Laryngeal theory

thumb|Overall extent of the [[Indo-European languages in Eurasia, Proto-Indo-European Urheimat in dark green and modern-day extent in light green.]]

The laryngeal theory is a widely accepted scientific theory in historical linguistics positing that the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language included a series of consonants that left no direct consonantal descendants in languages outside of the Anatolian branch. It was first proposed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879 to explain apparent irregularities in morphophonological patterns in daughter languages. The theory allowed for a better reconstruction of PIE ablaut and root; however, at the time there was no direct evidence of the proposed sounds in any of the daughter languages. This changed in 1927 when a Polish linguist, Jerzy Kuryłowicz, discovered that a sound transcribed as in the newly deciphered ancient Indo-European Hittite language appears in many of the places that the laryngeal theory predicted.

Subsequent scholarly work has established a set of rules by which an ever-increasing number of reflexes in daughter languages may be derived from PIE roots. The number of explanations thus achieved and the simplicity of the postulated system have both led to widespread acceptance of the theory.

Conversion from consonants to vowels

The reconstructed sounds are traditionally called "laryngeals" and are known to have been consonants, most likely fricatives; however, their exact place of articulation is debated. In its most widely accepted version, the theory posits three laryngeal phonemes in PIE. They are represented abstractly as:

(also written , , or , , , among other notations).

In the course of his analysis, Saussure proposed that what had then been reconstructed as long vowels and , alternating with , was an ordinary type of PIE ablaut. That is, it was an alternation between e grade and zero grade like in "regular" ablaut (further explanations below), but followed by a previously unidentified element. This element accounted for both the changed vowel colour and the lengthening (short becoming long or ).

So, rather than reconstructing , and as others had done before, Saussure proposed alternating with and with , where and represented the unidentified elements. Saussure called them simply , which was the term for what are now in English more usually called resonants; that is, the six elements present in PIE which can be either consonants (non-syllabic) or vowels (syllabic) depending on the sounds they are adjacent to: , , , , , and .

These views were accepted by a few scholars, in particular Hermann Möller, who added important elements to the theory. Saussure's observations, however, did not achieve any general currency, as they were still too abstract and had little direct evidence to back them up.

This changed when Hittite was discovered and deciphered in the early 20th century. Hittite phonology included two sounds written with symbols from the Akkadian syllabary conventionally transcribed as , as in 'I put, am putting'. This consonant did not appear to be related to any of the consonants then reconstructed for PIE, and various unsatisfactory proposals were made to explain this consonant in terms of the PIE consonant system as it had then been reconstructed.

It remained for Jerzy Kuryłowicz to propose that these sounds lined up with Saussure's conjectures.

Basic laryngeal set

Most scholars work with a basic three:

, the neutral laryngeal
, the a-colouring laryngeal
, the o-colouring laryngeal

Additional laryngeals

Some scholars suggest the existence of a fourth consonant, , which differs from in not being reflected as Anatolian but being reflected, to the exclusion of all other laryngeals, as Albanian h when word-initial before an originally stressed vowel.

E.g. PIE 'testicle' yields Albanian 'testicle' but Hittite 'testicle' whereas PIE 'bear' yields Albanian 'bear' but Hittite (=/hartka-/) 'cultic official, bear-person'.

Pronunciation

Considerable debate still surrounds the pronunciation of the laryngeals and various arguments have been given to pinpoint their exact place of articulation. According to the linguist Donald Ringe, it can be concluded with great certainty that all the laryngeals were obstruents, as they abide by the known rules of Proto-Indo-European obstruent syllabification. Further evidence regarding the pronunciation of the laryngeals may derive from their effects on adjacent phonemes. The evidence from Hittite and Uralic is sufficient to conclude that these sounds were guttural, pronounced rather back in the vocal tract. The same evidence is also consistent with the assumption that they were fricative sounds (as opposed to approximants or stops), an assumption that is strongly supported by the behaviour of laryngeals in consonant clusters, which is comparable to that of the coronal fricative .

Rasmussen suggested a consonantal realization for as the voiceless glottal fricative with a syllabic allophone (mid central unrounded vowel).This is supported by the closeness of to (with which it combines in Greek), Robert S. P. Beekes suggested that is always a glottal stop .

Alwin Kloekhorst argued that the Hieroglyphic Luwian sign no. 19 (, conventionally transcribed ) stood for (distinct from , sign no. 450: ) and represents the reflex of ; this would support the hypothesis that was, at least in some cases, . Later, Kloekhorst claimed that also Hittite preserves PIE as a glottal stop , visible in words like Hittite 'he is' < PIE , where an extra initial vowel sign (plene spelling) is used. This hypothesis has been met with serious criticism; e.g., from Elisabeth Rieken, Craig Melchert, and Mark Weeden.

Zsolt Simon supported Kloekhorst's thesis by suggesting that plene spelling in Cuneiform Luwian can be explained in a similar way. Additionally, Simon's 2013 article revises the Hieroglyphic Luwian evidence and concludes that although some details of Kloekhorst's arguments could not be maintained, his theory can be confirmed.

An idea occasionally advanced that the laryngeals were dorsal fricatives corresponding directly to the three traditionally reconstructed series of dorsal stops (palatal, velar, and labiovelar; i.e., that the laryngeals , and are more accurately written , , and respectively) suggests a further possibility, a palatal fricative .

From what is known of such phonetic conditioning in contemporary languages, notably Semitic languages, (the a-colouring laryngeal) could have been a pharyngeal fricative such as and . Pharyngeal consonants (like heth in the Semitic abjads) often cause a-colouring in the Semitic languages.

Uvular fricatives may also colour vowels; thus, is also a noteworthy candidate. Weiss suggests that this was the case in Proto-Indo-European proper, and that a shift from uvular into pharyngeal may have been a common innovation of the non-Anatolian languages (before the consonant's eventual loss). Rasmussen suggested a consonantal realization for as a voiceless velar fricative , with a syllabic allophone , i.e. a near-open central vowel.

Likewise it is generally assumed that was rounded (labialized) due to its o-colouring effects. It is often taken to have been voiced based on the perfect form from the root "drink" and Cowgill's law in Proto-Germanic (PIE → PPGmc → PGmc , "us two"). Rasmussen chose a consonantal realization for as a voiced labialized velar fricative , with a syllabic allophone , i.e. a close-mid central rounded vowel.

Kloekhorst reconstructs as the basic value, which in his view would be the labialized counterpart to (see above).

{| class="wikitable"

|+ Reflexes of h₂ in Anatolian

{| class="wikitable"

! PIE root !! Meaning || Modern Persian

| || 'bear' || wikt:خرس#Persian|

| || 'raw' || wikt:خام#Persian|

| || 'ashes' || wikt:خاک#Persian| 'dust, earth'

| || 'ignite' || wikt:هیزم#Persian| 'firewood'

| || 'passion' || wikt:خشم#Persian| 'anger'

Proposed indirect reflexes

In all other daughter languages, a comparison of the cognates can support only hypothetical intermediary sounds derived from PIE combinations of vowels and laryngeals. Some indirect reflexes are required to support the examples above where the existence of laryngeals is uncontested.

{| class="wikitable"

! PIE !! Intermediary !! Reflexes

| || ā || ā, a, ahh

| || u || ū, uhh

| || a || a, ā

| || o || o, a

The proposals in this table account only for attested forms in daughter languages. Extensive scholarship has produced a large body of cognates which may be identified as reflexes of a small set of hypothetical intermediary sounds, including those in the table above. Individual sets of cognates are explicable by other hypotheses but the sheer bulk of data and the elegance of the laryngeal explanation have led to widespread acceptance in principle.

Vowel coloration and lengthening

In the proposed Anatolian-language reflexes above, only some of the vowel sounds reflect PIE . In the daughter languages in general, many vowel sounds are not obvious reflexes.

{| class="wikitable"

! !! e grade !! o grade !! zero grade !! root meaning

| C(V)C || πέτεσθαι pétesthai || ποτή potḗ || πτέσθαι ptésthai || 'fly'

| C(V)iC || λείπειν leípein || λέλοιπα léloipa || λιπεῖν lipeîn || 'leave'

| C(V)uC || φεύγειν pheúgein || || φυγεῖν phugeîn || 'flee'

| C(V)r || δέρκομαι dérkomai || δέδορκα dédorka || δρακεῖν drakeîn || 'see clearly'

| C(V)l || πέλομαι pélomai || πόλος pólos || πλέσθαι plésthai || 'become'

| C(V)m || τέμω témō || τόμος tómos || ταμεῖν tameîn || 'cut'

| C(V)n || γένος génos || γόνος gónos || γίγνομαι gígnomai || 'birth'

The reconstructed PIE e grade and zero grade of the above roots may be arranged as follows:

{| class="wikitable"

! !! e grade !! zero grade

| C(V)C || *pet || *pt

| C(V)iC || *leikʷ || *likʷ

| C(V)uC || *bʰeug || *bʰug

| C(V)r || *derk || *drk

| C(V)l || *kʷel || *kʷl

| C(V)m || *tem || *tm

| C(V)n || *gen || *gn

An extension of the table to PIE roots ending in presumed laryngeals allows many Greek cognates to follow a regular ablaut pattern.

{| class="wikitable"

! !! e grade (I) !! zero grade (II) !! root meaning !! cognates

| C(V)h₁ || *dʰeh₁ || *dʰh₁ || 'put' || I : ē : τίθημι (títhēmi) II : e : θετός (thetós)

| C(V)h₂ || *steh₂ || *sth₂ || 'stand' || I : ā : Doric ἳστᾱμι (hístāmi) II : a : στατός (statós)

| C(V)h₃ || *deh₃ || *dh₃ || 'give' || I : ō : δίδωμι (dídōmi) II : o : δοτός (dotós)

Ablaut in the suffix

The first row of the following table shows how uncontested cognates relate to reconstructed PIE stems with e-grade or zero-grade roots, followed by e grade or zero grade of the suffix . The remaining rows show how the ablaut pattern of other cognates is preserved if the stems are presumed to include the suffixes , , and .

A separate suggestion proposes that the PIE -colouring laryngeal is reflected as Proto-Kartvelian in two fruit names borrowed from PIE 'apple', namely Proto-Kartvelian wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Kartvelian/msxal-| 'pear' and 'medlar', the latter etymologically the 'rotten () pear'.

Laryngeals reflected in the Uralic languages

Evidence for the PIE laryngeals has been suggested in ancient loans into Proto-Uralic. Work particularly associated with research of the scholar Jorma Koivulehto has identified several additions to the list of Finnic loanwords from an Indo-European source or sources whose particular interest is the apparent correlation of PIE laryngeals with three postalveolar phonemes (or their later reflexes) in the Finnic forms. If so, this would suggest great antiquity for the borrowings; since no attested Indo-European language neighbouring Uralic has consonants as reflexes of laryngeals, this would bolster the idea that laryngeals were phonetically distinct consonants.

However, Koivulehto's theories are not universally accepted and have been sharply criticized (e.g. by Finno-Ugricist Eugene Helimski) because many of the reconstructions involve a great deal of far-fetched hypotheses and the chronology is not in good agreement with the history of Bronze Age and Iron Age migrations in the Eastern Europe established by archaeologists and historians.

Three Uralic phonemes have been posited to reflect PIE laryngeals. In post-vocalic positions both the postalveolar fricatives that ever existed in Uralic are represented: firstly a possibly velar one, theoretically reconstructed much as the PIE laryngeals (conventionally marked *x), in the very oldest borrowings and secondly a grooved one ( as in shoe becoming modern Finnic h) in some younger ones. The velar plosive k is the third reflex and the only one found word-initially. In intervocalic position, the reflex k is probably younger than either of the two former ones. The fact that Finno-Ugric may have plosive reflexes for PIE laryngeals is to be expected under well documented Finnic phonological behaviour and does not mean much for tracing the phonetic value of PIE laryngeals.

The correspondences do not differentiate between , and . Thus

PIE laryngeals correspond to the PU laryngeal in wordstems like:
Finnish 'woman' / 'female' < PU < PIE [] = /-/ > Sanskrit 'goddess', OIr. (gen. of ), ~ Greek 'woman' (cognate to Engl. queen)
Finnish ~ Samic *sukë- 'to row' < PU < PIE
Finnish 'bring' ~ Samic *tuokë- ~ Tundra Nenets tāś 'give' < PU < PIE [] = // > Greek , Lat. , Old Lith. 'give', Hittite 'take'
:Note the consonantal reflex /k/ in Samic.
PIE laryngeals correspond to Finnic *h, whose normal origin is a Pre-Finnic fricative in wordstems like:
Finnish () 'medical plant, green herb' < PreFi < PreG > Gmc. 'green growth' > Swedish 'germ (shoot)'
Old Finnish inhi-(m-inen) 'human being' < PreFi 'descendant' < PIE > Sanskrit 'born, offspring, descendant', Gmc. 'generation, lineage, kin'
PIE laryngeals correspond to Pre-Finnic in wordstems like:
Finnish 'summer' < PFS *kesä < PIE () > Balto-Slavic *eseni- 'autumn', Gothic 'summer'
Finnish 'burnt-over clearing' < Proto-Finnic *kaski < PIE/PreG [] = // > Gmc. 'ashes'
Finnish 'to perceive, sense' < PreFi < PIE [] = // > Greek 'look, observe' (cognate to Lat. 'eye')
Finnish 'to go, walk, wander' ~ Hungarian 'to go, walk, proceed' < PFU *kulki- < PIE > Greek '(originally) to be moving', Sanskrit 'goes, walks, wanders (about)', cognate Lat. 'to till, cultivate, inhabit'
Finnish - 'do, make' ~ Hungarian , 'to do, make, put, place' < PFU *teki- < PIE > Greek , Sanskrit 'put, place', but 'do, make' in the western IE languages, e.g. the Germanic forms do, German , etc., and Latin (though OE and into Early Modern English do still sometimes means "put", and or still does in Dutch and colloquial German).

This list is not exhaustive, especially when one also considers several etymologies with laryngeal reflexes in Finno-Ugric languages other than Finnish. For most cases no other plausible etymology exists. While some single etymologies may be challenged, the case for this oldest stratum itself seems conclusive from the Uralic point of view, and corresponds well with all that is known about the dating of the other most ancient borrowings and contacts with Indo-European populations. Yet acceptance for this evidence is far from unanimous among Indo-European linguists, some even regard the hypothesis as controversial (see above). If, on the other hand, the Indo-Uralic hypothesis is supported, the explanation of why the correspondences do not differentiate between , and is that Pre-PIE or Indo-Hittite innovated this difference as a part of developing ablaut, where the zero grade matched ( and [h]), the front-unrounded full ("e") grade matched (mainstream > and < ) and the back-rounded full ("o") grade matched (Kümmel's uvular > pharyngeal fricative and ).

PIE laryngeals and Proto-Semitic

Several linguists have posited a relationship between PIE and Semitic, almost right after the discovery of Hittite. Among these were Hermann Möller, though a few had argued that such a relationship existed before the 20th century, like Richard Lepsius in 1836. The postulated correspondences between the IE laryngeals and that of Semitic assist in demonstrating their evident existence. Given here are a few lexical comparisons between the two respective proto-languages based on Václav Blažek, who discusses these correspondences in the context of a proposed relation between IE and Afroasiatic, the language family to which the Semitic languages belong:

Semitic 'to want, desire' ~ PIE [] 'to have sex'
Semitic ~ PIE [] 'to take'
Semitic 'in', 'on', 'by' ~ PIE [] > Sanskrit , ~ Greek
Semitic ~ PIE 'I'
Semitic 'to pass (over), move, run' ~ PIE [] 'to pass through'
Semitic 'to rise, grow, go up, be high' ~ PIE [] 'to grow, nourish'
Semitic : Arabic 'to rise, be big' ~ PIE [] 'to grow, nourish'
Semitic 'next, in addition' ~ PIE [] 'in'
Semitic: Arabic 'side', 'from, for; upon; in' ~ PIE [] 'on'

Comments

The Greek forms and are particularly valuable because the verb roots in question are extinct in Greek as verbs. This means that there is no possibility of some sort of analogical interference, as, for example, happened in the case of Latin "plow", whose shape has been distorted by the verb "to plow" (the exact cognate to the Greek form would have been ). It used to be standard to explain the root vowels of Greek "put, stood, given" as analogical. Most scholars nowadays probably take them as original, but in the case of "wind" and "plow", the argument cannot even come up.

Regarding Greek , the pseudo-participle affix *-ro- is added directly to the verb root, so - > *isero- > *ihero- > (with regular throwback of the aspiration to the beginning of the word), and Sanskrit . There seems to be no question of the existence of a root "vigorously move/cause to move". If the word began with a laryngeal, and most scholars would agree that it did, it would have to be , specifically; and that is a problem. A root of the shape is not possible. Indo-European had no roots of the type , , , i.e., with two copies of the same consonant. But Greek attests an earlier (and rather more widely attested) form of the same meaning, . If we reconstruct , all of our problems are solved in one stroke. The explanation for the business has long been discussed, without much result; laryngeal theory now provides the opportunity for an explanation which did not exist before, namely the metathesis of the two laryngeals. It is still only a guess, but it is a much simpler and more elegant guess than the guesses available before.

The syllabic in "father" might not be isolated. Certain evidence shows that the kinship affix seen in "mother, father" etc. might have been instead of . The laryngeal syllabified after a consonant (thus Greek , Latin , Sanskrit ; Greek , Sanskrit "daughter") but lengthened a preceding vowel (thus say Latin "mother", "brother") — even when the "vowel" in question was a syllabic resonant, as in Sanskrit "husbands' wives" < - < -).

Laryngeals in morphology

Like any other consonant, laryngeals feature in the endings of verbs and nouns and derivational morphology, the only difference being the greater difficulty of telling what's going on. Indo-Iranian, for example, can retain forms that pretty clearly reflect a laryngeal, but there is no way of knowing which one.

The following is a rundown of laryngeals in Proto-Indo-European morphology.

is seen in the instrumental ending (probably originally indifferent to number, like English expressions of the type by hand and on foot). In Sanskrit, feminine - and -stems have instrumentals in , , respectively. In the Rigveda, there are a few old -stems (PIE -stems) with an instrumental in ; but even in that oldest text the usual ending is , from the -stems.

::Greek has some adverbs in , but more important are the Mycenaean forms like "with ivory" (i.e. ? ?)

::The marker of the neuter dual was , as in Sanskrit "two carrying ones (neut.)", "two names", "two yokes" (< yuga-i? *yuga-ī?). Greek to the rescue: the Homeric form ósse "the (two) eyes" is manifestly from *h₃ekʷ-ih₁ (formerly *okʷ-ī) via fully regular sound laws (intermediately *okʷye).

::*-eh₁- derives stative verb senses from eventive roots: PIE "sit (down)": *sed-eh₁- "be in a sitting position" (> Proto-Italic *sed-ē-ye-mos "we are sitting" > Latin ). It is attested in Celtic, Italic, Germanic (the Class IV weak verbs), and Baltic/Slavic, with some traces in Indo-Iranian (In Avestan the affix seems to form past-habitual stems).

::It seems likely, though it is less certain, that this same underlies the nominative-accusative dual in o-stems: Sanskrit vṛkā, Greek lúkō "two wolves". (The alternative ending -āu in Sanskrit cuts a small figure in the Rigveda, but eventually becomes the standard form of the o-stem dual.)

:: derives desiderative stems as in Sanskrit jighāṃsati "desires to slay" < (root , Sanskrit han- "slay"). This is the source of Greek future tense formations and (with the addition of a thematic suffix *-ye/o-) the Indo-Iranian one as well: bhariṣyati "will carry" < .

::*-yeh₁-/*-ih₁- is the optative suffix for root verb inflections, e.g. Latin (old) siet "may he be", sīmus "may we be", Sanskrit syāt "may he be", and so on.

is seen as the marker of the neuter plural: *-h₂ in the consonant stems, *-eh₂ in the vowel stems. Much levelling and remodelling are seen in the daughter languages that preserve any ending at all, thus Latin has generalized *-ā throughout the noun system (later regularly shortened to -a), Greek generalized -ǎ < .

::The categories masculine/feminine plainly did not exist in the most original form of Proto-Indo-European, and there are very few noun types which are formally different in the two genders. The formal differences are mostly to be seen in adjectives (and not all of them) and pronouns. Both types of derived feminine stems feature : a type that is patently derived from the o-stem nominals; and an ablauting type showing alternations between and . Both are peculiar in having no actual marker for the nominative singular, and at least as far as the *-eh₂- type, two features seem clear: it is based on the o-stems, and the nom.sg. is probably in origin a neuter plural. (An archaic trait of Indo-European morpho-syntax is that plural neuter nouns construe with singular verbs, and quite possibly *yugeh₂ was not so much "yokes" in our sense, but "yokage; a harnessing-up".) Once that much is thought of, however, it is not easy to pin down the details of the "ā-stems" in the Indo-European languages outside of Anatolia, and such an analysis sheds no light at all on the / stems, which (like the -stems) form feminine adjective stems and derived nouns (e.g. Sanskrit devī- "goddess" from deva- "god") but unlike the "ā-stems" have no foundation in any neuter category.

:: seems to have formed factitive verbs, as in "to renew, make new again", as seen in Latin novāre, Greek neáō and Hittite ne-wa-aḫ-ḫa-an-t- (participle) all "renew" but all three with the pregnant sense of "plow anew; return fallow land to cultivation".

:: marked the 1st person singular, with a confusing distribution: in the thematic active (the familiar -ō ending of Greek and Latin, and Indo-Iranian -ā(mi)), and also in the perfect tense (not really a tense in PIE): as in Greek oîda "I know" < . It is the basis of the Hittite ending , as in "I take" < (original embellished with the primary tense marker with subsequent smoothing of the diphthong).

may be tentatively identified in a directive case. No such case is found in Indo-European noun paradigms, but such a construct accounts for a curious collection of Hittite forms like "(in)to the sky", "to, into the ground", "to the sea". These are sometimes explained as o-stem datives in -a < *-ōy, an ending attested in Greek and Indo-Iranian, among others, but there are serious problems with such a view, and the forms are highly coherent, functionally. And there are also appropriate adverbs in Greek and Latin (elements lost in productive paradigms sometimes survive in stray forms, like the old instrumental case of the definite article in English expressions like the more the merrier): Greek ánō "upwards, kátō "downwards", Latin "whither?", "to that place"; and perhaps even the Indic preposition/preverb â "to(ward)" which has no satisfactory competing etymology. (These forms must be distinguished from the similar-looking ones formed to the ablative in *-ōd and with a distinctive "fromness" sense: Greek ópō "whence, from where".)

Criticism

Throughout its history, the laryngeal theory in its various forms has been subject to extensive criticism and revision.

The original argument of Saussure was not accepted by anyone in the Neogrammarian school, primarily based at the University of Leipzig, then reigning at the cutting-edge of Indo-European linguistics. Several of them attacked the savagely. Hermann Osthoff's criticism was particularly virulent, often descending into personal invective.

For the first half-century of its existence, the laryngeal theory was widely seen as "an eccentric fancy of outsiders". In Germany, it was roundly rejected.), the direct evidence so crucial for the Neogrammarian thinking was lacking. Saussure's structural considerations were foreign to the leading contemporary linguists. an approach further accepted by Edward Sapir, Edgar Sturtevant, and – through them – much of American linguistics. The three-laryngeal system was defended, among others, by Walter Couvreur and by Émile Benveniste. Many individual proposals were made, which assumed up to ten laryngeals, such as that of André Martinet. While some scholars, like and Giuliano Bonfante, attempted to disregard Anatolian evidence altogether, the "minimal" serious proposal (with roots in Pedersen's early ideas) was put forward by Hans Hendriksen, , and later Ladislav Zgusta, who assumed a single /H/ phoneme with no vowel-colouring effects.

However, by the 2000s a widespread agreement was reached in the field – though not unanimous – on reconstructing Möller's three laryngeals. One of the last major critics of this approach was Oswald Szemerényi, who subscribed to a theory similar to Zgusta's.

References

Bibliography

External links

Kortlandt, Frederik (2001): Initial laryngeals in Anatolian (pdf)
Lexicon of Early Indo-European Loanwords Preserved in Finnish