Re: [tied] PIE laryngeals

Yay necromancy! But that aside, I have been modifying some of my
ideas on laryngeal identity, especially after reading some Winifred
Lehmann. I think the result is part Lehmann, part Rasmussen in its
nature, with a little bit of Goranson thrown in. ^.^

h1 = either a glottal stop or a glottal fricative. These may have
been allophonic.
The voiced version of h1 is a schwa.

h2 = voiceless velar or uvular fricative. I prefer the latter myself,
but I could understand the possibility of it being velar before high
vowels, i.e. that h2 is allophonically either a voiceless velar or
uvular fricative.
The voiced version of h2 is a lowered schwa, represented as an upside-
down a.
Adjacent to h2, *e eventually merged with natural PIE *a, but when
this happened (Early-, Mid-, Late-, Post-PIE?) is uncertain. I think
that before the merger, *e around h2 may have become a low front or
central vowel, and since that wasn't too far different from *a, the
two became pronounced the same. This would have DEFINITELY happened
once or before the loss of the laryngeals.
Perhaps the intervocalic voicing of the h2 in Hittite is present in
PIE, perhaps not - it's something to seriously look into.

h3 = (rounded) voiced velar fricative. It seems likely to have been
rounded, based on examples of laryngeal hardening in Germanic such as
*kwikwaz from *gwih3os (lively).
The voiced version was a backed rounded version of schwa, represented
as an o with a central bar.
Adjacent to h3, *e eventually merged with natural PIE *o, but again,
when this happened is uncertain. I think that before the merger, *e
around h3 may have become a mid front rounded vowel; this isn't too
far from *o, and eventually the two merged. The exact phonetic
position of this one, admittedly, is probably the weakest of the
bunch.

Does this sound plausible?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "aquila_grande" <aquila_grande@...>
wrote:

>
> In many european languages, an uvular spirant (uvular r, unvoised
> uvular spirant) colours the e into a. I therefor tink h2 likly was
> an uvular spirant. A rounded uvular spirant would likely produce an
> o-colouring and hence be h3.
>
> But also a rounded voiced pharyngeal spirant is likely to give an

o-

> colouring.
>
> Then h1 would likely be a h-sound. (A glottal or pharyngeal
> approximant/spirant)
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@>
> wrote:
> >
> > On 2006-04-19 22:23, David Mandic wrote:
> >
> > > What theories are there about the phonetic value of the PIE
> laryngeals?
> > > I've read somewhere they might have been pronounced as x', x

and

> xw
> > > respectively (to fit into the pattern set by k', k and kw

etc.).

> > > However, it doesn't seem plausible to me - if xw turned e into
> o, why
> > > didn't kw or gw?
> >
> > This objection has often been raised and is certainly valid.
> >
> > > According to me, h1 could have been a glottal stop,
> > > since it didn't affect a flanking e (excluding the

lengthening),

> and
> > > disappeared early, even in Anatolian.
> >
> > It's probably the majority view at present that *h1 was some kind
> of
> > glottal sound. When not vocalised, it seems to have had an
> aspirating
> > effect on a following (sic) stop in PIE, though the details of

the

> > process are not entirely clear yet, which would favour a glottal
> > approximant/fricative [h] over a glottal stop [?]. However, it's
> hard to
> > rule out the possibility that the reconstruction *h1 covers two
> > different but hard-to-distinguish PIE phonemes, */h/ and */?/.
> >
> > > H2 on the other hand might have
> > > been a sort of pharyngeal.
> >
> > Yes, a back fricative, at any rate. Its main allophone was
> voiceless,
> > but the voicelessness doesn't seem to have been distinctive, as
> *h2 did
> > not participate in voice assimilation processes. Like *h1, it
> could
> > exert pre-aspirating influence on PIE stops. Its Indo-Iranian
> reflex
> > aspirated a _preceding_ stop (which indicates an /h/-like
> pronunciation
> > at that stage).
> >
> > > As for h3, I've got no idea. Are there any
> > > sounds which display similar effects on vowels in other
> languages of the
> > > world?
> >
> > You mean retraction and/or rounding? There is no shortage of
> phonetic
> > environments that might produce such coarticulatory effects. The
> > influence of *h3 on _consonants_ is perhaps more enlightening,
> since
> > there is some decent evidence of voicing assimilation produced by
> *h3,
> > as in reduplicated *pí-[b]h3-e/o- and in some "Hoffmann

compounds"

> with
> > final *-h3on-, such as *h2ap-h3on- > Celt. *abon-. It would be
> > interesting to see if *s > *z before *h3. Unfortunately, PIE
> basically
> > excluded -es-stems as first members of compounds, so we would

need

> a
> > root noun with final *-s before the Hoffmann element as a test
> case, and
> > I can't think of a good example at the moment.
> >
> > > And what about the reflexes of the laryngeals in Slavic and
> > > Baltic - they also yielded prosodic (tonal) features.
> >
> > Yes, but these features don't distinguish the laryngeals, so they
> are of
> > little use in reconstructing the phonetic details you're
> interested in.
> >
> > Piotr
> >
>