Re: [tied] a last desperate plea

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

>
> 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

Aren't some of the word-inital "a"s in Hittite due to H2 or H1? It
seems possible that "h4" is simply one of the 3 in a certain
position. Does this explanation work?