4 ms·

How can you determine that a consonant was "laryngeal" (voiced?) from text?

smitty1e 3y ago
For an interesting example using ancient Egyptian, see https://youtu.be/J-K5OjAkiEA https://youtu.be/J-K5OjAkiEA
jfengel 3y ago
Laryngeal refers to the place of articulation (where the air stream is constricted). They are pronounced way in the back of the throat, like the glottal stop. Even further back than things like Greek chi or German ch.
Sprocklem 3y ago
See the video linked in the sister comment for (IIRC) an excellent discussion of historical reconstruction of sounds from writing systems, but I can add some clarification to the matter of laryngeal consonants: they are confusingly named for historical reasons but consitute three unknown consonants with a place of articulation towards the back of the vocal tract (near the larynx). In addition to this reconstruction, this specific case has the additional matter of finding consonants in a place where they are predicted from their influence on the nearby vowels in IE languages (and, incidentally, the expected vowels), but where there is otherwise no consonant attested in non-Anatolian IE languages.
canjobear 3y ago
The laryngeal consonants were guttural sounds produced in the back of the throat, like English h, German ch, Arabic `ayn or qaf, etc. We don't know exactly what the pronunciations were, but in other existing languages, laryngeal sounds like this tend to have an effect on the surrounding vowels. This happens because your tongue has to movie continuously between the sounds it produces, and so there's some blurring that happens between adjacent sounds. In particular, laryngeal sounds tend to make vowels near them become more back, low, and round. So for example before a uvular q sound in Arabic, the sound /a/ which is usually something like English a in cat will become back and low, something more like au in caught. You can get a process like this, playing out over hundreds of years: 1. You start with a form like Hewis, where H is some laryngeal sound. 2. The laryngeal sound makes the following vowel low and back, yielding Hawis. 3. The laryngeal sound drops, leaving just awis. In fact this is how we get the Indo-European root for "sheep" (reflected in English ewe, Latin ovis, etc.). The Hittite form is hawis.
- daliusd 3y ago
  Nice, sheep in Lithuanian is “avis” (https://lt.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/avis https://lt.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/avis) what I assume sounds like “hawis”
  - amitprayal 3y ago
    Avi in sanskrit
  - canjobear 3y ago
    Yeah, Lithuanian is one of the most conservative Indo-European languages.
    - mlinksva 3y ago
      I did not know the term, but very intuitive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_and_innovative_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_and_innovative_(l... linked near the top of https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Lithuanian_language https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Lithuanian_language I'd be curious to see some kind of (perhaps multi-dimensional?) characterization/ranking of all languages' conservatism and innovation, if anyone happens to have a pointer.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

For an interesting example using ancient Egyptian, see https://youtu.be/J-K5OjAkiEA https://youtu.be/J-K5OjAkiEA

Laryngeal refers to the place of articulation (where the air stream is constricted). They are pronounced way in the back of the throat, like the glottal stop. Even further back than things like Greek chi or German ch.

Sprocklem 3y ago

See the video linked in the sister comment for (IIRC) an excellent discussion of historical reconstruction of sounds from writing systems, but I can add some clarification to the matter of laryngeal consonants: they are confusingly named for historical reasons but consitute three unknown consonants with a place of articulation towards the back of the vocal tract (near the larynx). In addition to this reconstruction, this specific case has the additional matter of finding consonants in a place where they are predicted from their influence on the nearby vowels in IE languages (and, incidentally, the expected vowels), but where there is otherwise no consonant attested in non-Anatolian IE languages.

canjobear 3y ago

The laryngeal consonants were guttural sounds produced in the back of the throat, like English h, German ch, Arabic `ayn or qaf, etc. We don't know exactly what the pronunciations were, but in other existing languages, laryngeal sounds like this tend to have an effect on the surrounding vowels. This happens because your tongue has to movie continuously between the sounds it produces, and so there's some blurring that happens between adjacent sounds. In particular, laryngeal sounds tend to make vowels near them become more back, low, and round. So for example before a uvular q sound in Arabic, the sound /a/ which is usually something like English a in cat will become back and low, something more like au in caught. You can get a process like this, playing out over hundreds of years: 1. You start with a form like Hewis, where H is some laryngeal sound. 2. The laryngeal sound makes the following vowel low and back, yielding Hawis. 3. The laryngeal sound drops, leaving just awis. In fact this is how we get the Indo-European root for "sheep" (reflected in English ewe, Latin ovis, etc.). The Hittite form is hawis.

daliusd 3y ago
Nice, sheep in Lithuanian is “avis” (https://lt.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/avis https://lt.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/avis) what I assume sounds like “hawis”
- amitprayal 3y ago
  Avi in sanskrit
- canjobear 3y ago
  Yeah, Lithuanian is one of the most conservative Indo-European languages.
  - mlinksva 3y ago
    I did not know the term, but very intuitive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_and_innovative_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_and_innovative_(l... linked near the top of https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Lithuanian_language https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Lithuanian_language I'd be curious to see some kind of (perhaps multi-dimensional?) characterization/ranking of all languages' conservatism and innovation, if anyone happens to have a pointer.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]