Laryngeals

[Glen Gordon]

ANTHONY APPLEYARD:
 If H3 was /h.w/ or similar, with a labial component, surely in at
 least one of PIE's many descendant languages we would find H3
 presenting as /w/?

This is not necessarily so since we don't find even the "unlabial"
*H2 in non-Anatolian languages. It should be noted that /h.<w>/ doesn't
mean /h.w/. The latter is a consonant cluster whereupon we would expect
such a thing as you say. The phoneme /h.<w>/ means that the labial
superscript denotes a _quality_ of the phoneme. An example is English
"ship" which has automatic rounding of "sh". This is pronounced in
contrast to "shwip" yet most English speakers don't pay attention to the
contrast.

However, I have been wondering about things like Sanskrit da-u (1rst
person singular). It almost looks like *-H3 (*-h<w>) had become *-w in
this instance. I'll let others respond to its validity however. I may be
wrong.

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