--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer@...>
wrote:
> Both scholars also showed, immediately assisted
> by Rix, that some of the analogical explanations for schwa reflected as
> Greek /e/ and /o/ are morphologically impossible, and that there
> consequently is no possibility of accounting for the Greek laryngeal
> reflexes by a PIE inventory containing less than three laryngeals.
I didn't think the number of PIE contrasts was the issue. I
understood that Patrick's thesis was that the contrast lay not in the
laryngeal itself, but in the quality of the associated vowel. Thus
*&1, *&2 and *&3 would phonetically include an oral vowel, and the
distinction lie in that vowel rather than any associated consonant.
Patrick has consistently failed to address how, for example, *&1 would
have differed from *e or *eH, but that is a failing of Patrick, not
his thesis. A labelling of stages might help Patrick's argument.
(What stage/branch, for example, does *k^era?-tó-s correspond to?) I
haven't yet seen any arguments demonstrating that the contrast was not
carried in a vowel, albeit ultra-short. The biggest problem I see for
Patrick's theory is in the apparent correlation of vowel colour and
Hittite consonant.
Richard.