Re: dhuga:ter ('LARYNGEALS')

The reasons for the relative rarity of *H3 are semantic and have nothing to
do with vowel quality frequencies per se.

*H2 represents earlier *ha (feminine), *hha (indefinite plural), *?a
(stative), and *?a ('I', inactive).

No wonder it is frequent.


Patrick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 7:09 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: dhuga:ter ('LARYNGEALS')


> On 2008-03-23 12:39, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Sun, 23 Mar 2008 09:14:56 +0100, "fournet.arnaud"
> > <fournet.arnaud@... <mailto:fournet.arnaud%40wanadoo.fr>> wrote:
>
> > >Do we have statistics about this ?
> >
> > I haven't seen any. If I count the roots with initial
> > laryngeal in LIV, I get the following statistic:
> >
> > H- 14 (unknown laryngeal)
> > h1- 42
> > h2- 83
> > h3- 21
> >
> > That would seem to be significant enough to establish a
> > ranking: (1) *h2, (2) *h1, (3) *h3.
>
> ... which agrees quite well with the frequency of their occurrence in
> derivational suffixes and inflections. *h2 occurs e.g. in fem. *-ih2,
> fem. or coll *-h2, 1sg. pf. *-h2a, 2sg. pf. *-th2a, factitive *-(e)h2-;
> *h1 in stative *-(e)h1-, desiderative *-h1se/o-, optative *-j(e)h1-,
> instr.sg. *-(e)h1, nom.du. neuter *-ih1. *h3 is rare; it occurs
> (probably) in nom.du. anim. *-oh3, in the "Hoffmann suffix" *-h3(o)n-
> and hardly anywhere else otuside of root morphemes.
>
> Piotr
>
>