Typology and the phonetics of laryngeals

[Stanley Friesen]

At 01:50 PM 4/4/00 +0300, Ante Aikio wrote:

>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].

I, too, for other reasons, have drifted away from H1 as [?].

I am not sure whether this counts as typological reasoning, but I strongly
lean towards a labialized H3 on the basis of parallelism with the
labialized obstruents.

So, my current "best guess" for the laryngeals is something like yours,
/x', x, x^w/, or /h, x, x^w/.  (With /x/ being a *back* fricative, and /x'/
or /h/ being less far back).

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com