--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, anthonyappleyard2 <no_reply@...> wrote:

>
> "Petusek" <petusek@...> wrote:
> > what are the reconstructed Nostratic counterparts of the PIE
> > (so-called) laryngeals? Can anybody give me any examples, please?
> > Thank you.
>
> "etherman23" <etherman23@> wrote:
> > It's been suggested that word final h2 (the only laryngeal found word
> > finally) developed from PPIE *k (*k doesn't appear word finally).
> > Bomhard, IIRC, reconstrcuts 4 laryngeals and equates them with 4
> > Afrasian laryngeals. Kortlandt reconstructs 3 laryngeals and links
> > them to Uralic and Altaic uvulars. Unfortunately I can't help you with
> > examples.
>
> My guess is:-
> H1 was the glottal stop.
> H2 was the voiceless epiglottal fricative heard in Arabic "MuH2ammad",
> and is sometimes transcribed as [h] with a dot under. The separate
> form of its Arabic letter looks like a 2 rotated 180deg.
> H3 was the ayin sound, as in Arabic [muH3allim] = "teacher". the
> separate form of its Arabic letter looks like a 3 rotated 180 degrees.
> Some say that there were two H1's. If so, then the other form was the
> ordinary h sound.
>

My current thinking (which presumes the Glottalic Theory and
Indo-Tyrrhenian Hypothesis) is that:
H1 was /S/
H2 was /h/ or perhaps /x/
H3 was /?/

That H2 is /h/ is fairly well agreed upon. In Indo-Iranian it
aspirates preceeding stops and it is phonetically low which would give
it the a-coloring property.

My assumption that H3 is a glottal stop is based on the Glottalic
Theory. H3 voices stops. Though this has been taken as evidence that
it is voiced, it's also possible that this wasn't voicing per say but
glottalization (which in the daughter languages was manifested as
voicing). The glottal stop being a back consonant could conceivably
back a vowel. If /e/ is back then the most unmarked form it would take
is /o/ so that there's no need to assume any lip rounding in H3 as
some researchers have done. I note that H3 voices stops but does not
cause aspiration. This supports the contention that it is not a fricative.

Most unusual is the claim that H1 is /S/. I have two reasons for this.
First is that there appears to be a few correspondances between PIE
*H1 and Etruscan s'. Since PIE has no /S/ otherwise the simplest
assumption if they are equated is that H1 is /S/. The second piece of
evidence comes from Uralic. There are several words, especially in the
Finnic branch that were apparently borrowed from PIE (or perhaps they
were inherited from Nostratic). In the Finnic languages *h corresponds
to *H1 in these words. This would imply that H1 is /h/ however PI
looks like it already has /h/ known as H2. In Finnic languages *h <
*S, so if /h/ is out of the realm of possibilities then the next most
likely candidate would be /S/. We should also consider that H1 doesn't
cause any voicing assimilation. This would most easily be explained
by assuming that H1 underwent voice assimilation. Given that PIE /s/
had a similar nature (except word initially where it's always
unvoiced) it wouldn't be unnatural for /S/ to also have /Z/ as an
allophone.

Of course, the jury is far from in on this.