Re: PIE Reconstruction

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

> Rob wrote:
>
> > Couldn't that be from analogy with _as-_ 'be'?
>
> I don't think so, because <a:sat-> is the antonym of <s-at->, not
> of *<as-at-> 'existing' (nonexistent :-)). The analogy of <sat->
> produced the "regularised" alternative negated form <á-sat-> (with
> a short /a/, also occurring in the RV). As there is no analogical
> explanation for the form with <a:->, it's rather clearly of
> phonological origin.
>
> > Or do you think there
> > was still a phonetic schwa adjacent to the laryngeal?
>
> Why a schwa? The initial sequence *Hs- regularly gives RV s-, which
> means that the laryngeal (still preserved in Proto-Indo-Iranian)
> was consonantal in this cluster. It caused the lengthening of the
> reflex of *n. as it also did in word-internal contexts.

Even so, a sequence like /n.?s-/ or /n.hs-/ seems very difficult to
pronounce cross-linguistically. Also cf. Biblical Hebrew, where
phonetic (but not phonemic?) schwas were often present
with "laryngeals".

I'm not saying that the schwa was a realization of the laryngeal; I'm
saying it was realized *with* the laryngeal.

- Rob