pre-IE k > H

[Carol F. Justus]

>On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> Dear Indo-Europeanists:

>> In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
>> proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=IE or early IE k became a
>> "laryngeal".

[ moderator snip ]

>Actually, this phonological change is quite common in other language groups,
>for example in PF-U *k- becomes h- in Hungarian (but stays k- in Finnish) when
>it is followed by vowels such as a or o. It parallels IE examples (including
>the one you have mentioned) and Sino-Tibetan examples

I wonder if it is not important to distinguish between a *k > h (such as
happened in Germanic (e.g., cornu, 'horn') and *k- > largyngeal written in
Hittite with a sound transcribed as 'h' with a diacritic under it?

Carol Justus