[tied] Re: The trouble with *h3

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

> As far as I'm concerned, *pi-ph3-e/o- didn't count as decisive
> evidence as long as it was an isolated known instance of the
> voicing. I saw no way of ruling out other possible explanations,
> such as sporadic voicing dissimilation (*p...p > *p...b). But
> Hamp's elegant analysis of the "river" word *abon- as *h2ap-h3on-
> has strengthened the case for voiced *h3 considerably, and Olsen's
> demonstration that the Hoffmann suffix regularly induced
> assimilatory voicing in preceding stops practically proves that *h3
> was _distinctively_ [+ voice]. The only proviso is that we agree to
> reconstruct the suffix as *-h3on- (rather than, say, *-h1on-,
> which, if my memory serves me well, was Hoffmann's own
> reconstruction). I used to have doubts about it, but now, having
> done more reading on nasal suffixes and some more thinking on my
> own I have overcome my initial objections. I even think Olsen is
> probably right in identifying *-h3on- with the root *//h3en(h2)-
> // 'carry (a burden)', as in <onus>.

First I have a couple questions :-P

1. Which IE dialects have the *abon- word?
2. Aside from (Vedic?) Sanskrit (pibati) and Latin (bibet), which IE
dialects have voicing in their forms for *peh3- 'drink'?

That said, I think that it seems likely for the *-h3on suffix to be
related to the root *h3en(h2)- 'carry (a burden)'. If this was
indeed the case, then we have a quite nice compound for a 'river'
word: *h2ap-h3on- 'water-carrier' > 'river'. Since noun-verb
compounds (I forget their technical term, something from Sanskrit)
were productive in IE, such a compound seems likely.

On another note, what do you think the *phonetic* realization of /h3/
was? If the voicing effects noted above were in fact the result
of /h3/, then it was indeed voiced. However, this does not say what
its articulatory position was. I think, based on the fact that it
backed an adjacent vowel, that /h3/ was a pharyngeal fricative.

- Rob