Laryngeals

[Glen Gordon]

ME (GLEN):
 A labial quality must be added to explain this - thus *H3 = /h.<w>/
 and it is a labial *H2. ...

MODERATOR:
 The evidence adduced in favour of voicing of *H3 is Skt. pibati,
 Latin bibit "he drinks", a reduplicated present from a root
 reconstructed as *peH3-, in combination with Sturtevant's Rule.  A
 tad thin, I admit. --rma

It does seem kind of thin.

APPLEYARD:
 In my mouth at least, I find that the /e/ in /h.a/ tries to acquire
 a distinct flavour of /a/, and the /e/ in /3e/ (where /3/ is ayin)
 tries to acquire a distinct flavour of /o/.

Well, certainly *H2 and *H3 appear to lower IE vowels. As far as I
understand, both *a and *o are low vowels (an important thing to keep in
mind), *a being unrounded front and *o being rounded back. If both *H2e
and *H3e become Anatolian *ha in sharp contrast to the result of IE
*H1e, then we must conclude that there is something special about both
*H2 and *H3 that makes it quite different from *H1 which shows up with
virtually no trace in later IE lgs. Thus the logical choice for *H1 has
to be /?/.

Since *H2 and *H3 both agree on lowering vowels and since laryngeals are
known to do such a thing, */h./ might be a logical choice. Yet *H2 and
*H3 are different in that *H3 in addition to lowering, rounds vowels,
thus the labial */h.<w>/ for *H3.

Voicing doesn't necessarily accomplish this feat as the moderator points
out. Labials are a more direct choice.

--------------------------------------------
Glen Gordon
glengordon01 at hotmail.com