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Is there any regular development of adjacent laryngeals in Proto-Indo-European?

Nope, at least not TMK. There was a suggestion by Colarusso that this explained the odd appearance of "horse" in Greek, in that it was derived from the stem "quick". It he might have said it was **h₃eh₁ḱu- or something, and so "dog" became **h₃h₁ḱu-on- and 'horse' was **h₃h₁eḱu-o- and that *HHe > hi / #_ in Greek.

But this was highly speculative. Possibly Genn Gordian, in that he was arguing inheritance from Pontic (i.e. Indo-Caucasian).

bricka wrote:Is there any regular development of adjacent laryngeals in Proto-Indo-European?

There wouldn't be two adjacent laryngeals within a root, but it is certainly possible to have a cluster of two laryngeals across a morpheme boundary.

Take the verb "to give", whose root is probably *deh3. Make it into the 1st person singular perfect middle, with reduplication, and you get *ded-h3-h2ei. This "regularly" gives Vedic Sanskrit dade. Unfortunately, this kind of construction is strongly subject to paradigmatic levelling, so that it would be hard to say what "regular" development would have given.

A good way forward would be to identify a PIE neuter consonant stem noun ending in -h2 or -h3, and see what its plural (-h2) would be like. I couldn't find any Greek or Sanskrit derivatives of such a hypothetical noun, however (it would end in -ê/-ô in Greek and -â in Sanskrit).

But offhand I would say that *-eh2h3e would give (late) PIE **-â, and -eh3h2e would give **-ô. In Hittite, both would give -ahha.

gsandi wrote:There wouldn't be two adjacent laryngeals within a root,

Theoretically, in zero grade there could be. Some roots are reconstructed with two laryngeals, e.g. *H2eHs-eH2 ashes, hearth and *H2oH1-(e)s- mouth. At least in Hittite I've seen a zero grade reconstructed for the genitive hassas, possibly from *H2Hs(H2)-os. In this case the second laryngeal has become syllabic, just like the case of two adjacent resonants (*wlkwos, with syllabic l).

A laryngeal-skepticist site says that the PIE word for "two widows" had two consecutive laryngeals in a row:

http://languagecontinuity.blogspot.com/ ... idows.html


H1widʰwéH2H1e

Sleinad Flar wrote:

gsandi wrote:There wouldn't be two adjacent laryngeals within a root,

Theoretically, in zero grade there could be. Some roots are reconstructed with two laryngeals, e.g. *H2eHs-eH2 ashes, hearth and *H2oH1-(e)s- mouth. At least in Hittite I've seen a zero grade reconstructed for the genitive hassas, possibly from *H2Hs(H2)-os. In this case the second laryngeal has become syllabic, just like the case of two adjacent resonants (*wlkwos, with syllabic l).

I suppose. There is no strange-sounding reconstruction that some laryngalists haven't suggested somewhere...

I am not sure why the word for "ashes, hearth" has to be reconstructed with any more laryngeal than at the beginning. This is how I reconstruct it, with my explanation:

*H2es-s There seems to be a rule that final clusters -ss, -rs, -ns are reduced to -s, -r, -n with lengthening of the previous vowel (and later loss of final n): *H2ess > *Hass > *Hâs, *pHters > *p@têr, *kuons > *kuôn > kuô. I can't prove this, but it accounts for the facts as well as any theory, and you can actually pronounce the reconstructed forms. (Try to pronounce two initial laryngeals in the zero grade hypothesis!).

(As for the lengthening of *Hâs to hâsas in Hittite and âra in Latin, it wouldn't be the first time in IE languages to transfer short consonant stem nouns to longer o/â stem ones).

In the case of the "mouth" word, why does it begin with H2, by the way? It could just as well be *H3oH1-, *H3eH1- and who knows what else.

gsandi wrote:In the case of the "mouth" word, why does it begin with H2, by the way? It could just as well be *H3oH1-, *H3eH1- and who knows what else.

Sorry, typo. It was probably H1 (if it started with a laryngeal at all). Hittite doesn't retain the laryngeal in the mouth word (ais).

(Try to pronounce two initial laryngeals in the zero grade hypothesis!

The second laryngeal would be a schwa, of course!
(I agree with you that all of this is very theoretical and abstract, and like you I'm hesistant to reconstruct these roots with so many laryngeals. Just playing the devil's advocate here.)

Sleinad Flar wrote:

gsandi wrote:In the case of the "mouth" word, why does it begin with H2, by the way? It could just as well be *H3oH1-, *H3eH1- and who knows what else.

Sorry, typo. It was probably H1 (if it started with a laryngeal at all). Hittite doesn't retain the laryngeal in the mouth word (ais).

On H1 I actually agree with the mainstream: it is obligatory initially before a vowel. In my view, this is because it was a glottal stop, similar to what happens in German.