--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Grzegorz Jagodzinski"
<grzegorj2000@...> wrote:
> > He's right about these instances of *a, yes, but
> > I think he might be going too far in some cases
> > like *was-. I don't think it truly was **wHs- at
> > the very last stage of IE. Vocalization of laryngeals
> > in these positions would have occured early on.
>
> Why? Notice that *H used to yield a vowel (E, call it "schwa" or
> what you like) easily, anyway more easily than *r or *l. And wlC-
> yielded wl.C-, not *ulC-, didn't it? So, why wHC- mightn't have
> yielded wEC-?
There is at least one other language that I know of (Biblical Hebrew)
that had phonetic schwas (indeed, the word "schwa" comes from Hebrew)
articulated next to laryngeals. Furthermore, Biblical Hebrew had
three different "colors" of schwas: a-colored, e-colored, and o-
colored. At least one descendant of IE, Greek, had the same thing.
My take on the matter is that "syllabic laryngeals" were never really
syllabic, but had a schwa(-like) vowel coarticulated with them when
they were in zero-grade position. For example, *pxté:r 'father' was
likely pronounced [p@...:r]. In every IE language, this schwa merged
with some other vowel phoneme -- /a/ in most descendants, /i/ in Indo-
Iranian, and /e/, /a/, or /o/ in Greek, depending on the laryngeal
involved.
Concerning wHC-, then, there is nothing to prohibit such a sequence
in IE. However, the Greek word _(w)ástu_ 'town' and Vedic
_vástu_ '[ibid.]' both show a form with two zero-grade syllables.
That's why I think it was unlikely to have been of native IE origin.
- Rob