From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 46421
Date: 2006-10-19
----- Original Message -----From: Piotr GasiorowskiSent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 1:42 PMSubject: Re: [tied] Origins of Indo-European, and naturalness of laryngealsOn 2006-10-18 19:31, Andrew Jarrette wrote:
> I have often been struck by the oddity, to an English speaker, of
> the laryngeal theory. It posits the former frequent occurrence of
> various phonemes articulated at the back of the mouth, often fricative
> or otherwise articulated with constriction of the throat. If these are
> what Proto-Indo-European had in abundance, then this would suggest that
> PIE probably sounded most similar, of all modern languages, to Arabic.
> Which would make me inclined to say that Indo-European arose close to
> Arabic-speaking territory, perhaps Anatolia on the northern fringes of
> Mesopotamia.
Aren't you jumping to conclusions? If there were just three laryngeals,
and if *h1 was glottal [h], we are left with just two back fricatives,
probably [x] (or something similar) and [G]. Why should the impressions
of a Modern English speaker suffice for this inventory to qualify as
odd? Speakers of OLD English had all these sounds in their language (in
some positions they were eventually vocalised or lost with the
compensatory lengthening of vowels, not unlike the PIE laryngeals).
Piotr***
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ice-retreat.gif
In the picture linked above, we see the retreat of glaciation that directly precedes our own times.
Sometime prior to, or around 18kya, at least some of the population of the Caucasus, which was ethnically Caucasian, speaking Caucasian languages one of which was similar to Hattic were driven southward into contact with Afro-Asiatic speakers, the two of the contact areas being Anatolia in the west and Sumer in the east.
A typical development is seen with the less numerous Hattics (the later Hittites) who first learned Afro-Asiatic there. They learned an AA language that had four gutturals: [?], [h], [¿], and [h.], and still used at least three vowel qualities to differentiate roots semantically (non-Semitic, where vowel gradations are purely grammatical).
This new learned language became the basis from which PIE developed (one variety of it), and the now Hittites restricted their earlier language, Hattic, to religious use.
The same process was occurring elsewhere with slightly different results in phonology and lexicon though a Sprachbund disseminated common characteristics througj, at least, the western areas.
As the glaciation receded, Caucasians speaking varieties of PIE pulsed in all directions _except_ south of Anatolia where they were met by successful resistance from ethnic AA speakers.
There are few linguistic theories that have been more vituperitively attacked than the "Laryngeal Theory" in PIE. Strangely, it is probably the dominant theory today.
Those who originated it were quite aware that it seemed to suggest that AA('s) and IE('s) were genetically related (Møller).
The idea that AA's and IE's were ethnically related was strongly rejected by the mostly Europeans who were intensely studying languages and cultures but regarding only the language ([P]IE) as derived from AA languages overcomes that objection though it will hardly be a source of pride for IEists to realize that IE (and PIE) is a relatively recently derived _construct_, not a language with a more ancient pedigree like (P)AA.
The "Laryngeal Theory" is based on several false premises, the most notable of which is that "laryngeals" can "color" vowels. In languages like Arabic, where gutturals are both laryngeal and pharyngeal, all four gutturals regularly appear before [a], [i], and [u]. Though the gutturals slightly modify the vowels allophonically, the basic phonemic character of he vowels is not affected.
We should keep firmly in mind that 'guttural' here means simply 'produced in the throat', i.e. posterior to the velum, the place of the larynx and pharynx.
Thus, the form of the theory that proposes a value of [x] and [G] for "laryngeals" is particularly suspect since neither [x] or [G] are "laryngeals' nor yet "pharyngeals" (not "guttural") but rather _velar_ fricatives.
As some readers may not know, an *H4 was also proposed to account for words in Hittite that had no <h>, and was theorized as phonetically [?], the glottal stop, to differentiate the *H1 which caused lengthening of the vowel, and was theorized as simple [h].
On the basis of what I have argued above, I theorize that only two "laryngeals" (really 'gutturals') are detectable in Hittite: [?] (Hittite <Ø>) and [h] (Hittite <h>). As is well-known, cuneiform V probably derives from Mesopotamian [?V].
I propose that [?] in the AA language into contact with which the Hattic people came, is seen (usually) as Hittite <Ø>, representing [?V]; and that [h] and [h.] _both appear in Hittite as <h>, probably simply [h].
AA [¿] appears in Hittite as <y/i> with possibly some appearances as <h>.
AA roots in the form [ha/i/uC] become [ha:/e:/o:C]. Any AA root without a a guttural, hence containing a short vowel in IE, appears a [CeC]. It appears to me at this time that [?a/i/u] could also lengthen at least initial root vowels.
It is clear from this that any study of (P)IE that does not look at the basic Nostratic hypothesis, that IE and some AA languages are related (derived), misses a great source of information about the earliest forms of IE languages.
To be clear, I believe it is incorrect to assert that PAA and PIE are derived from a common ancestor (Nostratic), but rather I assert that IE languages are derived from specific set of AA languages spoken in Anatolia with possible extensions even farther west into Europe by contact with originally speakers of Caucasian languages.
Patrick
***