PIE e/o Ablaut

[CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU]

Someonw wrote:

>>> Hyeug - to yoke.

>> I am not sure why you reconstruct an initial laryngeal.

Peter replied:

>I have been hunting through my notes, and I'm not sure now either!
>I picked it up from somewhere, without keeping a record of who suggested it.
>I only have a note that Sanskrit occasionally has a long augment before this
>root a:yunak, and a reference to the Greek development in /dzugon/, which
>one or two people have suggested shows an initial Hy cluster  (#Hy > /dz/,
>#y > /h/).   And my Sanskrit books show no sign of a long augment!

For what it's worth, several scholars of the dim dark past have proposed that
PIE y- yielded Greek <Z> ([z] or [dz]?), while Hy- yielded [h-] (rough
breathing), provided that the laryngeal was voiceless.  For discussion and
analysis see Lehman, PIEP, 74ff.  I think this development is phonetically more
plausible: the voiced resonant remains voiced, the voiceless laryngeal devoices
the y-.  But please: the evidence is fairly scanty, and I cannot say that I
accept this as fact.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at memphis.edu                    University of Memphis