----- Original Message -----
From: "Andreas Johansson" <and_yo@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 8:50 PM
Subject: Re: Missing the sky
> Joe Hill wrote:
> > > Why doesn't anybody seem to believe in the "schwa indogermanicus" any
> > > longer? Even tho' initial [pxt-] would probably delight a Georgian,
> >doesn't
> > > the fact that a vowel turns up in all daughter languages sort of
suggest
> > > that there were one there right from the start?
> > >
> > > Andreas (who's not an IEist)
> > >
> > >
> >
> >Becuase of Hittite.
> >
> >Hittite has an /x/ sound where all other IE languages have a vowel. As
> >hittite is the earliest attested IE language, and Lanyngeals had been put
> >forth before, it makes sense, no?
>
> Well, I guess it does - otherwise the IEists would reconstruct the words
in
> question like they do. So, does Hettite have something like /pxter/ for
> "father"?
>
> Andreas
>
>
Well...hittite doesn't have a cognate in it's vocabulary, apparently.