"syllabicity"

[Peter &/or Graham]

Pat said:

>I do not dispute that 'laryngeals' were consonantal in Nostratic but by
>Indo-European, I believe their consonantal had been lost except for Hittite.

There is some evidence in Sanskrit that requires them to be a consonant:
(a) the failure to lengthen IE /o/ in the 1st person singular perfect, while
lengthening did take place in the 3rd:  1 sing: cakara < ke-ker-He, as
opposed to 3 sing caka:ra < ke-ker-e.   This is usually explained by the
presence of the now invisible consonant H in the 1 sing.

[ Moderator's comment:
  *ke-kor-H_2e vs. *ke-kor-e (Brugmann's Law).
  --rma ]

(b) A similar point - set roots fail to lengthen the vowel in causatives -
again usually explained by the presence of a laryngeal consonant.  A
laryngeal must have been present, but a vowel would have allowed
lengthening.

(c) Reduplication of roots beginning with a laryngeal.   We find an
unexpected -i-: e.g. gan-igm-at < Hgen-Hgn-.   If the H at the beginning of
the root had vanished, the -i- would not appear (as it does not in roots
without initial H-) and if it had become a vowel, it would appear at the
beginning of the reduplicated syllable as well.   The only explanation is a
consonantal H, which then shares the later usual interconsonantal
development to -i-.

(d) If H has already become a vowel in (for example) the IE root *kerH "to
proclaim", how do we explain the reflexes of an apparent long r in ppp
ki:rta-?   Why not *krVt-, as if from a CrV root?

(e) The development of voiceless aspirates is impossible to explain if the H
is a vowel, because they do not develop regularly before other vowels, but
only occur only where we expect an H, e.g. a-khya < a-kH-ya, compared with
cayati < keH-ya-ti.

(f) In Skt H develops to -i- between consonants.  If it were already a
vowel, it would have caused palatalisation, but in fact it prevents
palatalisation, when it comes between a consonant and a following front
vowel - e.g. in the example above, a-kh-ya as opposed to the palatalised
cayati.

Outside Sanskrit there are also bits of evidence, for example:
(a) Roots with initial H.   In the form HReC, if H has already become a
vowel, we will not find the pattern ReC, but VReC in Latin etc; if it is
lost, we would not find the prothetic vowel in Greek & Armenian.  Therefore
it survives as a consonant.

(b) Avestan patterns of consonants such as you find in the word for "path":
nominative panta: < pent-oH, but genitive paTo: (interdental fricative) <
pntH-os, and oblique pad-.  These are not explicable if H were a vowel.

So I need to see some good evidence for your position, Pat, before I am
convinced!

Peter