Re: dhuga:ter ('LARYNGEALS')

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <miguelc@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 6:23 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: dhuga:ter ('LARYNGEALS')


> On Sat, 22 Mar 2008 22:53:59 -0500, "Patrick Ryan"
> <proto-language@...> wrote:
>
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <miguelc@...>
> >To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> >Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2008 8:37 PM
> >Subject: Re: [tied] Re: dhuga:ter ('LARYNGEALS')
> >
> >
> >> On Sat, 22 Mar 2008 11:41:00 -0500, "Patrick Ryan"
> >> <proto-language@...> wrote:
> >>
> >> >By the way, is it not suspiciously coincidental that the 'laryngeal'
> >> >theory
> >> >has three coloring agents that just happen to coincide with the three
> >> >attested vowels in PIE?
> >>
> >> It's neither suspicious nor a coincidence. It's just what we
> >> would expect.
> >
> ><snip>
> >
> >***
> >
> >Flip answers are timesavers, to be sure.
> >
> >Why do you not tell me why we should expect this in detail?
> >
> >Frankly, I think you have no argument to establish that.
>
> There is only so much room in the lower half of the vowel
> space, and we can only positively identify the laryngeals by
> their effect on the vowels. I suppose that if there had been
> only 1 colouring laryngeal --it would have coloured to /a/--
> we wouldn't have had the coincidence. In all other cases (2
> or more colouring laryngeals), we would have had what we
> have.
>
> And most things in PIE come in threes, anyway (*k, *k^, *kW;
> *k, *g, *gh).
>
>
> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> miguelc@...

***

Well, it is a minor point in one way but a major point in another.

The major point is that if "we can only positively identify the laryngeals
by their effect on the vowels", then if the lengthened vowels are 'original'
rather than 'colored', there is no evidence to propose that a 'laryngeal'
had any specific nature except to be a consonant that would be likely to
lengthen a vowel: /h/.

Actually, I think you are actually confusing two separate things.

You are presuming that the color of any 'laryngeal' should somehow correlate
with typological vowel quality frequencies.

Why?

If a system had only one coloring 'laryngeal', it might well 'color' vowels
to /u/.

What the 'color' of any given 'laryngeal' should be is a function of the
frequency of the 'laryngeal' in the system not its coloring or non-coloring
capabilities.

The strongest argument I know against 'coloring' 'laryngeals' is that intact
Semitic languages like Arabic have a full complement of 'gutturals'
(?/h/¿,H) and while these may produce allophones of the vocalic phonemes,
the allophones never rise to phonemic status as proposed for PIE.

Not being a numerologist, I cannot really evaluate your last remark
properly.

However, I can say that in the dorsal (velar) series, *gW and *kW are not so
much the velarized correspondents to *g^/*g and *k^/*k as substitutes for
earlier /G/ and /x/.


Patrick