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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Laryngeal consonants in Proto-Indo-European
In-Reply-To: Randy.Witlicki@pop.valley.net's message of 26 Apr 1995 16:56:29 GMT
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In article <3nltvt$dij@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> Randy.Witlicki@pop.valley.net
(Randy Witlicki) writes:

>I have read about "laryngeal consonants" i.e. sounds produced in the larynx
>used in proto-indo-european. Just what were these sounds; how were they
>produced and what did they sound like?  How many such sounds were there?  How
>could anyone figure out that a dead language used sounds that nobody makes
>anymore?

>I am very interested in this subject and would appreciate book references or
>other information.

The questions are reasonable, but not directly answerable.

For this, we need to go back in the history of Indo-European studies to late
1878, when Ferdinand de Saussure published a monograph on the PIE vowel system.

Philologists has known for some time that there were long vowels that did not
alternate regularly with short vowels in PIE, but with a single vowel they
signified with the symbol shwa (the "upside down e" you see in dictionaries).
What Saussure showed was that vowel length vs. shwa patterned like vowel+R vs.
R alone, and he postulated two consonants which disappeared leaving both vowel
length and vowel color (that is, *a: and *o: in the European languages), or an
"obscure" vowel shwa in those environments in which a vowel did not precede
them.  Saussure simply referred to these as "resonants" like *r, *l, and so on.

A Danish philologist, Herman M{\o}ller, took up these ideas of Saussure's, and
used them in his work trying to find cognates between the Indo-European and
Semitic languages.  Since there are consonants with known vocalic affects in
the Semitic languages, known as laryngeals and pharyngeals, M{\o}ller called
Saussure's reconstructions "Indo-European laryngeals."

Fast forward 40 years, to 1925.  10 years earlier, Hittite had been shown to be
clearly Indo-European, but there were some odd consonants, written with cunei-
form symbols that in the Semitic Akkadian were pharyngal fricatives, that had
to be explained.  This was done in a masterful paper by Jerzy Kurylowicz, who
showed that the Hittite consonants (which were a sticking point for acceptance
as IE for some linguists) corresponded to Saussure's hypothetical resonants.
This strengthened *both* cases at once.

Over the years, people have tried to determine what the PIE "laryngeals" were
like.  Given their vocalic affects, the most likely candidates are still
pharyngeal or laryngeal consonants like those found in Afro-Asiatic and the
languages of the Caucasus, families close to the proposed homeland of the
Indo-European speakers.  However, most of these efforts have faltered, in my
opinion, because of a mistaken view of the PIE vowel system.

In any case, leaving such issues aside, there were clearly 4 laryngeals, based
on the Hittite evidence:  Two a-coloring (one leaves an <h> in Hittite, one
does not), one o-coloring, and one e-coloring or non-coloring (in the standard
version of the theory).

I don't know how deeply you want to get into this.  I'll provide a couple of
references, and if you find that you want more information you can contact me
by e-mail.

Hoenigswald, Henry.  _Language Change and Linguistic Reconstruction_.  The
    final chapter is a demonstration of Saussure's result using very strict
    rules about allowed assumptions in internal reconstruction.

Lindemann, Otto.  _The so-called "laryngeal" theory_.  This is a mid-1980s
    synthesis of the state of our knowledge.  It is fairly techincal; you
    should at least have some background in linguistics and the classical
    languages to appreciate it.

de Saussure, Ferdinand.  _M{\'e}moire sur le syst{\`e}me primitif des voyelles
    dans les langues indo-europ{\'e}ennes_.  If you read French, the original
    monograph is still a classic of argumentation.  It was re-printed in the
    late 1970s or early 1980s; it is also available in the 1922 _R{\'e}cueil
    des publications de F. de Saussure_.

Kurylowicz, Jerzy.  h hittite et <shwa> indo-europ{\'e}en.  In _Symbolae
    grammaticae in honorem Joannis Rozwadowski_, v. 1.  (I can't remember the
    way to get a "barred l" in TeX for Polish, for JK's name.)  This is a rare
    book in this country; I think the Yale library has it in the regular
    stacks, so you can probably get it via interlibrary loan.  Again, in French
    but easy enough to follow, since the audience in question didn't necesarily
    know Hittite.

Lehmann, Winfred P.  _Proto-Indo-European Phonology_.  A short monograph which
    looks at all the data available in 1952 for the retention of laryngeals
    into the various daughter languages--an hypothesis which was radical at the
    time.  Tough, but in English, and doesn't assume a great deal of linguistic
    background.

Keiler, Allan.  _A Phonological Study of the Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals_.
    Examines the similarities between the vocalic affects of the PIE laryngeals
    and Arabic laryngals and pharyngals.  If you have some background, this
    might be what you are looking for.

I can't think of any more off the top of my head (Yes, I mean that:  I've spent
nearly 25 years studying the PIE laryngeals and the vowel system.) that are of
use to the beginning student of the question.  There are a couple of others who
read this newsgroup who might have some additions to my list.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
