--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "aquila_grande" <aquila_grande@...>
wrote:
>
> I wonder: Are there any instances of phonemic difference between
> aspirated stops and stops + h in IE?
>
> If this is not the case, perhaps everything that look like aspirated
> stops were stops + h(1,2or3) in IE, and the whole consept of aspirated
> stops an illution?
There are examples of Sanskrit having a voiced aspirate where
everywhere else has a voiced nonaspirate. For example *eg'(H)o. These
are probably best explained as voiced stop plus laryngeal. There are
some instances of this with voiceless aspirates. For example *ponthos.
In Sanskrit there's the expected pantHas, yet Iranian languages show
alternation between a voiceless stop and a voiceless fricative (<
voiceless aspirate). This makes sense if in Iranian languages a vowel
sometimes existed between the stop and a laryngeal, and other times
not. All of this suggests that stop+laryngeal > aspirated stop only in
Indo-Aryan. Actually in the Slavic languages this has also been
proposed for voiceless velar stops followed by a laryngeal. On the
flip side there are examples where it seems unlikely that a laryngeal
is the cause of the voiceless aspirate.