--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "etherman23" <etherman23@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
> wrote:
> >
> > ***
> > Patrick:
> >
> > No PIE root may begin with a vowel.
>
> That's the standard theory but not a single IE language lacks native
> words with initial vowels.
I had always understood that Farsi was an IE language. (I don't know
whether the Daric variant of Modern Persian has initial vowels; it
still has syllable-initial consonant clusters, whereas Farsi doesn't.)
> Hittite, which generally retains
> laryngeals, has no attested laryngeal for PIE *es.
What attestation could you possibly expect for Hittite if the *h1 were
a glottal stop? Do we have ancient texts describing the pronunciation
of Hittite?
To take a modern example, all Thai syllables begin with a consonant,
and the written language has a corresponding consonant letter.
Syllable-final glottal stops are written differently. Non-final
syllables may begin with a glottal stop. Does this spelling attest
syllable-initial glottal stops? (I've left the very few words like
the word for 'rishi' out of the discussion - it only strengthen the
arguments for non-attestation of glottals stops.)
Now the script for Moabite, a NW Semitic language, had three variants
of aleph, depending on the following vowel. Does this mean that
word-initial glottal stop is not attested for Moabite? Possibly it
does, for the Gurmukhi script (the script normally used for Panjabi,
another IE language), has a similar 3-way split in its vowel-holder
consonant letters. Or do all words begin with consonants in Panjabi?
Richard.