From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 61406
Date: 2008-11-05
----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 11:56 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Laryngeal h4
>
> On 2008-11-04 23:51, Andrew Jarrette wrote:
>
>> I have seen that a fourth laryngeal h4 has been posited for those
>> cognates where Latin or Greek has <a-> but Hittite has <a-> too (no
>> <ha-> from *h2e-). I would like to ask: is it possible that we could
>> be dealing here with *h1a-, with <a> a wholly separate vowel,
>> unaffected by the preceding *h1, which in Hittite appears as Ø- in onset?
>
> Definitely.
>
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/38439
>
> Piotr
>
============
Definitely...
not so clear,
As I have said before,
This requires the underlying premice that there is only one proto-phoneme
that should have become H2.
If you assume at least two phonemes H2 :
1. a weak one that becomes Ø in Hittite
2. a stronger one that becomes h in Hittite
then you cannot conclude that Hittite allows you to posit *a in PIE.
And I consider there are many more reasons to posit two H2 than there are to
posit *a
For example some laryngeals harden into k, some other don't.
This is a wide-spread phenomenon.
And the connection between Hittite alpa "cloud" to the root Halba "white" is
not that much solid.
This is poetry.
Piotr once mailed a list of his "fundamental a" words.
about 30 "words"
Personally, I don't think this list has anything compelling.
Arnaud