pre-IE k > H

[CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU]

Pat Ryan wrote:

>In Greenberg's new book, _Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives_, the
>proposal is made on pp. 59-60 that pre=3DIE or early IE k became a
>"laryngeal".

>Greenberg cites Latin costa, 'rib', and Greek ostou^s, 'bone', among others,
>as examples of "a number of roots which require proto-forms with k alongside
>of H".

>I was, of course, aware of *kost- and *ost(h)-, for which I would prefer
>another explanation, but I am unaware of numerous examples suggesting this
>relationship.

I haven't seen Greenberg's book, but this is strange, since IE languages
are full of words with initial k- (k'-).  Any such change would have to have
been very rare.  And would there have been a conditioning factor?  Hard to find
one with so few examples (impossible, of course, if there's only one).

If there were any connection (unlikely, I think), one might think rather of a
"hardening" of laryngeals to a velar stop, perhaps in sandhi -- since final
laryngeals were common enough, one could consider whether /-VH HV-/ was
realized as [-Vk kV-], the second word then being reanalyzed as /kV-/.  That,
at least, could have a certain phonetic plausibility.  But please, folks, this
is *highly* speculative, and unless several more plausible examples can be
found, it isn't worth the phosphors it is written on.


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