Re: Laryngeals: arguments from typology?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@... wrote:

>
> > The specific effects of the laryngeals are various, and show up
> > slightly differently in different languages. They include vowel
> > length and aspiration, but also accentuation, and various kinds of
> > paradigm irregularity.
>
> > Peter
>
> One thing I've been wondering about the laryngeal theory is whether laryngeal-induced coloring (and lengthening) is a comparativ or internal reconstruction. My current impression is that it's the latter - and so for PIE proper the situation would have been all six of *a *e *o *a: *e: *o:, tho we'll still need some actual laryngeals around to account for Anatolian. How Brugmann's Law fits here I'm not sure.
>

Are you doubting whether there were laryngeals other than those attested to by Anatolian? (If so, I share this doubt.) What do you make, though, of loan proposals in which IE laryngeals surface as Uralic [h], [k] etc.?

> Another note, is there any evidence outside of Greek for root-initial preconsonantal (ie. vocalizing) laryngeals? If not, is there anything speaking against considering these prefixes of some sort? The idea of various complex onset clusters reconstructed on the evidence of one branch only sounds distressingly ad hoc to me.
>

I don't think every case can be explained away as a prefix: for example, Gr. <ane:r> corresponds to OInd. <nar>, which has no prefix but which lengthens the preceding vowel in compounds such as <su:nara->. However, the lengthening element in this case need not have been a laryngeal.

> Relatedly, is there any consonantal segmental evidence for root-initial prevocalic *h1? Greek again has /e/ in the zero-grade, but does anything preclude considering this eg. a not-quite-lost reflex of the original root vowel?
>
> John Vertical
>