopaedia of Indo-European Culture.
No need to apologize for "droog", except perhaps for the effort of reaching
for a Russian etymological dictionary to make absolutely positively sure
that it wasn't a borrowing from, say, Old Polish dróg [it isn't, of
course].
As to *h4, it's a laryngeal reconstructed for the purpose of explaining
non-Anatolian a-colouring (in the case of *h4up-, there is no /a/, but
there is /h-/ in Armenian), but no /h/ in Hittite, as expected if the
laryngeal were *h2.
Adams in EIEC seems to believe in *h4, or at least keep his options open
(better to overdifferentiate than to destroy information). I tend not to
believe in *h4, but I haven't personally checked all the relevant cases and
found ways to explain away the lack of /h/ in Hittite in all of them. I
assume others have, to their satisfaction. H. Craig Melchert, in
"Anatolian Historical Phonology" doesn't even mention *h4.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...