On 2006-07-27 09:36, P&G wrote:
> H4 does seem to be an invention purely to explain the unexpected absence
> of H- in some Hittite words. It has not won wide acceptance, as far as
> I know, because inventing a PIE phoneme just for one languae is inefficient.
For two languages, actually, since *h4 is at the same time, somewhat
paradoxically, supposed to account for the unexpected _occurrence_ of
some instances of Albanian <h-> (belated apologies for a mistake I made
in message #28665; I haven't noticed it until now!). The case for *h4
has always been shaky, however, and very few IEists have accepted it.
Douglas Q. Adams has done most to popularise the idea of *h4 by using it
in the EIEC, which in my opinion was a risky thing to do in a reference
book addressed to all sorts of interested readers, also those who are
not aware of the controversial aspects of some of the reconstructions.
Piotr