Typology and the phonetics of laryngeals

[Ante Aikio]

On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, Herb Stahlke wrote:

> In the various IE handbooks, I've seen a number of phonetic solutions
> proposed for the problem of what the laryngeals were phonetically, but all of
> them look like typologically odd sets of sounds given standard
> reconstructions for PIE.

> In the '70s and '80s, phonological typology was called on pretty heavily to
> motivate the glottalic hypothesis for PIE.  I'm puzzled about the near
> absence of application of typology to the question of what the phonetic
> values of the laryngeals might have been.

> Have I missed obvious sources?  Has there been discussion of the typology of
> laryngeals?

I am not familiar with the typological discussion (if there was any), but
another thing that may be of interest in this context comes into my mind.
I believe the IE loan words that show laryngeal reflexes in Uralic may
tell something about the phonetic values of laryngeals. Since there are
etymologies that show such substitutions as 1) *h[1-3] > Uralic *k, 2)
*h[1-3] > Uralic *x (read *x as [Y] =gamma), 3) *h[1-2] > Uralic
(retroflex) *S, it seems probable that some [x]-type sounds must be
reconstructed (/x´ x xw/, perhaps?) Such phonetic values as e.g. [?] for
*h1 proposed by e.g. Beekes 1995 seem problematic to me; a substitution
[?] > [k] seems perfectly possible, but [?] > [Y] does not, let alone [?]
> [S].

Regards,
Ante Aikio