Ablaut, Laryngeal Theory and the Hittite 'ḫ' - Linguistics for Newbies
Vložit
- čas přidán 11. 09. 2023
- Today, I will talk about why I think the Hittite 'ḫ' is one of the most 'famous' signs in all of linguistics. It's not necessarily my favourite, that goes to 'ǂ' but very interesting all the same. I will go over the basics of ablaut and laryngeal theory in Proto-Indo-European linguistics and how the Hittite 'ḫ' kinda proved that comparative linguistics as a field works.
This was an ambitious video for me so your patience is much appreciated! What about a deeper dive into some of these concepts later down the line?
For fun and curiosity, I included some Luwian hieroglyph and cuneiform examples of the ''ḫ'' in action. Very cool.
Here are the main resources I used to produce this video, in no particular order:
Rasmussen BA. F.O. Lindeman: Introduction to the 'Laryngeal Theory', Oslo 1987. Bibliotheca Orientalis. 1990;52-55.
Bednarczuk, L. (1988). Języki indoeuropejskie . (T. I-II). Państwowe Wydaw. Naukowe.
Ringe, D., Warnow, T. and Taylor, A. (2002), Indo-European and Computational Cladistics. Transactions of the Philological Society, 100: 59-129.
E. G. Pulleyblank (1965) The Indo-European Vowel System and the
Qualitative Ablaut, Word, 21:1, 86-101
Brugmann K. Elements Comparative Grammar Indo-Germanic Languages
Translated from German by J. Wright.1888. 5 vols.
Figulla H. H. Weidner E. F. Weber O. & Hrozný Bedřich. (1916). Keilschrifttexte aus boghazköi ... autographien. J.C. Hinrichs
Payne A. Hieroglyphic Luwian: An Introduction with Original Texts
Volume 2 of Subsidia et instrumenta linguarum orientis,
Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010
Hawkins, J. (2000). Vol 1 Inscriptions of the Iron Age, Berlin, Boston - Zábava
Another good example of umlaut in Greek would be:
Ballo (Βάλλω) throw
Belos (Βέλος) arrow
Bolos (Βώλος or Βόλος) net thrown to catch and also dice cast and in modern Greek small ball
And, of course, the classic
Lego (λέγω) I speak
Logos (λόγος) speech
trying to learn linguistics from youtube from scratch, this channel is a gem
will there be any videos on languages you specialize in or you separate the work from the hobby so to speak? thx in advance
I'm still unsure. It's difficult for me to get motivated to work on something in my free time when I've worked on it during the day, if you get what I mean.
Very interesting because it is the first time I saw laryngeals in the original scripts. Very accessible too. I am fairly new to Hittite. I would like to know if Hittite can provide the answer to the question if all long vowels come from a short vowel followed by a laryngeal. I have seen too few and always the same examples, like newah (renew), whereas most daughter languages show long vowels. My main objection to the three laryngeal system is that in that system most words wll contain a laryngeal and most reconstructions with this system are completely unpronounceable. In defence it is said that the phonetic realisations are not known, but that is too easy. When reconstructing sounds, one should have a clue how they may have sounded and, preferably, the system should not be atypical. At least your video gives us a clue to the pronunciation. Another problem is that often laryngeals are postulated when Aanatolian doesn not have them. I accept two laryngeals, a voiced an unvoiced one, because in my view, when a stop is modified by an aspirate or a glottal stop or by palatalisation, the modifying phonemes before or after vowels should exist as well. Accordingly, palatalised stops cannot exist without palatals. That's why Russian has consonants followed by Ь alongside Й, Ю and Я. Polish, French and Lakota nasals exist alongside n as an initial consonant followed by a vowel and Lakota glottalised stops exist alongside prevocalic glottal stops. So an aspirate as in * bher-, which is related to the English verb bear without an apirate as in * howis (sheep) would be very atypical. Prove me wrong if I am. By the way, *terh- is related to English through. Did you read the papers by Jouna Pyysalo? He publishes on PIE and Anatolian regularly. I appreciate his scientific approach to sound changes. I have the impression he is not taken seriously by the Leiden school in my country. I agree with his two laryngeal system but I think his representations of aspirate stops and ablaut in PIE are too far fetched. I am not saying I have all the answers but some answers may be more straightforward than you think and I am one of the few in the field that never forgets that a language like PIE was actually once spoken and therefore should be reasonably pronounceable.
I think that your points on the high frequency of laryngeals in PIE and the lack of laryngeals in Anatolian where they are predicted to be are valid concerns about laryngeal theory in its current format. I defintely don't accept ideas of a fourth or fifth laryngeal - that would be encroaching on the absurd in my opinion.
I'm happy to accept that some form of laryngeal theory is the answer, I just think it is still work in progress. I'm interested in the next few years whether research on Proto-Uralic (or some other neighbouring proto language like Kartevelian) maybe some 'frozen' reflexes will be discovered and shed new light on the issue but I think the low quality of papers looking for evidence of borrowed laryngeals in these languages is revealing in and of itself that we might be missing something in our current understanding of laryngeal theory.
I've interacted a few times with Jouna Pyysalo on FB, he is very knowledgable and he's advised me well on a few things.
Ubykh ( wəbəĥ ) manages to be spoken with only 3 vowels and dozens of consonants
🎉je 1❤de 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
I'm not sure if it was clear, but "avus" (the Latin name of the ideogram) and "huhas" are cognates. Old Armenian "հաւ" seems to have a reflex of the laryngeal too, not that I know anything about the prehistory of Armenian.
And I overcame them