From: Rick McCallister
Message: 52978
Date: 2008-02-13
> On 2008-02-13 19:17, Rick McCallister wrote:____________________________________________________________________________________
>
> > And what are those reasons?
>
> For the vast majority of roots that have *a- in the
> Brugmannian
> reconstruction, Hittite shows <h-> if it has a
> cognate at all:
> halkuessar (*h2algWH-), ha:ssa- (*h2ah1s-), ha:nz
> (h2ant-), harki-
> (h2arg^-) etc. It's therefore safe to assume that
> Brugmannian *a-
> _almost_ always represents *h2a-. *o- is more
> tricky, since *h3o-
> accounts only for some of its occurrences, *h2o-
> being another common
> source (both have <h-> in Hittite). Words which have
> Hitt. <e-> or <a->
> may go back to *h1e-, *h1o- or *h1a- or reflect *e-,
> *o-, *a- without a
> consonantal onset. But where the two possibilities
> can be distinguished,
> we usually find some evidence of an initial
> laryngeal, e.g. *h1d-ónt-
> with a prothetic vowel in Gk. and Arm., lengthening
> in Ved. á:sat- 'not
> being' < *n.-h1s-n.t- and ipf. 3pl. á:yan 'they
> went' < *e h1j-ent. Such
> evidence is of course easier to find for frequently
> used roots,
> occurring in diverse morphological environments, but
> if _they_ have to
> be reconstructed as *h1ed-, *h1es- and *h1ei-, at
> least some if not all
> of less common roots surely had *h1- as well and
> vowel-initial roots
> were at best rare in PIE.
>
> Piotr
>
>