Saturday, March 7, 2009

Laryngeal Reflexes in Latin: Part II

So Matt pointed out that the section in Sihler where he (Sihler, not Matt) goes over syllabic laryngeals may shed some light on why a laryngeal which stands in between two consonants fails to show the triple reflex in Latin. Apparently this is the reason: it's a syllabic laryngeal, which develops differently in Latin as well as Sanskrit, for that matter. (CHC > Lat. CaC, Skt. CiC)

I don't know if I like this explanation. I can't quite put my finger on it, but something seems fishy. I wonder whether Hittite shows any reflexes of these syllabic laryngeals. Off to Kloekhorst!

3 comments:

Mattitiahu said...

Oh crap, yeah, I was going to check that Ringe book for you, but I forgot. I'll do that today to see what he thinks.

I'd bring around my NIL to look at today, but that thing is too massive to leave the house with my other shite that I need for my daily work.

Mattitiahu said...

It appears that something similar happens in Tocharian, so I made a post on it.

I don't know if this happens universally however.

nmashton said...

The Neogrammarians reconstructed a schwa indogermanicum (Grundriß §§193–201) to account for these vowels.

Positing an original vocoid (which, considering that the reflexes are vowels everywhere, is sensible on the face of it), however, means that long syllabic resonants, aspirated voiceless stops in Sanskrit (e.g. sthitaḥ ≈ status), etc. require a separate explanation.