--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "elmeras2000" <jer@...> wrote:
> I know of no evidence that the laryngeals
> would have coalesced with each other before vanishing; it is often
> presented that way, but there is no evidence that I have ever seen
> or heard about
What sort of argument would you accept as evidence? How about this:
If there were still three laryngeals, then under zero-grade *ah1,
*ah2, and *ah3 all have the same reflex of /i/ in Vedic. This
implies that in that time frame *h1, *h2, and *h3 had all changed to
be i-colored. It seems improbable that they would all make the same
change. And if they did and were so similar, how did they maintain
separate identities?
Do I infer correctly from your statement that you would agree that
there is no evidence in Indo-Iranian for multiple laryngeals?
> The three Greek colours of syllabic resonants followed by
> laryngeals present the same oppositions of coloration as the
> laryngeals had when they coloured adjacent /e/ in a prestage of
> PIE, That certainly indicates that the laryngeals were still there
> in the relevant post-PIE linguistic stage when the specifically
> Greek sonorant colorations were effected.
As you know, Patrick has proposed a hypothesis that laryngeals did
not color adjacent vowels, but rather the vowel color was an
inherent quality of the vowels. One line of evidence against this
hypothesis is the Greek reflexes of zero-grade with an adjacent
laryngeal. (That is what "the three Greek colours of syllabic
resonants followed by laryngeals" refers to, is it not?) What
other lines of evidence are there against this hypothesis?
Tom