Sturtevant Edgar H. The Indo-Hittite Laryngeals

Linguistic Society of America, 1942. — 101 p.In this book the word laryngeals designates certain consonants of Proto- Indo-Hittite. The name is historically a translation of German Laryngale, which term was borrowed from Semitic grammar bv Hermann Moller to designate five phonemes of his Proto-Indo-European-Semitic. Moller’s theories have powerfully influenced the study of our laryngeals [5-9], and the name is an instance of this. Nevertheless it is not at all certain that the IH laryngeals were identical with the laryngeals of Semitic grammar either phonetically or historically, and neither is it certain that these IH phonemes were all actually produced in the larynx. The fact that English has two originally equivalent terms, laryngeal and laryngal , and that the latter tends to be used more and more by phoneticians and Semitists, makes it possible for us to avoid certain unfortunate suggestions by retaining the name laryngeals , which has besides already gained some currency as the designation of these four IE or IH consonants.